Decolonial leadership for cultural resistance and social change: Challenging the social order through the struggle of identity

Abstract

The current article focuses on subaltern social groups’ efforts that emphasize the struggle of identity with purposes of cultural resistance and social change. Through a critical approach that incorporates the reality of “coloniality” as the context within leadership emerges, the article draws from the experience of a Native American organization in a middle-size city of the United States that uses identity as a resource to challenge the dominant Eurocentric social order. The construct of “decolonial leadership” is proposed to illuminate the emancipatory process of this organization that aims to decolonize society debunking myths and narratives imposed with the dominant social order and taking control of reality from their cultural perspectives and leadership approaches. A process of decolonial leadership creates spaces from which developing collective actions and sense-making processes that eventually contribute to building symbolic power to change the dominant social order. Using a sociological and anthropological lens that challenges leader-centered perspectives and focuses on the collective dimensions of leadership, the study contributes insights to both the social change and the indigenous leadership literature.

Keywords

Decolonial leadership identity struggle symbolic power collective action social change leadership postcolonial leadership indigenous leadership Native American leadership

Introduction

Leadership can be understood as a social myth that functions to legitimize a specific social order. Moreover, “the major significance of most recent studies on leadership is not to be found in their scientific validity but in their function in offering ideological support for the existing social order” (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992: 115). In mainstream conceptualizations of leadership, there is an unquestionable assumption that leaders and hierarchies are needed for the functioning of organizations, and this approach has real consequences when it comes to practice leadership (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992). For critical leadership studies (CLS), it is central to understand better the existing social order that mainstream leadership approaches support. A social order that is viewed in this article as the context where ideas and assumptions of leadership emerge and are exercised.

Most of today’s social orders around the world are resulting from colonialism. These social orders are characterized by Eurocentered colonial structures of power, also known as “coloniality,” that still produce specific social discriminations that are codified by racial, ethnic, anthropological, or national forms (Quijano, 2010). The Eurocentric perspective “naturalizes” domination and oppression and “universalizes” a hegemonic worldview and its social order as superior to the rest. This dominant social order establishes a hierarchy between races, cultures, and identities that results in an asymmetrical distribution of power, recognition, and value (Mignolo, 2011).

In the United States, race, culture, and identity are functional to establish social orders and distribute power in asymmetrical ways. While white people are situated at the top of the social hierarchy and their identity implies recognition and prestige, marginalized social groups experience exclusion and stigma. However, today, many subaltern social groups in the country are unfolding emancipatory processes of leadership that emphasize the work and struggle of culture and identity to challenge the dominant social order. Also, they involve the decolonization of the marginalized groups first, since they might have internalized the oppression, and then actions and strategies to “decolonize” the dominant society. In this article, emancipatory processes lead by subaltern social groups are defined as decolonial leadership.1 More specifically, decolonial leadership is the process that aims to decolonize society debunking myths and narratives imposed with the Eurocentric social order and taking control of reality from the cultural perspectives and collective leadership approaches of the subaltern social groups.

Since mainstream leadership is functional to legitimize a Eurocentric social order with colonial structures of power based on race, culture, and identity, it becomes central for critical leadership perspectives to study in-depth decolonial leadership processes. These decolonial processes emerge within a context of coloniality and struggle against the social order using culture and identity as resources for social change. Moreover, because the dominant social order is supported through the internalization of assumptions of individualistic and vertical views of leadership where a leader at the top accumulates all the power, it is key to make visible more distributive and participatory ways of exercising leadership. Instead of annihilating people, more shared leadership approaches can empower them in a more collective and emancipatory way. Overall, subaltern groups and their leadership processes that challenge coloniality have been excluded when theorizing leadership. Therefore, the central question that arises is how does an unfolding decolonial process of leadership look like and how does it use culture and identity as resources for social change?

Brown and Hosking (1986), in their critical work about distributed leadership and skill performance within social movement organizations, described the skills involved in achieving, maintaining, and changing social organizations and orders and how leadership is central to create social orders. Also, Zoller and Fairhurst (2007) examined the role of leadership in mobilizing collective resistance in organizations to transform structures of domination. Additionally, Ospina and Su (2009), in their research about race, ethnicity, and the work of leadership in social change organizations, showed how the participants of their study understand race-ethnicity as a resource to advance their goals revealing details about the roles of these social identities in the work of leadership.

Issues of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1989) from the sociological field and collective action (Melucci, 1996) from the social movement literature are central to improving our understanding of processes of cultural resistance and social change that today are taking place. Implementing these two concepts in this article is helpful to understanding leadership more collectively and offering insights regarding how social change leadership can be developed using cultural identity as a resource to balance asymmetries of power through the idea of symbolic power.

This article contributes to postcolonial discourse in leadership and organization studies by applying a decolonial lens and offering empirical research about an emancipatory process of leadership within a context of coloniality. Also, this research illuminates the relationship between cultural identity as a resource and leadership which can help to advance our understanding of how social change leadership happens. Finally, this study also implements a more collective approach to leadership analysis incorporating a social and cultural perspective grounded in sociology, anthropology, and an ethnographic methodology of research.

This article is focused on an urban Native American organization with members from 17 different tribes in a middle-size city of the Northwest of the United States that provides health services to the community and is engaged in a process of decolonization for social change. The study was designed not to understand the processes of this organization as representative of Native American leadership but as an example of a subaltern social group. More specifically, a marginalized social group that resists and struggles in a collective way against the dominant worldview and uses cultural identity to balance asymmetries of power and challenges the dominant order. Today, there are over 500 federally recognized tribes in the United States (Warner and Grint, 2006), and urban American Indians in the same city belong to many different tribes. Thus, this research is not about Native American leadership, since the notion of a homogenous “Native” leadership may be just as dangerous as the idea of a universal theory of leadership. This study is about a subaltern social group engaged in a process of collective emancipation and decolonization within a context of coloniality.

In what follows, I briefly discuss the systematic lack of analyzing context and power relations regarding postcolonial and indigenous leadership research, and I describe the context of coloniality. Moreover, I connect identity with power through the concept of symbolic power and briefly introduce how identity formation has been treated in the leadership literature. Then, I present the ideas of collective action and collective identity to help explain the struggle of identity within organizations to construct symbolic power in a more collective way. Additionally, I describe the methods and the two main findings of this ethnographic case study, situate the findings from this study within the leadership literature, identify implications for practice and theory, and suggest possibilities for further research.

Postcolonial and indigenous leadership: Lacking context and power

In the leadership field, generally, both research and classroom textbooks draw from a Western perspective that does not acknowledge Eurocentrism and coloniality as the social order and context where leadership emerges (Jimenez-Luque, 2018). Moreover, the analysis of leadership processes implemented by non-Western and subaltern social groups is rarely included, and scholars “typically discuss models of leadership as universal phenomena without reference to diversity” (Chin and Trimble, 2015: 12). However, some critical scholars like Nkomo (2011) proposed a postcolonial approach to the study of leadership drawing from Said, Spivak, and Bhabha and incorporating anticolonial scholars like Fanon, Cesaire, and Senghor.

In terms of indigenous leadership, international scholarship is still sparse, despite research expanding in this area (Bolden and Kirk, 2009; Evans and Sinclair, 2016; Katene, 2010; Kenny and Fraser, 2012; Nkomo, 2011; Spiller et al., 2011; Sveiby, 2011; Warner and Grint, 2006). In their work about Australian indigenous leadership and artists, Evans and Sinclair (2016) suggested that “in order to understand, and learn from, the leadership practices of indigenous artists, we need to grasp the significance of structural, historic, and cultural context” (p. 484). Similarly, Zhang et al. (2012) argued that studying indigenous leadership requires an understanding of historical, societal, and cultural factors that impact leadership and leadership outcomes.

When it comes to research regarding Native American leadership, it is scarce and suffers from the same lack of context that most studies about indigenous leadership experience. According to Warner and Grint (2006), research about American Indians presents “an ahistorical bias that explores the leadership issues affecting Indian communities as if they are Indian problems rather than the consequences of historical displacement and cultural destruction” (Warner and Grint, 2006: 231). Thus, “indigenous leadership definitions found in the scholarship of Indians and non-Indians, then, require an understanding of the impact of assimilation policies and practices in a historical context” (p. 231).

For example, in the United States, despite legislation aimed at constructing greater equity, racist narratives and social structures from colonial times are still embedded in society resulting in discrimination, inequity, and social injustice. Since the Europeans’ arrival to what is today the United States, American Indians have suffered from a process of acculturation resulting from a history of colonialism and violence. Moreover, within the social hierarchy resulting from colonialism, Native American people occupy the lowest positions. Besides, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice which studied data from 1999 to 2014, American Indians are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by police. More specifically, males’ analysis of the data shows that Native Americans are 3.1 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans, and these killings go almost entirely unreported by mainstream media (Woodard, 2016). As a result of this context of historical injustice since the arrival of the Europeans, American Indians have experienced intergenerational trauma or “soul wound,” understood as the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over their lifespan and across generations (Heart, 2003).

Furthermore, within the Native population, in general, urban Natives represent the most excluded and marginalized group, even more so than American Indians living on reservations because urban Native Americans have experienced a stronger process of assimilation. Ironically, although this social group represents nearly 67% of the nation’s 4.1 million self-identified American Indians and Alaska Natives, they are invisible in many ways, since the collective imaginary of the dominant culture portrays them in reservations (Urban Indian Health Commission Report, 2007). In essence, urban Natives experience double acculturation because, besides the so-called “soul wound” that has been internalized, they also suffer from a situation of invisibility of their own culture, identity, and collective processes of leadership, as a consequence of living in cities.

Therefore, without addressing the context of coloniality and the asymmetries of power imposed by the Eurocentric social order, theories of leadership regarding subaltern social groups remain incomplete. Indigenous leadership emerges and is conceptualized in the context of violence and identity struggle that today’s postcolonial societies represent. Moreover, understanding the importance of leadership processes unfolded by social groups that have been acculturated and aim to recover their cultural identity to build symbolic power becomes critical for social change leadership. Symbolic power understood as a specific type of power that can contribute to balance asymmetries of power in postcolonial societies and challenge dominant social orders.

Symbolic power and identity: Toward a struggle for identity

In the sociological field, Bourdieu conceptualized identity as a field for struggle. More specifically, the French sociologist coined the idea of symbolic power when connecting the concepts of identity with relations of power. This combination provides a deeper relational approach that views the construction and reconstruction of identity as a field for struggle to gain symbolic power. A specific type of power that represents a struggle for social legitimacy “to win everything which, in the social world, is of the order of belief, credit and discredit, perception and appreciation, knowledge, and recognition—name, renown, prestige, honor, glory, authority, everything which constitutes symbolic power as recognized power” (Bourdieu, 1984: 251).

From a perspective of CLS, Collinson (2003) also proposed a relational and holistic approach to study identity formation within organizations, arguing that “the identities of followers and leaders are frequently a condition and consequence of one another” (p. 187). In a similar vein of thought, Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) advocated for avoiding the essentialist and static assumptions of the literature about identity in organizations and suggested a more fluid and fragmented idea of work of identity. By the work of identity, it is understood as a continuous process of engagement in building and rebuilding a coherent and unique notion of who individuals are and how they relate to others (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). Moreover, identity work “constitutes an ongoing sense-making process to construct a meaningful relationship between a person’s self-identity and social identity (Kreiner et al., 2006; Watson, 2008)” (Winkler, 2018: 121). Additionally, identity work implies self-doubt and self-openness resulting from the encounters with others or with their images (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). Thus, identity work can be better understood as identity struggle to “offer an alternative approach to many influential streams in the field, moving in between conventional (‘quasi-essential’) and postmodernistic (decentred) orientations” (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1165).

Besides the concept of identity struggle, the idea of connecting power relations with identity is also present in CLS. For example, critical perspectives raise questions about leaders’ and followers’ identities, and by combining research around power relations and identity construction, CLS “encourage researchers to rethink leaders, followers, and contexts as well as their dialectical interrelations” (Collinson, 2011: 191). For Bourdieu (1984), social groups try to acquire symbolic power to impose their worldview and frameworks to make sense and meaning of reality as most valuable. However, if a group fails to promote its values, it will be forced to accept its inferiority (Bourdieu, 1984). More broadly, it is key to acknowledge how in today’s postcolonial societies, power is attributed asymmetrically to different cultures and identities and how this context influences the emergence, conceptualization, and practice of leadership.

In the leadership literature, culture and identity have normally been conceptualized as tools for control and domination at an organizational level, and not many researchers have seen those concepts as resources for emancipatory purposes. However, Ospina and Foldy (2009) offered a critical review of race and ethnicity in the leadership literature as resources for social change organizations. Moreover, regarding leadership research about leaders of color, Ospina and Su (2009) argued that “most studies have downplayed the connection of race-ethnicity to the systems of oppression that defined their leadership. Yet, the racial–ethnic identities of these leaders and their followers might not just be relevant but central cultural resources of their work” (p. 156). Overall, leadership studies have traditionally viewed race-ethnicity as a fixed variable, and the asymmetries of power derived from those social orders have not been acknowledged (Ospina and Su, 2009).

For Bourdieu (1989), the struggle for social identity is key in creating social orders and challenging them. As the French sociologist argued, “to change the world, one has to change the ways of world-making, that is, the vision of the world and the practical operations by which groups are produced and reproduced” (p. 23). Therefore, a struggle of identities among social groups is necessary for imposing frameworks of world-making and acquiring symbolic power.

Understanding identity as a struggle in Bourdieusian terms offers a more relational and collective perspective of the leadership work related to using identity as a resource for social change. Moreover, the concept of symbolic power applied to the leadership field opens the possibility of understanding the context of coloniality and the asymmetries of power where indigenous leadership emerges and is conceptualized. However, although the identity struggle to acquire symbolic power becomes a key resource for subaltern social groups to challenge the dominant social order, it is also critical to unfold processes of collective action that result in the construction of collective identity. As Ospina and Su (2009) argued, it is important to acknowledge that a collective work that turns all the negative legacy of a particular social group into a positive resource is required. Thus, it is through processes of collective action and identity how a process of decolonial leadership unfolds and how, eventually, subaltern social groups will have the capacity to leverage power and change the dominant social order.

Leadership and collective action: Collective sense-making for social change

Since the charismatic and transformational paradigms are still the dominant worldviews in leadership (Spoelstra, 2018), the idea of leadership remains very individualistic and vertical, assuming a leader at the top who concentrates all the power. As Tourish (2013) argued with his critique of transformational leadership, this approach legitimizes the concentration of power into the hands of a few who are determined to transform others. Thus, to address the power imbalances that mainstream concepts of leadership embrace, a fundamental reformulation of the notion of leadership is critical (Tourish, 2013).

In the social movement literature, collective action is understood as a social construction with purpose and meaning. Collective action addresses the processes within the system of the collective actor such as leadership models, ideologies, or communication methods and external relations with allies and competitors that all shape the collective actor (Melucci, 1996). This purpose emerges from framing or giving meaning to a specific situation and shaping a concrete reality where people will have to respond (Fairhurst, 2011). However, framing is also defined throughout collective action transforming elements of the dominant culture, bridging, amplifying, or transforming other frames (Snow et al., 1986). Therefore, framing influences action, and action influences framing when preexisting beliefs or oppositional values that emerge during the struggle are incorporated within the frames of the groups struggling (Taylor and Whittier, 1995). There is an interconnection between framing and action (Snow and Benford, 1992), and both influence each other in creating a shared reality (Fairhurst, 2011), a new social order.

The literature of social movements is extensive and “focuses on movements and movement organizations rather than individuals,” recognizing a collective understanding of leadership (Foldy et al., 2008: 516). Applying the concept of collective action allows the connection with the idea of collective sense-making and framing within organizations and the development of collective identities. As Melucci (1996) argued, collective identity is a shared definition created by individuals or groups of people to give a particular orientation to the collective action where they are involved. The struggle of identity is key in the process of collective action to decolonize “subaltern” individuals who have internalized the oppression and can become future civic leaders committed to social change.

Understanding more in-depth processes of collective action and identity offers new nuances on how sense-making within organizations unfolds more relationally and how the leadership work of identity to acquire symbolic power is co-constructed collectively. Moreover, analyzing the process of a decolonial leadership approach that seeks to build a new social order will illuminate how more distributed and participatory processes of social change leadership look like.

Methodology

This research is an ethnographic case study of a Native American organization that, within a context of coloniality, goes through a decolonial leadership process and shows how the use of their cultural identity can challenge the dominant social order. The organization selected is unique because it is an organization of urban American Indians belonging to 17 different tribes. This particularity is central because it avoids essentializing Native American leadership and instead recognizes the social construction of cultural identity since (1) there are many different cultural approaches regarding each of the 17 tribes in the organization and (2) they navigate between two cultures (theirs and the dominant culture) daily which exhibits a more fluid and hybrid perspective of culture and identity.

Organization

The organization examined in this study offers health services to the local Native American community using an indigenous approach of “sacred hospitality,” an intentionally created practice where compassion meets the needs of patients, staff, and community. This holistic perspective integrates the healing of the body, mind, and spirit. The health services are provided in five departments: medical services, pharmacy, dental services, behavioral health services, and children and youth services. Additionally, every summer, the organization offers leadership camps for young urban Natives to know and appreciate their own culture and develop future civic leaders for the region.

Methods of data collection and data analysis

For this study, it was central to have a gatekeeper, a well-recognized American Indian leader in the region whom I worked with for several years in the past. For several months, it was critical to establish trust with the members of the organization, participating with them in many formal and informal events. Additionally, every step of the process (research design, data collection and analysis, and findings) was in consultation with the elders and positional leaders of the organization, and I had their approval to disseminate the results of this study.

The study included (1) observations for 6 months of how the organization uses their cultural identity to challenge the dominant social order at both, the organization and other settings where the members of the organization carried out leadership activities (powwows, local forums with the community, leadership camps, etc.), (2) gathered artifacts related to the cultural identity of the organization such as architecture, artistic creations, clothes, documents (including document analysis of the organization created internally and written by external actors), rituals, and stories for 6 months, and (3) conducted 13 interviews (individually and with groups) of approximately 90 min each interview with participants of the organization (positional leaders and followers). The individual interviews (positional leaders) and the group interviews (positional followers) were taped and conducted with staff at each of the five departments where services were provided.

Notes and memos from the observations and the transcripts from the interviews were coded through NVivo software and by hand. When coding by hand, I implemented open coding developing codes to begin to help answer my research question, as suggested by Lincoln and Guba (1985), and from there, I used axial coding, assembling the data in new ways and identifying core categories and subcategories as proposed by Creswell (2013). Finally, my codes generated themes, as recommended by Saldaña (2012).

Participants

In general, the participants in this study were the chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, clinical director, human resources director, and members of the organization working in different positions (positional leaders and followers) in each of the five main departments that provide services. The selection of participants was based on (1) a sample of 11 positional leaders and 23 followers working at the different departments of the organization to have a broader vision of their relationships and the collective process of meaning-making within the organization and (2) the members’ level of involvement or understanding of the decolonial process of leadership using culture and identity as a resource for social change, as the central phenomenon of the study, and on the identification of informants by other informants (Garson, 2012).

Positionality statement

For more than 10 years, I have worked with indigenous communities and people of African descent in different Latin American countries, learning other ways of understanding leadership and organization that go beyond the Western canon. These personal learning experiences have been central in developing a more collective and horizontal approach to the study of this phenomenon that resonates with the most recent conversation that is going on in the field about collective dimensions of leadership lead by Ospina et al. (2020). Moreover, my analysis is informed by a social and cultural perspective grounded in sociology and anthropology. This perspective contributes to a more relational and collective understanding of leadership and views culture and identity as fields for struggle. The following section discusses the findings that are representative of a decolonial process of leadership and all the aspects learned about how culture and identity were used as a resource to challenge the social order.

Findings and interpretations

Through a decolonial process of leadership, the organization used culture and identity as a resource to challenge the dominant social order: (1) creating a safe space for cultural resistance and decolonization and (2) providing a platform for collective action and identity. The combination of a safe space for developing the identity struggle with a platform from which unfolding processes of collective action resulted in creating a collective identity of the group. The identity struggle and the collective action contribute to building symbolic power. A type of power that eventually can be used to leverage asymmetries of power with the dominant society and has an impact on changing the social order.

Although this article and the two main findings are focused on the description of decolonial leadership and how culture and identity are used to challenge the social order, it is important to previously acknowledge some outcomes of this emancipatory process that were identified during this research. Describing how a decolonial process of leadership was successful in challenging the social order implies another study. However, presenting previously a few outcomes of using culture and identity as resources for social change can be helpful to better understand the process described below.

For example, some of the leaders and members of the organization who participated in training, workshops, and/or leadership camps in the past described how the organization empowered them by appreciating their cultural identity. As a former student in the leadership camps who currently occupies a position of leadership in the organization said:

“The (organization) has taught me how to have that conversation and taught me how to really be who I am and stand my ground. And to share with others my gift (PF6).”

Another student of the camps who currently works for a nonprofit in the area stated:

“I think the organization helps people in becoming more active. Like, for example, to be involved in campaigns. I didn’t know, when I started here, I was [young age]. I had no idea how to contact my legislator and how to voice my concerns or whatever. So, I think you learn how to make a change (PF4).”

Or one of the members of the staff who before joining the organization did not feel part of the urban Native community argued:

“Providing the environment for me to meet with other people and to meet with Native American community. I think that by itself is empowerment. Events like the pow wow and the fun run and things like that have been the building blocks where I have been able to tap into meeting people in the community and I feel more empowered that way (PF5).”

Today, around 30% of the participants of the annual leadership camps for young urban Natives end up either working in the organization or other organizations involved with the community and the work of social change in the area. Decolonizing the oppressed minds is the first step to the decolonization of the imagery of the oppressor. This process contributes to building symbolic power that can be used for social change. One example of the organization being successful in changing the minds of the oppressed to change the oppressor is the improvement of the relationship with dominant institutions in the city. The health clinic is strategic in inviting to most of the events representatives from dominant institutions such as the city hall and the police department. As one member of the staff stated:

“The organization has always worked to have a good relationship and improving that with the city. It’s been an ongoing process. I started here in 1999, and I have watched the improvement in the relationships with the city and I think [the founder and CEO] does a wonderful job of educating people about Native culture and people of color (PF2).”

Moreover, the organization has successfully changed the dominant view of the industry of health services regarding American Indians and women, an industry dominated basically by white men. As one of the employees said regarding how the leaders have changed the dominant mentality of society in general and the industry in particular:

We have a very strong leadership model of women [….] they had to fight a lot to be able to be allowed to enter the room, to be allowed to have a voice. And it just shows their passion for the work because they could’ve easily given up and say, “you know what? They’re not going to invite me to the table, so I’m not going to go anymore.” They have been successful because they still show up every single day. You have to admire them because they have something to say... (PL3).

In what follows, I will describe the main two findings of this research, which describe how a process of decolonial leadership looks like and how it uses culture and identity as resources for social change. These findings show the result of leadership actions, interactions, and collective processes of sense-making that occurred within the organization and between the organization and external actors within a context of coloniality.

Creating a safe space for cultural resistance and decolonization2

Current Western imagination is the result of five centuries of “Europe’s hegemonic imperial project and encounters with non-European peoples, cultures, religions, and ways of life” (Gruffydd Jones, 2006: 221). Today, even if most colonial institutions have disappeared, colonialist concepts are still embedded in our minds. Thus, within a context of coloniality in the United States, urban American Indian populations are considered “invisible” because, besides suffering historical displacement and a stronger process of assimilation in the cities, according to the imagery of the dominant culture, they belong to reservations, museums, and are part of the past. For example, one employee described her experience studying in a big city in the United States:

“I was probably the only Native student at high school and some of the students thought I still lived in a teepee. Then, if I didn’t live in a teepee, they didn’t know I even existed (PF1).”

This invisibility is translated into asymmetries of power in society and, more specifically, in a lack of public services and policy that affected primarily educational and health services for the community of urban Natives. Moreover, the historical cultural destruction of Native people and their invisibility in the cities result in the internalization of the oppression and the hegemonic social order, and a lack of appreciation of their own culture and identity. As one of the leaders stated regarding the educational struggles and social issues of the young Native children:

Only one out of every four kids were getting to high school. [….] But there’s a lot of suicide, substance abuse... And they said, “there’s got to be some way that we can make a difference!” So, we formed the organization (PL1).

Within this context of cultural assimilation, invisibility, and asymmetries of power where the organization was founded, the decolonial process of leadership was conceptualized and emerged. When the health clinic was created, one of the main issues concerning American Indians was substance abuse and suicides (today diabetes). Because nobody was concerned, a group of urban Natives decided to create this organization using their savings and writing a grant awarded by the federal government. As one of the leaders stated: “Nobody rode in on their white horse and saved us (PL1).” In other words, the urban Native community in the area needed to develop their own leadership processes and frameworks to make sense of reality as active subjects instead of waiting to be saved.

Understanding identity as a field for struggle and a resource for social change, the founders of the organization decided that the first step to raising cultural pride was to gain visibility creating an organization where all the urban Natives of the area could gather. Just the presence of the building with Native American symbols and artifacts and a big billboard with the health clinic’s logo that includes feathers, stones, and animals designed by Native artists contributes to disrupt the hegemonic narrative of a predominantly white city; a hegemonic narrative and social order of American Indians belonging to reservations and the past. One of the health clinic members stated regarding the need to make visible the invisible and disrupting dominant narratives: “There’s a face and (the organization) plays a role of having that face and saying, ‘hello, we’re here. There’s Native Americans in your community and there are Native Americans in your medical community’ (PL2).”

Inside the building, one can find abundant Native American artwork created by local artists. This artwork not only transmits culture since artifacts are connected with deeper layers of culture, such as assumptions, values, and beliefs but also it is art that supports local American Indian artists and contributes to the work of identity of the organization. From a Western perspective, the health clinic looks like a museum and plays a role as a space where urban Natives can make sense of and celebrate their culture and identity. There is artwork everywhere, and the same happens with the staff who wears bracelets, necklaces, and earrings with Native motives. Moreover, in different rooms for the patients and the staff, there are magazines and televisions offering news and music related to American Indians. This environment contributes to creating a very welcoming feeling for urban Natives who do not need to hide and can show their cultural identity.

Another strategy implemented by the organization to use culture and identity as a resource for challenging the social order is to display symbols and artifacts that provide positive images of Native Americans. Symbols and artifacts transmit a collective imaginary of a social group, and the leaders of the organization use them to gain visibility, to disrupt dominant narratives that portray Native people as dirty, ugly, and abandoned, and at the same time looking for empowering urban Natives making them feel proud of their cultural identity. For example, one employee said:

“We want to have a very nice facility that people come in and not only do they feel welcome, but that it is clean and we don’t have crappy furniture and where you know everyone is well dressed (PF2).”

Besides a nice facility and the artwork described above, the staff’s outfits need to be clean and well ironed because they are aware that they are transmitting more than a professional image. Through their personal images, they provide frameworks to make sense and meaning of their reality regarding a positive image of the cultural identity of urban American Indians that challenge the narratives and myths of the dominant social order. Moreover, all the rooms are well illuminated, and this element contributes to a more welcoming space that has a psychological effect on everybody, living in a city where winters can be very long. Besides, at the organization, they are very concerned about constantly cleaning the facilities and, as an example, when something gets dirty, even staff not responsible for cleaning the building takes a broom or a mop and starts cleaning.

Another critical element to unfold the process of decolonial leadership is the creation of a physical space. This space gives visibility to the struggle and represents, at the same time, a safe space where Native people from the area can feel celebrated and valued. Understood as a sanctuary to unfold the work of identity, the safe space is where young urban Natives can develop a sense-making process from their cultural perspectives and construct their self and social identity. In essence, through a decolonial process of leadership, urban American Indians can learn and appreciate their cultural traditions and critically reflect about their particular realities within a postcolonial system of oppression and domination. One of the leaders stated: “Just being Native in a nondiverse place, being gay in a very conservative city… it’s nice because you can be what you want here and celebrated. This is a place of diversity to the max, and in (this city), it’s hard to find places like that (PL3).” Following the same line of argument, one of the leaders said: “I think that’s the thing that I want: Staff, especially young staff, to get that it’s kind of like a sanctuary place (PL1).”

In conclusion, understanding identity as a field for struggle, the health clinic used culture and identity as a resource to challenge the dominant social order through the deconstruction of old and construction of emergent frameworks and cultural forms to support their cultural identities. Also, creating a safe space became central as a place where the organization could unfold their decolonial process of leadership and provide platforms for collective action.

Providing a platform for collective action and identity

Collective action emerges from framing and giving meaning to the frames created. There are three main collective action frames: injustice, agency, and identity. Injustice refers to the moral indignation; agency to the consciousness that through collective action, it is possible to transform society; and identity refers to defining the “we” versus “they” with different interests or values (Gamson, 1995).

This community health clinic creates collective frames of sense- and meaning-making, emphasizing in all their meetings and events the historical injustice that exists regarding urban Natives. They also work to make urban American Indians appreciate their cultural identity and, providing them with ways of acting collectively, enhance their individual and collective agency trying to empower them. Additionally, a collective process of sense- and meaning-making within the organization results in creating a collective identity that gives a particular orientation and meaning to the group’s actions from their own cultural perspective.

The organization provides many platforms from where to unfold processes of collective action and sense-making. Every week there are many events taking place related to health issues and specific struggles of urban Natives. Also, there are several big annual events where the staff of the organization, patients, students, and the community, in general, are encouraged to participate. Many of these events are held on the organization’s premises, but others are held in different locations around the city trying to reach all urban Native groups with difficulty with transportation and mobility. These events are open for indigenous and nonindigenous people in the city, and the organization is very intentional in inviting representatives from dominant institutions such as the city hall or the police department. Through these encounters with representatives of the dominant culture, urban Natives gain visibility and awareness about their needs and struggles and amplify their cultural frames, which eventually can imply bridging frames with external actors or transforming the dominant ones. Furthermore, in every meeting of the organization related to running the health clinic, there is a space to support the Native cultural identity. Some of these actions to support their cultural identity imply debunking dominant narratives and recovering their stories and leadership approaches to take control of their own reality and challenge the social order. As one of the employees said regarding challenging the status quo and the social order:

It’s very empowering that we never just shoot for the status quo, which I see a lot in Native culture. [….] But always around here, whether we like it or not, we’re always shooting for that next one. And our leadership will not let us be status quo. It’s like we’re always going to be a step above (PF2).

One of the organization’s rules is that all the staff needs to be involved in as many weekly events as possible. Some of the most popular workshops and trainings provided weekly are the “Indian education forums,” “hero stories,” “healthy yoga nights,” or “smoking/vaping prevention” among others. In all of them, culture and identity are used as resources for challenging the social order like, for example, implementing circles where every person is acknowledged and can share with the rest of the community concerns and ideas, or rituals at the beginning and the end for welcoming the community and cleaning the negative energies. Circles and rituals contribute to creating a community of practice and a sense of cultural belonging that gives purpose and meaning to the collective action.

Another rule of the health clinic is that all staff needs to participate in at least three of the five main events that are offered every year: Healthy heart powwow, Indian youth summer program, annual diabetes prevention fun run/walk, annual youth services yard sale, and diabetes, and mind, spirit, and emotion night. In each of those events, the organization provides resources for the community and always emphasizes their Native identity through statements, ceremonies, food, and music.

One of the biggest annual events is the “Summer leadership camp,” where young urban Natives gather for three months to learn more about their culture and become future leaders. As a very illustrative example of how the decolonial leadership process uses culture and identity as resources for social change in general, and in the leadership camps in particular, is when the students finished the camp and, besides getting a diploma, they also get a t-shirt that says: “Decolonize, indigenize, revitalize, mobilize.”

The goal of the leadership camps is to focus on empowering urban Natives through the work and struggle of identity, and the motto of the camps is “Become a warrior, nurturer, scholar, and community activist.” To attain this goal, the organization offers daily classes for three months about Native American history, art, storytelling, craftwork, games, and sports. Through all these classes, students can learn about their own culture and history through a leadership development program based on learning new knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

The second most popular annual event, the “Healthy heart powwow,” was open for the entire city and gathered American Indians from different regions. They followed an ancient tradition of economic and cultural exchange between different tribes. This event aims to keep ancient traditions and create networks through activities like cash prizes for dance categories, drums, blood sugar testing, blood pressure testing, health promotions, and raffle drawings. Connecting people through culture and identity gives a particular orientation to the collective action of the organization, and it is helpful to enhance the collective agency of urban Natives in the area.

Another strategy of the organization to enhance collective action is creating workshops and trainings to educate on how to organize and share good practices from the past that were successful for the community. Seeing other people struggling and having meaningful frameworks to make sense of reality is essential to developing collective identity. One of the leaders of the community health clinic explained that:

Growing up seeing that struggle, I was able to volunteer as a high school student. Me and a couple of my friends from a youth leadership program got to volunteer and be youth leaders in their Indian youth programs so we volunteered a lot (PL4).

A key element to unfold the decolonial process of leadership is to create spaces from where collective action can develop and result in collective identity. Thus, the organization provides “platforms” for collective action, and it is at these platforms where collective identity rises with the struggle. One of the employees stated: “The (organization) allowed you more of a practice of interculturality and social justice…. I think it allows us to practice that which is why I’m here (PF3).” Weekly events, annual events, trainings, workshops, specific campaigns, symbolic actions, protests, and so on are platforms that the organization provides to their staff, patients, students, and the community in general. Within these platforms, the collective action emerges and results in collective identity that eventually can contribute to building symbolic power to balance asymmetries of power in society for effective social change.

In summary, the organization was very intentional in unfolding processes of framing and collective action that challenged the dominant social order. These processes of collective action challenged assumptions about individualistic and vertical approaches of leadership, since collective processes of leadership imply that one no longer perceives leadership as a phenomenon that belongs to a few chosen ones but as a process where everybody can and should lead. Providing platforms is central to develop distributed and participatory processes of leadership because they are the spaces where one sees other people struggling or has the possibility of being involved in the struggle. Moreover, collective processes of sense- and meaning-making resulted in the development of a collective identity of the group that contributes to building symbolic power. Processes of leadership that involve collective identity and agency end up building power that can be used to balance asymmetries of power and change oppressive social orders.

Discussion

Building on previous research on indigenous leadership and identity formation within organizations combined with social movements, this article introduces the construct of decolonial leadership for better understanding the use of culture and identity by a subaltern social group as resources for social change. Specifically, I argue that leadership can be understood as a social myth that functions to legitimize a social order that results from colonialism and is based on individualism and hierarchies of race, culture, and identity. Therefore, any leadership process led by subaltern social groups represents a challenge to the dominant social order and the individualistic assumptions of leadership that support it. Also, I identify particular strategies of the leadership work of marginalized social groups that emphasize the use of culture and identity as a resource to gain symbolic power. This type of power can be used to leverage asymmetries within the social hierarchy of the dominant order and contributes to effective social change.

This work makes three main contributions to leadership studies. First, by focusing on the concept of coloniality and the asymmetries of power resulting from colonial structures, this research offers a different approach to understanding, and learning from, indigenous processes of leadership. Previous research on indigenous leadership has not acknowledged enough the context and the existing power relations where indigenous leadership is conceptualized and emerges (Evans and Sinclair, 2016; Warner and Grint, 2006; Zhang et al., 2012). Indigenous leadership is conceptualized and emerges within a context of coloniality. Therefore, it is impossible to understand indigenous leadership without acknowledging that it is constantly involved in a struggle for balancing asymmetries of power when it comes to exercising their own leadership within the dominant social order.

The findings indicate that a process of decolonial leadership, besides emerging within a context of coloniality, unfolds in a specific space. Thus, leadership is not the sole responsibility of one individual who acts in a vacuum. What matters is not only the context of coloniality where leadership emerges but also to the spaces where the decolonial process of leadership unfolds. The data of this research suggest that safe spaces and platforms are critical to developing decolonial processes of leadership because it is in these places where the struggle for identity and the collective actions can unfold. Thus, mainstream leadership approaches centered on leaders offer a very narrow view of a phenomenon where the context and the spaces play a critical role in effectively exercising the work of leadership.

Second, this article suggests that illuminating the relationship between cultural identity as a resource and symbolic power can help to advance our understanding of how social change can happen. This article documents a decolonial process of leadership challenging the dominant order and assumptions of leadership. The previous literature on social change leadership (Brown and Hosking, 1986; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Ospina and Foldy, 2009; Ospina and Su, 2009) has not used a decolonial lens to study leadership in general and social change in particular. Also, by implementing the concept of symbolic power, this article combines identity and power in organizations with emancipatory purposes. Symbolic power is built through the deconstruction of old and construction of emergent frameworks and cultural forms. This study has shown how a decolonial process of leadership develops different strategies to build symbolic power using frames that, beyond language, can be created through role modeling, architecture, artwork, clothing, and so on.

This process brings nuances regarding the power embedded in identities and implies a more holistic perspective than previous research (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Collinson, 2003, 2011; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003; Winkler, 2018). Additionally, the concept of symbolic power is directly linked to a process of liberation and emancipation, while more traditional leadership and identity work has often been approached in the leadership literature from a perspective of control and regulation (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012; Collinson, 2011; Spicer et al., 2009; Wickert and Schaefer, 2014).

Finally, by drawing from Melucci’s concept of collective action, this work provides a lens to understand the collective work of leadership and how groups of people make collective sense and meaning of this phenomenon. Since mainstream perspectives of leadership focus on the leader, and normally positional leaders, critical scholars acknowledge the relative dearth of empirical studies focused on collective leadership (Pearce and Conger, 2003). This study shows a more distributive and participatory way of exercising leadership that, instead of annihilating people, can empower them in a more emancipatory way.

Previous research regarding how sense-making emerges from collective processes of leadership is scarce (Foldy et al., 2008; Ospina and Su, 2009; Smirch and Stubbart, 1985; Pfeffer, 1981). Through the concept of collective action, this article describes the collective frames of sense- and meaning-making that use culture and identity for social change. These collective frames result in the creation of a collective identity that gives a particular orientation and meaning to the group’s actions based on who they were and who they want to become. These frames are the result of the work of leadership within the organization between leaders and followers and external actors of the dominant culture. Thus, some of these collective frameworks are a combination of the amplification of the frames of subaltern groups, the bridging of frames with those of the dominant society, or the transformation of the dominant ones. Collective processes of leadership imply that one no longer perceives leadership as a phenomenon that belongs to a few chosen ones but as a process where everybody needs to lead.

Limitations and conclusions

Decolonial leadership implies a critical view of leadership beyond mainstream leadership perspectives frequently legitimizing the dominant social order. In this article about an American Indian organization that unfolded a process of decolonial leadership was central to acknowledge that leadership is conceptualized and emerges within a context of coloniality. Thus, within a context of power structures inherited from colonialism, power relations need to be acknowledged in any leadership process if we want to better understand how leadership is conceptualized, emerges, and, more importantly, what leadership is for.

Also, social change organizations and emancipatory social movements led by subaltern social groups need to be aware of the necessity of creating specific spaces such as a safe space for reflecting and theorizing about their struggle and platforms to develop collective actions. Through these spaces, collective identity can be developed. A collective identity is translated into collective agency and implies building symbolic power to change the dominant social order. Within a social order where the value and recognition of one’s race, culture, and identity define your position in the hierarchy, the concept of symbolic power and the struggle of identity to gain this type of power result critical for any process of social change.

The idea that leadership is co-constructed through collective sense- and meaning-making is key to challenge dominant assumptions of leadership as an individualistic and leader-centered phenomenon only available for an elite. Additionally, creating new assumptions of a more shared-power and participatory way of exercising leadership, rather than annihilating people and creating passive citizens, can empower them in a more emancipatory way.

This research has some limitations that suggest new possibilities for further research. For example, for this study, I did not interview patients or students of the organization. I also did not interview members from the dominant institutions. Moreover, this study is focused on how culture and identity are used as resources for social change within a particular context where most of the members had experienced a strong process of cultural assimilation and invisibility that other social groups might not. In other words, the work of leadership and struggle of identity with a subaltern social group whose identity has not suffered an intense process of destruction might result in a different implementation of decolonial leadership.

In conclusion, since hegemony implies blindness, the struggles of resistance of subaltern social groups that go beyond mainstream canons of leadership can be critical to learning more about how social change can be implemented and making visible more collective and participatory processes of leadership. These more power-shared perspectives of leadership from nonmainstream leadership actors who belong to nondominant cultures can contribute to a bigger epistemological and theoretical eclecticism of the field. Also, learning from their perspectives and struggles can be essential to improve the quality of our democracies and political systems and learn about new tools to build a better world.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Antonio Jimenez-Luque

Notes

Author biography

Dr Antonio Jimenez-Luque’s work, broadly speaking, explores how cultural, social, and historical perspectives influence conceptualizations and practice of leadership understood as a relational process of mobilization, emancipation, and social change. At the intersection of critical theory and intercultural studies, his research topics are (1) organizational culture, identity, and change; (2) leadership and framing for sense/meaning-making; and (3) critical interculturality and global social justice.

From 2004–2013, Dr Jimenez-Luque was the coordinator for the International Cooperation for Development at the University of Barcelona Solidarity Foundation. He designed and implemented projects on topics related with human development, peace-building, human rights, and critical interculturality with local governments, universities, grassroots organizations, and social movements in Algeria, DR Congo, Vietnam, Colombia, and Bolivia, among other countries. In 2014, Dr Jimenez-Luque moved to the United States where he worked at Gonzaga University for the Associate Vice President for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as Intercultural Research Associate and taught a variety of classes including Leading Across Cultures, Democracy, and Human Rights, and Latin American Politics. Since 2018, he is teaching at the University of San Diego and developing his research agenda on issues of leadership and social justice from a critical, global, and intercultural perspective.

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