This month the American Indian OIC would like to honor and recognize Dr. Joe Hobot, our very own President and CEO, who has been faithfully serving the organization since he started here as a teacher 20 years ago!

Born and raised in Blaine, Minnesota, Dr. Hobot is a descendant of the Hunkpapa Band of the Lakota Nation from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Joe was raised with a strong connection to his Lakota heritage through his family – specifically his maternal Grandfather and his mother, who are both enrolled citizens. His Lakota Name, Sunkmanitu Tanka Se Tokeya Hiyaye, means “He Leads Like a Wolf”.

Owing to his own personal experiences in public school, where Native American history and culture were seldom represented accurately by teachers or the curriculum (if represented at all) his interest in the mechanics of education and in creating better learning opportunities Indigenous students was born.

Over the course of his professional career here at the American Indian OIC, Dr. Hobot has since been instrumental in shaping the direction of our organization when it came to advancing racial equity in the education system writ large and reinvigorating Indigenous educational experiences specifically. In 2017 he researched and published, “Resurgence: Urban Restructuring American Indian Education,” a national report commissioned by the National Urban Indian Family Coalition (NUIFC) that documents the nationwide success of a growing cohort of alternative Indigenous schools throughout Turtle Island who have been surpassing the academic outcomes of the mainstream system for decades. This report was instrumental in creating the first-of-its-kind national community of practice for Native American alternative schools whose work continues to this day by schools such as AIOIC’s very own Takoda Prep.

After earning his master’s degree in education, Joe knew he wanted to use his talents to serve the urban Indigenous community of the Twin Cities. Soon after graduating, he found a posting in the local paper for a social studies teacher at Takoda Prep.

“I just knew straight away after seeing the classified that that job was specifically meant for me,” Joe remembers.

He applied and was hired three days after his interview. His first day on the job with the AIOIC was on Wednesday, August 23, 2006.

From his beginnings as a classroom teacher, Joe would eventually be promoted to serve as the AIOIC’s Education Director, bringing Takoda GED and Takoda Institute into his portfolio. When his predecessor Dr. Lee Antell announced his retirement, Joe through his hat in the ring and was selected by the AIOIC Board of Directors to become the next President and CEO. He started his current chapter at our organization on May 23rd, 2014.

Through Dr. Hobot’s efforts over the past two decades, he has not only helped the academic institutions at the AIOIC grow and thrive, but the organization itself – tripling the AIOIC’s annual budget in both overall size and earnings during his current tenure as President and CEO. All of which translates to dramatically increasing the amount of people our organizations can serve each day.

Even with all this in mind, Joe is quick to say that the success of American Indian OIC has never been about himself, or just one person. He sees leadership as nothing more than a collective team effort wholly dependent on the entire staff of the AIOIC committing their time and talents working together on behalf of the community.

Joe has repeatedly stated that “I’m only as good as the team that is around me,” and constantly strives to put the focus back on the AIOIC team.

After 20 years, Joe’s motivation comes from knowing that the work he does every day can make a real difference in the lives of our clients and students, and that oftentimes progress comes in small steps. Sometimes, it happens just for one student, one family, one opportunity, or one improvement at a time. But overtime, these successes start to add up, and real improvements can be both seen and felt by the people the AIOIC serves. To this end, Dr. Hobot puts a higher value in overall consistency and commitment to the work in order to achieve continual improvement overall. He strives for the AIOIC to empower our participants to make the right changes in their lives now that will advance their wellbeing over the long term, as well as the wellbeing agency and the community as a whole moving forward.

As Joe shared: “I want to set the table for the next generation, to be able to give them the improved systems, the improved organizations, and a community that is demonstrably better off than where it was when we all got into the game ourselves years ago. We were all gifted these organizations by our elders, our predecessors, many of whom founded these agencies. Through their hard work and tireless efforts during their time, they set a pretty high bar for all of us to follow. The best way of expressing our thanks for what they have done is to build upon their work, build upon their sacrifices, and move the bar even higher for those who will be coming next. By doing it in that way, we will know that we made our contribution to this incredible legacy here within the urban Indigenous community of the Twin Cities, we know that we gave them the most powerful ‘thank you’ possible by taking the ball the handed over and running even further with it!”

When asked to describe his 20-year journey at American Indian OIC in only one word, Joe chose: Gratitude.

He is grateful for the opportunity to serve his community in a way that called upon his talents and called for the very best of him time and again. He is grateful for the many talented people he has been privileged to work alongside over his two decades at the AIOIC. He is also grateful for the valuable lessons his experiences here at this organization have taught him both as a person and as a professional along the way.

Twenty years on down that road, and still getting after it just the same as he did on his very first day back in 2006, Joe is still here, still serving AIOIC, still serving the urban Native American community, and most of all, still grateful for the journey and excited about what comes next.