ITEP Staff Bio:
Cal Seciwa - ITEP Director

NAU's Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals has a new director. Zuni tribal member Calbert (Cal) Seciwa took the reins of the tribal environmental training institute, based at NAU's duBois Center, on March 5. "It's good to be part of ITEP," Seciwa says. "I've seen the Institute grow and flourish under the late Virgil Masayesva's vision of what an organization can do for our Native American communities in the environmental arena. I applaud his work and that of all the staff here, and I look forward to continuing that great work." Seciwa comes to ITEP after more than 15 years at Arizona State University, where he served as director of the American Indian Institute, an organization whose mission is to recruit and retain Native students at ASU. That organization met with notable success under Seciwa's leadership. When he signed on as director in 1989, less than 175 Native students attended ASU; when he left in 2005, over 1300 Indian students were enrolled in the university's undergrad and graduate programs. Before his career with ASU, Seciwa served in various settings as a teacher and school administrator, tribal administrator and co-coordinator of intertribal efforts on issues such as cultural preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), Indian economic-enterprise programs and infrastructure development. In the 1980s he taught at the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque and also served as chair of the University of New Mexico's Tribal Enterprises Studies program at the Gallup campus. He took his undergraduate degree in Southwest Indian Studies at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, where he obtained his secondary-school teaching certificate. He then attended law school and took part in a unique paralegal training program that resulted in a one-year internship with the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, DC. "That internship," he says, "gave me exposure to the dealings of the federal domestic-delivery system, what various agencies are doing-or not doing-in terms of programs like the Indian Self-Determination Act, Intergovernmental Agreement Act, and other efforts of importance to Native Americans." Seciwa was raised in the Zuni area and spent much of his youth involved in his family's farming, ranching and sheep-herding activities. He is a member of Zuni's Badger clan, born for the Eagle clan, and maintains close ties with his Zuni cultural and spiritual heritage. Last year he and his family sponsored a Shalako home, contributing to the tribe's most important religious ceremony, which requires an entire year's preparations. "I draw upon these kinds of things to replenish my energy and renew my spiritual connections," he says. "I always keep in tune with the prayers of my people." Seciwa says, "It's good to be part of this community and to be living within our sacred area," noting that the San Francisco Peaks represent one of the four cardinal directions for the Zuni people as well as other regional tribes. Seciwa's wife continues to reside in the Phoenix area, where his two grown daughters also live with their families, including his five grandchildren. He's an avid family man, golfer, reader, and traveler. Seciwa takes the reins at ITEP two years after the death of ITEP's co-founder and original director, Virgil Masayesva. (Since Masayesva's passing, ITEP has been capably led by Associate/Interim Director, Mehrdad Khatibi.) Seciwa joins the ITEP team at an exciting time for the Institute as it expands its tribal air-quality training program and continues branching out with new multimedia environmental training and support activities designed to assist tribes throughout the lower 48 states and Alaska in building their autonomous environmental-management capacity. Cal Seciwa can be contacted at 928/523-9651, or e-mail him at Cal.Seciwa@nau.edu.

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