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.

Subaltern social groups do not see their conceptualizations of leadership represented by the images of leadership and leaders portrayed in the narratives of the “official” history of their countries. This article draws from the experience of an American Indian summer leadership camp in the United States (US) where memory is used by the organization as a resource for legitimizing their power and leadership perspectives to effect social change. Through a leadership work based on rhetoric and framing to decolonize the dominant history of the US, a process of collective sense and meaning-making is unfolded. This work of leadership builds collective agency that contributes to legitimize both American Indian memories and leadership perspectives. Through legitimacy, subordinated social groups develop the capacity to justify that they hold the power to govern themselves and not just to consent and submit to external actors. Eventually, legitimacy of memory and leadership perspectives can be leveraged as power since the group believes in their potential. Through a critical approach drawing from history and sociology, the study contributes insights to both the social change and the Indigenous leadership literature.

Historically, human beings have shown a tendency to go beyond government‐oriented structures and developed processes of collective organization from below to address particular issues. Overall, studies in public leadership have put too much attention at the top, and to leaders in positions of authority, and work in the field regarding bottom‐up and collective processes of exercising public leadership from excluded social groups is scarce. The current study is a mini‐ethnographic case study that includes observations, artifacts collection, and interviews, and was conducted within a Native American health clinic organization founded in the Northwest of the United States that provides health services to the community. From perspectives of critical interculturality and process philosophy, the current article examines how this organization understands and exercises a collective process of public leadership from below. In particular, the focus of the current study is on how frameworks for sense and meaning‐making of their struggle pursuing the public good are developed and how the organizational structures to adjust to the external challenges of a rapidly changing world from a position of social exclusion are created.

The non-profit sector in the United States (US) plays a key role in reproducing racism and classism. These two systems of oppression within non-profits mirror colonialism since their agendas and decisions about their implementation are made by elites rather than by people directly affected by the issues at hand. Through a case study of a Native American non-profit organisation in the north-west of the US, this article explores how emotions, particularly the processes through which people regulate emotions, can be used as resources for social change. Drawing on decolonial theory and combining critical non-profit and leadership studies, the research included observations, the gathering of artefacts and 13 interviews/conversations with individuals and groups. This article offers leadership strategies and actions for decolonising structures of the non-profit sector using emotions as assets for meaning-making, communication and resistance. Two central findings emerge: (a) emotions can change the dominant script; and (b) emotions can be used to resist, raise voices and contribute to social change. These findings bring new perspectives and nuances to better understand public leadership within postcolonial societies and are especially relevant for non-profit organisations led by marginalised social groups that have initiated collective struggles of social change to decolonise American society.

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