per capita distributions

Per Capita Distributions of American Indian Tribal Revenues: A Preliminary Discussion of Policy Considerations

Year

This paper examines policy considerations relevant to per capita distributions of tribal revenues. It offers Native nation leaders and citizens food for thought as they consider whether or not to issue per capita payments and, if they choose to do so, how to structure the distribution of funds and make that distribution serve tribal goals. We describe this as a "preliminary discussion" because it represents only the first stage of an ongoing research project examining tribal per capita distribution policies and their effects.

Resource Type
Citation

Cornell, Stephen, Miriam Jorgensen, Stephanie Carroll Rainie, Ian Record, Ryan Seelau, Rachel Rose Starks. "Per Capita Distributions of American Indian Tribal Revenues: A Preliminary Discussion of Policy Considerations." Published for the 2007 National Congress of the American Indians Annual Convention. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 2007. Paper.

Richard Luarkie: The Pueblo of Laguna: A Constitutional History

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative interview with NNI's Ian Record, Laguna Governor Richard Luarkie provides a detailed overview of what prompted the Pueblo of Laguna to first develop a written constitution in 1908, and what led it to amend the constitution on numerous occasions in the century since. He also discusses the reasons Laguna is currently engaging in another effort to reform its constitution.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Luarkie, Richard. "The Pueblo of Laguna: A Constitutional History." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2014. Interview.

Ian Record:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Richard Luarkie. Since January 2011, Richard has served as Governor of his nation, the Pueblo of Laguna. He previously served as First Lieutenant Governor of Laguna and as a village officer for several terms and he is also a former small business owner. Governor, welcome and good to have you with us.

Richard Luarkie:

“Thank you.

Ian Record:

“You and I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and talk in the past on a number of nation building topics. I wanted to sit down with you today and have a conversation about another topic that we haven’t really touched base on yet and that is Native nation constitutionalism and constitutional reform and specifically the Pueblo of Laguna’s current constitution, how it came to be, and how it is changing. And I figured it would be beneficial if we start at the very beginning. What did the Pueblo of Laguna’s 'traditional,' unwritten constitution, if you will, look like before colonization and what core governance principles and institutions did it rely upon?

Richard Luarkie:

“Well, thank you for allowing me to be here again. For the Pueblo of Laguna, like many other tribes, our governance was based on traditional models, traditional teachings. Our creation story tells us that at the time of creation when our Mother created all entities -- deities, the world, the earth, the sun, the moon, the spiritual beings as well as the humans -- there was always leadership and there was always governance. And that governance, though, was fueled and inspired by values of love, of respect, of compassion, of responsibility, of obligation -- not necessarily rights, but responsibility and obligation to do our part. And so leadership was responsible for the caretaking of that and so that’s how I saw our governance systems run prior to any formal government system that came into play like constitutions. So like many other tribes the inspiration of tradition, the inspiration of spirituality, the inspiration of a way of being, in our language we say '[Pueblo language],' our way of life, is really how we governed ourselves. So that’s how we were structured as a government.

Ian Record:

“So in 1908 Laguna became one of the first Native nations to actually develop a written constitution and I’m curious, what prompted Laguna to take that step when it did and how did that written constitution compare to what you just laid out, basically the unwritten way of life that you relied upon for so long in terms of, during that time prior to colonization when that was the sole guide for how the Laguna people lived. How did, what prompted the Laguna to develop that constitution and how did it compare and contrast to that traditional way of life?

Richard Luarkie:

“Well, when the 1908 constitution came along, it was probably a result of a culmination of events, of issues. Laguna like any other tribe had its issues. During the 1800s, there was a lot of divisiveness going on, there was a lot of infiltration from different factions, there was the attempt to hold onto our traditional way of life, our traditional governance systems, but you had Protestant and Presbyterian and Catholic and still some influence from maybe even the Mexican influence and of course the federal government. So you had all this dynamic going on. But you also have now, the inclusion of Bureau [of Indian Affairs] schools, the Carlisle Indian School, the Albuquerque Indian School and all the other schools across the country that took our young kids away when they were small in the 1800s and now come the late 1800s, early 1900s these kids are home and they’re now adults and they’ve been groomed in a manner of how is it that we should govern ourselves. So they’ve learned a whole new system so they began to utilize those teachings. What was also maybe, I don’t think it’s unique to Laguna because I know other tribes and in particular other pueblos this has happened to, but we had three Anglo governors during the end of the 1800s that were married into the tribe. They were Presbyterian and that became a strong influence during that time period and that’s what helped to architect that first constitution.

Understandably though, our local community saw that as looking at it maybe constructively...also recognized that the federal government through the recognition by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 when he recognized the 19 Pueblos by granting us a cane recognizing our sovereign authority. They recognized that acknowledgment. And so as a way to maybe better communicate with the federal government, they saw this as a tool. So it was then adopted by our council and when you read through the 1908 constitution, there’s still remnants of the time before where you had a leader and that leader was, it literally says in the 1908 constitution, ‘The governor is the supreme ruler,’ because prior to that the religious orders are what they call our caciques at the time, they were the ones that appointed the leadership and the leadership then had full authority. But when the constitution came in that changed and so, to a certain degree, and so you began to see remnants still sticking there within the constitution, but I really believe that it was for the purpose of trying to find compromise, trying to find a way to hold on to our traditional way of being, but also prepare for how is the future moving and how do we communicate with those other forms of government in the future.

Ian Record:

“So in part it was to enable outsiders such as the federal government to make sense of who Laguna was and what they wanted to preserve perhaps?

Richard Luarkie:

“I believe it was a way to make sense of who Laguna was, but also I think very, I think intelligently a way for Laguna to protect what it had and using the government’s tools to do that.

Ian Record:

“So that was in 1908 and we’re sitting here in 2014. So you have now 106 years as a Pueblo with a written constitution and I’m curious, how has that 1908 constitution evolved over the past now century plus?

Richard Luarkie:

“It’s real interesting because you begin to see, we’ve had four constitutional amendments since 1908. So you begin to see a shift from authority of one person to the authority being given to the council. You also begin to see a watering down, if you will, of maybe the practice of core values to more formality in how governance is done. And so what I mean by that is the 1908 constitution was in place for almost 50 years.

The first amendment took place in 1949 and so in 1949 that amendment took place for two pieces. The first one was to adopt the IRA because we now became an Indian Reorganization Act tribe. We adopted that. Even though it was not required, the government, the leadership at the time of the Pueblo felt that this was a way to enhance our ability to continue to work with the government. So we became an IRA tribe. They adopted that. They also adopted the membership process. So as a part of the 1940 census they wrote that in. So we began to see membership. But at that time membership was based on residency, it wasn’t based on blood quantum or anything like that. It was based on residency and it also demonstrated core values because if you were helping, you were taking care of your family, you were being part of the community, even if you were not from there, you applied for membership, you were considered for that membership and in many times given membership. So we have individuals that were from another tribe married in at Laguna applied for membership during that timeframe and on paper are four fourths Laguna. So those are things that happened during that time period.

Then we saw a short nine years later we saw the constitution amendment take place again in 1958 and we saw that core value practice begin to shrink and the driver in the 1959 constitution was revenue because now we went from having almost no revenue to having millions and the reason that happened was because of the discovery of uranium on our reservation. So in a short nine years the constitution had a major change. So we implemented blood quantum at that time period. So we went from a value of being a part of the community to defining who’s going be a member based on blood driven by dollars.

And so the other piece that also came in that was very critical during that time period was our tribal court system. So our tribal court system was adopted in the 1958 constitution. So we went from again that membership of being half Indian to half Laguna, tribal courts and per capita. So now we have those three things now being implemented into the constitution. And we began to see that the governor from the 1908 to the 1949 to the 1958 constitution, we’re beginning to see a shift of authority being given to, from the 1908 to the 1949 to the staff officers, away from the governor and in the 1959 constitution, ’58 constitution we begin to see more authority be given to the council, so from the governor to the staff now to the council.

And so now jumping to 1984 we saw another amendment. And so in 1984, the amendment that took place that was most significant there was again related to blood quantum and we reduced the blood quantum requirement from one half to one fourth and the driver for that is we were seeing more, we were seeing a declination in people being enrolled because nobody was meeting that blood quantum anymore. So that was a driver. The other piece of it was that it was an effort to make parents or grandparents, guardians, whoever more responsible for getting their children enrolled. So what also went into that constitutional amendment was that from the time a child is born, the parent, guardian, grandparent, whoever, they have two years to enroll their child. If they miss that two years, they’re out of luck. They can’t become a member, even if they’re four fourths. So that happened in 1984.

So in 2012, we did another constitutional amendment and the constitutional amendment was for two specific things: to remove secretarial approval and to remove the two-year restriction. So the secretarial approval one was pretty straightforward and so that we began to move down that path of being responsible for our own way of governing. The removal of the two-year restriction was an effort to try to get back to that core value because we constantly remind and we tell our people, ‘Love one another, respect one another, be good to one another, be inclusive,’ but if you’re not one fourth, you can’t be a part of us. That’s not consistent with that teaching so we, and if you miss that two-year timeframe, you’re out of luck. And so we removed that so that we can begin the process in that, and so the two-year restriction was removed. And the reason we shared with people is that it makes sense, there’s nothing wrong with people being made responsible to get their children enrolled, but what about those children that didn’t have a chance, that got adopted out. They never had a chance because they didn’t have a parent, they didn’t have a grandparent, they didn’t have anybody and it’s not fair to them.

So what about those people that traditionally, there in our part of the country when a male marries a female, he goes with her family land if she’s not from our Pueblo, obviously he leaves our Pueblo and back in the ‘40s, ‘50s, prior to that, they actually relinquished their rights and went with that other tribe. So if they did the right thing, life happens, maybe the spouse passes on, then this person, because of that two-year restriction is now out of luck, but this now gives them the opportunity to come back to the Pueblo. So those were the drivers behind those amendments and so we’re now beginning dialogue as a directive by the tribal council to now go to that next step of looking at blood quantum and so we’re preparing for that discussion this year with our community, which will probably, if they want to change that, lead to another constitutional amendment.

Ian Record:

“I was going to ask about these 2012 amendments. You and I have had this conversation in the past, but I think it would be helpful to go into a little more detail, because I remember you saying that one of the reasons why you guys tackled that first was to remove the consideration of the feds, of an external actor, if you will, from the deliberations about how do we want to constitute ourselves moving forward? What do we want our constitution to look like where we can basically base it solely on what’s in our best interest and not so much what will the feds approve or not approve of? Can you talk a little bit more about the mindset behind saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to deal with that first. We’re going to get that out of the way and then we can sort of focus on these huge constitutional challenges we face like blood quantum?

Richard Luarkie:

“Right. For our Pueblo we’ve done a lot of, taken a lot of time to look back at history and the implications of policy, federal, all the way back to the Spanish period and the church, the Catholic Church, the Protestants, all those implications, what’s happened. We’ve had also the great fortune to hear individuals like Mr. Jim Anaya and individuals talk about those areas of Indigenous rights and the areas of non-recognition to recognition to now the responsibility of that recognition.

So for Laguna, it was really embracing the ideology of the responsibility for that recognition and in order for us to be responsible, we have to make our decisions in the manner that best fits us, not only on paper and in constitutions, but here and here. It has to make sense to us. And when you have an external body saying, ‘Well, that doesn’t conform with this code or this whatever,’ that’s inconsistent. And so it was a significant driver for us to be able to remove that so that we can then move forward and make these much larger decisions because even things as simple as ‘Indian.’ When you look at the 25 CFR [Code of Federal Regulations] they have ‘Indian’ defined this way. When you look at ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act], it’s defined this way. When you look at housing, it’s defined this way. So we’re defined for convenience. We needed to take that out of the way and we need to define who we are. And so those were our drivers.

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting, Laguna’s not the only one that’s taken that approach. There’s a growing number of other nations that have basically come to that same realization that, ‘if we are serious about taking full ownership in our governance again and understanding the often insidious forces that were at play, external forces that led us to have the system we have now that is not perhaps true to who we are, we’ve got to get that other actor out of the equation, that Secretary of Interior out of the equation.’ But you still had to go through a secretarial election, right, to get that out and I’m curious. We’re spending part of the conference this afternoon talking about that very topic of secretarial elections and removing the Secretary of Interior approval clause and you guys just recently went through the secretarial election and that’s often a very scary proposition for tribes is to think, ‘Oh, not only do we have to reform our constitution internally, but then we’ve got to go through this bureaucratic sort of often drawn-out process at the federal end and I was wondering if you can perhaps paint a brief picture of what it was like for Laguna, what some of the challenges were in that secretarial election process, perhaps any advice you could give other nations for navigating that process effectively so they can actually get through that election process and then perhaps return to the more important matter at hand.

Richard Luarkie:

“Well, for Laguna, one of the things that was beneficial for us is the relationship we had with the Bureau in our area and them understanding the whys -- why we want to do this -- and the whole purpose behind it and educating them on that. Once we had that piece, and it wasn’t a challenge for us. We’re fortunate we’ve had a good relationship so that wasn’t a big challenge. What was interesting to me and where the challenge fell was with our elders and the older population because their pushback was, ‘Well, if we remove secretarial approval, then we’re relieving the federal government of their trust responsibility,’ and we’re saying, ‘No. No, that’s not right.’ And so what it caused us to do was go through this whole process of educating and reeducating our community and reeducating and so it took us, we started this, gosh, [in] 2005. So it didn’t happen just overnight, but it took some iteration and most important, the most important ingredient was the education. So we still have, to this day we still have some elders saying, ‘That was not right because you relieved the federal government of their trust responsibility.’ You have the other end of the spectrum, our younger people jumping for joy saying, ‘It’s about time. Why are we letting the government do this to us?’ So it’s a growing pain and I think we need to even after the process has taken place, we need to continually educate of what does this policy mean and what are the implications and what does it mean to be a sovereign tribe, a sovereign nation.

Ian Record:

“So I’m glad you touched on citizen education because I wanted to ask you some more questions about that. You mentioned that just around this issue of these two amendments that you passed in 2012, that there was a several-year education process that went into place and I would imagine that that as you said continues on with some of the conversations you want to continue to have around the constitution, whether it’s blood quantum or something else. What approaches have you taken to that task of citizen education, of citizen engagement? What’s worked, what hasn’t? I would assume you’ve learned quite a bit from the citizen interaction you’ve had around this topic over the last several years and that you plan to apply to continuing the conversation with them now.

Richard Luarkie:

“One of the things that has been helpful is consistency and what I mean by that is we’ve, in particular to our constitutional review and amendments, we’ve established a Constitution Review Committee. Since our last amendment we’ve disbanded it, but over those years, once the council decided and the community decided that we need to do a constitutional change, that committee’s been consistent so from administration to administration, whether I’ve been the governor or not, we’ve not changed that committee. So the consistency has been there.

The other pieces that we started the conversation with the community, asking them, ‘What do you think needs to change? Here are the things we’re suggesting and here’s why.’ And so having their input was critical. The other piece is educating the council because if the council doesn’t understand and they’re being asked and it contradicts what you’re telling people, it creates a whole fireworks of assumptions and, ‘Well, he said, she said,’ kind of things and so making sure the council understands what’s happening.

And so I think those are really important things and making sure that there was clarity. And obviously with a larger community it’s more difficult to manage that communication, but I think those pockets are real important. And in our community, we have six villages so in our council meetings...every Thursday we have village meetings so that’s communicated to the villages so the villages have the opportunity to ask questions and pose comments or what not to get back to the council for consideration. And so those are the communication streams that we used. And so the point I’m trying to make is that communication was probably the key element in this constitutional amendment.

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned earlier that revisiting the blood quantum as a prime criteria for determining who can be a part of us and who can’t is something that you’re revisiting. Are there other areas of the constitution or other things that people are talking about integrating into the constitution? I guess I’m trying to get a better handle on what sort of constitutional issues will Laguna be tackling in the near future?

Richard Luarkie:

“That’s probably going to be the biggest one right now. The other piece of it, our offices,  we have a tribal secretary and we have a tribal interpreter and we have a tribal treasurer that are elected officials, but in the constitution it says that they have no governing authority. They’re basically elected administrators. So the question in the community has been, ‘Do we need to elect those positions or just hire full-time with people that have the background to fulfill those particular roles?’ What it’s going to cause is really the requirement to go do a whole job description and those kinds of things because right now in the constitution their job description is as an example tribal secretary, keep the meeting minutes, that kind of stuff and that’s it. So those kind of minor things I think we’ll see addressed in the future, but I think right now the focus really is going to be on this larger element of blood quantum and how do we maintain our tribe, how do we maintain identity as well as protecting our sovereignty going forward. And it’s a, I think it’s going to be a much larger conversation than just blood quantum because when I think about sovereignty, in my mind sovereignty isn’t a definition, of course they’re out there in a dictionary or whatever, but to me sovereignty starts here. Sovereignty is a community thing and I think that is going to be part of what’s going to be woven into this whole conversation of moving forward on blood quantum because it’s going to touch a lot of other areas.

Ian Record:

"Governor, we really appreciate you taking some time to sit down and share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us."

Richard Luarkie:

"Yes. sir. You're welcome."

Karen Diver: Nation Building Through the Cultivation of Capable People and Governing Institutions

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative interview with NNI's Ian Record, Chairwoman Karen Diver of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa discusses the critical importance of Native nations' systematic development of its governing institutions and human resource ability to their ability to exercise sovereignty effectively and achieve their nation-building goals.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Diver, Karen. "Nation Building Through the Cultivation of Capable People and Governing Institutions." "Leading Native Nations" interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 17, 2009. Interview.

Ian Record:

“So I’m here with Chairwoman Karen Diver, who is the chairwoman of Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. And previous to that, she served as Director of Special Projects for Fond du Lac, so she has a wide range of experience, which is precisely why we’re having her sit down with us today.

The first question I’d like to ask you is a question that I ask everyone I sit down with and that is, how would you define Native nation building and what does it entail for your nation?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s almost straight out of the textbook: aggressive assertions of sovereignty backed up by capable institutions. You come into tribal government and it’s at different phases in its growth. And given that most tribes have really not been self-governing for that long, often times, we’re plugging the gap or reformulating. But if the basis of your decision is always putting self-governance first and self-determination, generally you can always plug in the gaps of your institutional capabilities along the way. But it’s the legitimacy of the actions and then backing it up with the way to actually implement them.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned 'legitimacy in the actions,' and the Native Nations Institute and Harvard Project research holds that for Native nation governments to be viewed as legitimate by the people that they serve, they must be both culturally appropriate and effective, which is a double-edged challenge for a lot of nations, particularly those that have not governed, essentially been in control of their own governance for a very long time, and had that determined by outsiders. So how do you view that assertion that for governments to be legitimate, they have to be not only effective, but also culturally appropriate?”

Karen Diver:

“I think for tribes, we’re not as removed from government; government is very personal. Tribal members can walk in at any time, we employ our tribal members, we’re related to one another, so it’s not impersonal in a way that I think traditional government is. And when you’re decision making, the actual impact on real people in their real lives really has to be primary. And for that to work, you have to take into account the circumstances in which they live. It could be as simple, for us, making sure that our policies and procedures account for the ability to participate in cultural activities like wild rice leave, for example, is actually in our personnel policies. It’s a week-long endeavor; people need to do it when the crop is ready. Or it can be as broad based as, what do your family leave policies look like? Recognizing we have extended, large extended families, the grieving process is a community process. So just giving a bank of leave time might not be something appropriate. You might want to have some flexible use of leave to take into account that our families are large, complicated, and primarily their employment serves to take care of them and their families. So you have to have that balance. So cultural traditions matter, and to balance those with the needs of both governmental and the economic entities that we serve; that’s the only way we’re going to have a successful workforce.”

Ian Record:

“So I want to next run a quote by you that we reference often and it’s a quote by a Native leader who once said, ‘The best defense of sovereignty is to exercise it effectively.’ Can you speak to that statement?”

Karen Diver:

“To me, that really means once again building up those capable institutions. Everybody likes to know, ‘What are the rules that we’re playing by?’ Especially if you’re dealing with outside entities that you do work with, whether it’s governmental or through your economic development efforts, but also that you’re defining what those rules are and whether you’re dealing with a local unit of government, the feds, bankers, auditors, they don’t get to define the playing field. You’re defining the rules, you’re communicating them, and you’re saying that, ‘Your work with us is going to be defined by us.’ A lot of that is understanding the tenets of Indian law and explaining it to people and making distinctions between, ‘Who are we as a race?’ versus our political status and those are often confused by many people. So as long as you keep your political status separate than our cultural traditions and who we are historically and currently as a people. To me, that’s real basic and that’s really one of the main elements of sovereignty."

Ian Record:

“You, as I mentioned at the outset, you have served your nation both as a senior administrator and as currently, as chairwoman. I was curious to learn, what, based on your experience, do tribal bureaucracies need to be effective?”

Karen Diver:

“Well, that’s real key. We all know when it goes wrong. It’s the deviation from what is normal and it’s viewed as political graft or having a brother in power so to speak and that’s where…for the average citizen they feel that tribal government isn’t really serving them; it’s inequities in service delivery or access. And sometimes that happens at the service delivery level or the program level or institutional level with hiring and things like that. I think for tribal government, monitoring those activities, putting those systems in place, building accountability and transparency of the rules ends up being key to having equitable service delivery and equitable systems. And for our band members, the expectation that it doesn’t matter who you elect, the level of service you receive and your opportunities are the same.”

Ian Record:

“So it essentially supports stability and expectations among the people when they don’t…they see consistency. They see fairness and they can see consistency across administration so it’s not just, ‘Oh it was this way for this term,’ and then the new term comes in, new administration comes in and things change.”

Karen Diver:

“Well, you’re proving capability in government, too, because the reason you would elect people changes then it becomes about their effectiveness and their skills and ability to do the job rather than your personal connections and how you might gain from that. So it changes peoples’ I think reason for how and why they may vote for tribal leadership.”

Ian Record:

“And being a chair of a nation, you must experience this firsthand, this challenge of the dependency mentality. Where the expectations, at least on part of the citizenry, is rooted in, ‘What can the government do for me?’ or, ‘I’m going to go to the government and get the goodies,’ rather than really viewing that government as serving the nation, as advancing the nation’s long-term priorities. Is that something you struggle with and how do you do you work to overcome that?”

Karen Diver:

“Yes, I’ve struggled with it, but I’ve struggled with it in terms of, once again, how do we build those systems in place so that they serve the needs of our citizenry, but also changing the expectations of our citizenry? And the current tribal council has been a part of kind of changing the mentality of, ‘What our citizens should expect from their tribal government?’ And I usually say to folks, ‘Don’t ask me for a handout. Ask me for a job, or if you’re not ready for that yet, why don’t you tell me what you need to get there?’ And the framing of it is fairly simple. What I tell people is, ‘I care about you enough that I’m not going to put a band-aid on your issue because it’s going to come back. Unless I know what’s going on, we need to create or refer you to something that creates a long-term fix because I don’t want you to have to come back.’ And I really feel that promoting dependency within our own community is a part of the reason why we haven’t been able to move as forward as we could be yet because I’ve turned into a social worker now instead of an administrator, instead of someone who assures that there’s good systems. And I also think it’s not fair to our people to say to them, ‘The way that you get services is by telling me a lot of your personal problems that are going on.’ I need to know them to the extent that I need to identify any gaps in our system, but I also shouldn’t put my own people -- if I care about them -- in the position of having to beg, and there is a difference. I’m not doing it to satisfy my ego because I can feel really good about what I’ve done for you. I care about you enough to say, ‘Let’s look at a long-term fix instead of a short-term band-aid.’”

Ian Record:

“Right. So it’s essentially, ‘Let’s look at the root cause of your problem or your challenge,’ versus just simply addressing the symptom, which will be sure to reoccur at some point.”

Karen Diver:

“Right. And it helps me identify where we might have gaps in service, whether it’s combined case management, stabilizing your housing, where you really need some service delivery, whether it’s health issues, we should make sure that each of our systems are coordinated enough that there is a holistic response to the issues people face in their day-to-day lives.”

Ian Record:

“You mention this issue of building a holistic response, or the capacity to do that, to whatever issue is at hand or that you’re facing. And this really gets to this issue of developing a systems-based approach to service delivery, which we hear about more and more, and we see a lot of that sort of activity in Indian Country with nations saying, ‘The status quo is not working. We’ve got our programs and services going a million different directions, they often duplicate one another. We’ve got to take a systems-based approach that gets at these root causes that you discuss.’ Is that something that you’re working to do, take care of?”

Karen Diver:

“Oh, actively. And both as a staff member and then once I got elected. I’ll give you an example. One of our projects that we’ll be breaking ground here within a month is supportive housing. Supportive housing is what transitional housing used to be. It’s for folks who have had a hard time getting on their feet and for every step forward it might have been two back, chronic homeless, multiple episodes of homelessness. Well, homelessness isn’t the lack of a house, it’s a circumstance, a set of circumstances going on that are preventing people from being stable. In order to do supportive housing, you not only have to build the housing, but you also have to develop service delivery that looks at what are the needs of the family and they may be multiple. You’re also committing to staying by them whether or not they take that step forward or step back, and that’s why they call it permanent supportive housing, because unlike transitional housing the two years are up whether you’re ready to be independent or not. And what it really does is say, in terms of case management, what does the whole family need and it’s self-determined by the family. So much like for tribal government, it’s saying for families, too, to say, ‘What are my needs right now?’ and their needs might be simple in the beginning. It might be having adequate health care and getting their diabetes under control so they’re not facing chronic health issues. It might mean helping the family say at some point that they’re chemical dependent, coming to the realization that it is fueled by underlying mental illness, but there’s a safe place to be able to say that and get at the root causes of why people anesthetize themselves with drugs and alcohol. And what you’re trying to do is reduce the episodes of homelessness and instability in the family so that children can stay in longer, the same school longer, they can maintain their level of health care and what you see over time is school social workers are talking to mental health case managers. We know that health outcomes are affected by the lack of housing; we know that school performance is affected by that. Working together stabilizes the need for service delivery by multiple systems, but they all have to be at the table and integrated together. It’s a model that’s been shown to work outside Indian Country, not yet being implemented to a big extent within Indian Country. The model’s perfect for us because we know our families best. We need to be talking to each other and the family will be the one that hopefully will move forward because of it. So it’s an example, but we’ve built silos in Indian Country, much like we’ve bemoaned in larger systems that are out there, but we’re better contained within ourselves to actually break those down.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned you know your families best. And hearing you describe this approach of supportive housing, that requires an intimate understanding, intimate awareness of what’s going on in your community, what their needs are, what their challenges are, what their priorities are, what they need from the tribe in order to be made whole, or put them on the road to self-sufficiency, whatever it might be, that’s not an approach that an outsider can develop and implement. Is it something that has to be done at the local level by the people who it’s designed to serve?”

Karen Diver:

“Absolutely, because at any given point in that service delivery or that plan that the family develops, you’re going to have to have culturally competent service delivery. You’re going to have to understand that for a family to break their cycle of chemical dependency that it might be isolating to them for some of their other family members, and that’s a hard thing to do. So you’re recreating family systems and showing them a healthy way in a way that doesn’t deny their ability to still remain a part of a larger community. It’s understanding that children are served best when they’re with their families and an easy fix isn’t putting them in out-of-home placement, but intensive services for their extended families. It’s building even the actual facilities in a way that understands that we tend to congregate together and you never know when you might have a niece coming to live with you, and it shouldn’t upset your household composition because that’s what your housing rules say. So it requires us to be flexible. And I think that’s one of the beauties of self-governance is when you determine your own rules, you can be flexible enough to meet multiple demands, but in a way that’s also accountable so that everybody has the same access to that flexibility.”

Ian Record:

“As I mentioned, you were once a senior administrator of your tribe and now you’re the chairwoman. And I was curious to learn, having served in both of those capacities, can you speak to the importance of delineating clear, distinct roles, responsibilities, authorities for each of those key decision makers, implementers? And what happens when those roles aren’t clearly defined?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s an over-used phrase, but I think many people have heard it. If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which road you take. I think that for both tribal government and tribal administrators, it’s all about the plan. Where do we plan to get in two years, five years? I’m a big fan of strategic planning. I’m a big fan of understanding who is responsible for the items in the strategic plan. Who’s monitoring the outcomes and making sure that we’re holding staff accountable? Has there been community input to the plan so that we’re actually serving them and going in a direction that they care about? And we are just starting to undertake now a whole community-wide strategic planning process that will inform tribal government and it’s a difficult transition. Last year I thought, ‘I’m just going to get the staff kind of primed and say give me a few goals and objectives for the year,’ and I almost started a mass revolt. I had the flurry of emails saying, ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘Well, I want to know what you plan to do next year. This is not a trick question, what do you plan to do,’ because at the end of next year I’m going to say, ‘Did you accomplish what you had planned?’ And you’re actually going to maybe make presentations to tribal council about that. Also understanding your role, there’s a plan and each department should understand who their stakeholders are. Human Resources, for example, they think of the applicants and employees as their stakeholders, but they don’t necessarily think of their other divisions that they do the work for as their stakeholders and at the timeliness of their work and the quality of their work can have a big affect on operations. So right now, our tribal council has three of our members were in administrative positions before so we were on the other side of the tribal council table. It’s made a huge difference in terms of our understanding of the importance of their work, not frittering it away, making meeting time productive time and they’re happy. They’re happy because being accountable to us is different. It’s in terms of decision making, not necessarily these huge processes that takes up a lot of their time but doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything. So very important on both ends to understand, ‘What is our role?’ We’re an approving role, they’re doing the work and they’re bringing us their recommendations.”

Ian Record:

“So it’s essentially -- and this gets to what my next question’s about -- what are the respective roles of elected officials and those administrators and bureaucratic employees because you’re seeing it less and less, which I think is a good thing, what you see in some Native communities is still the mentality among the leadership where they have to do it all, and a reticence perhaps to delegate authority. And I’m curious to learn from you how you envision the roles and the separation of those roles and where does one’s work stop and the other’s begin, perhaps?”

Karen Diver:

“I think we’re fairly typical of every tribal government and it comes up during campaign time and when we have our open meetings with our citizenry, they say, ‘The reservation business committee, they micromanage.’ And what I tell people is, ‘You expect us not to micromanage, you want us to take big picture, our appropriate role is in policy making, procedure development, setting vision and long-term direction of the reservation.’ I said, ‘But you want that until the issue involves you, then you expect us to micromanage and fix your problem, and if I go back and tell you you have the ability to provide a grievance or you can talk to the program manager and resolve conflict that way,’ you say, ‘you’re not taking care of my issue.’ So it goes back to that, how do you balance the personal aspect of tribal government, because we are all interrelated, we’re a community, a tight-knit community with the ability to put good governance systems in place and good business systems in place and there’s no perfect science to that, because first of all you’re never going to develop a policy where you’re going to expect to hit every possible outcome or gap. That’s why your policies are a work in progress and need regular review and updating. Also people come up with some really personal circumstances that you may want to accommodate. So I think that there’s a balance there.

The delegation of authority ends up being a lot about control and hiring capable staff and letting them do their job is really key in getting all of the work done because tribal government has a breadth unlike any other form of government. We are corporate, we are government, we are like non-profit service delivery agencies, environmental, education, health. We have to rely on content-area experts. However, I also think being a context expert, they don’t always recognize the big picture they operate in because they’re looking at it from their silo of expertise. So I think tribal government role -- if you look at it in terms of dialogue and challenging each other -- we can help them see the big picture, they can help us understand the peculiarities of their particular area of expertise. That’s where you come up with the win-win. It’s when it’s directive or when you impose upon them, but if you set up the right processes, we often say government-to-government consultation, well we need to have consultation within our organization as well so that we can come up with the best possible scenarios up front and tweak them along the way and see where we may have missed something.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned in part of your previous response about the expectations of citizens, particularly come campaign time. For instance, where internally between elected officials and administrators, bureaucratic employees, you may have a clear understanding of who should be doing what, but then there’s the citizen’s expectations that are always causing friction against that. How important is public education about the separations of authorities, about the checks and balances, about the delegations, about who does what? That it’s incumbent upon Native nation governments not just to have a clear internal understanding, but also to make sure the community understands so that it allows you to keep your momentum going?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s a difficult process, I’ll be very honest about that. And one of the ways I characterize it in some of the one-on-one conversations I have with tribal members is if all of my wishes could come true for our own people, one of them would be that it really didn’t matter who you elect, because it didn’t have relevance in your day-to-day life. That as an individual and as a leader in your family, you were able to get and/or acquire those things you need to meet the needs of your own family, whether that’s through employment educational opportunities, social services, that you knew what was out there and you could access it and you were using those resources to build your own self-sufficiency to the point where once it came to the ballot, it was much like traditional forms of government. Who has the skills to do the job? Do they have the background? Do they have a plan? And it changes your expectations. So I think that’s something that comes over time. But also, when people understand that in their best interest, they can self determine their own needs and you’re creating the systems for that to happen, I think it’s going to change the dynamic of what individuals expect out of tribal government.”

Ian Record:

“And isn’t that where strategic planning is very important because the community understands, ‘There’s a larger goal at work here. It’s not just about the now, it’s not just about what I need personally or what my family needs at this moment, but it’s about where we’re trying to head as a community.'“

Karen Diver:

“I think the economic crisis has really changed that a bit. I think in Indian Country -- especially for tribes who have been building a private sector economy within their borders and really using that as a surrogate tax base -- you’ve been able to plug in some of the gaps and funding in order to create programs or supplement them and access other sources of funding. And I think that the downturn really let people know that it’s not a given that tribal government’s going to continue to grow, it’s not a given that the things that are here now will remain. And we’re a per capita [distribution] tribe, so that’s one of the things we’ve been able to do purely as a poverty reduction; nobody’s getting rich off it. But people understood that maybe that isn’t a given and that we have to be smart about our resources, and maybe the best use of tribal government time is looking at economic and governmental stability and not necessarily the day-to-day issues that arise in tribal council’s life. They’re taking a little bit more ownership and more what we’re doing is more information and referral, ‘Did you know that this is available to you and this is available to you?’ rather than direct service, one-on-one."

Ian Record:

“So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about economic development. And a lot of what the NNI-Harvard Project research looks at is the two polar opposites when it comes to economies that we see in Indian Country. One, you have essentially the dependent economy, which is largely born of constitutions and governments that were imposed or systems of governments that were imposed by the outside. And then you have productive economies, which we’re obviously seeing more and more of as tribes take control of their own affairs, as they begin to launch and build diversified economies. I was wondering, from your perspective, how do Native nations move from a dependent economy, heavily reliant on outsiders, the federal government, to a productive economy where they themselves are in the driver’s seat of economic development? And in that process of moving from one to the other, what are some of the most important building blocks?”

Karen Diver:

“First and foremost, social capital. You need to develop your own citizenry to be a part of that. Talk to a lot of young people and say, ‘What are you going to school for? Liberal arts? Great. We need people to do services to our own band members, but gee, do you also know we need accountants? We need internal auditors; we need dentists and healthcare delivery people, teachers.’ So I think building that social capital so that the cultural competency comes from our own people serving our own community is real key. We can’t always use neighbors and people who aren’t familiar with our own community because then you miss that cultural competency piece. A lot of good people in Indian Country who are Native, but we really need to grow our own and provide the role models. The other part of it is purely regulatory. Do you have the systems in place where economic development can thrive? One of the gaps in our own system right now is we don’t have uniform commercial codes. So that’s kind of on the block. Developing systems of conflict resolution that are transparent and you know who’s rules you’re operating under. Once again, the tenets of Indian law, if you’re working with outside parties, do they really know what dealing with a sovereign is and the context with which this business relationship will be taken out? Regulatory control is also things as simple as what’s your background check policy? Are you going to be able to meet outside commitments that you’re making, for example, under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act? Do you understand their rules? If you’re in a banking relationship, what are their rules, their operating on and how do you mesh that with your own? So I think that a lot of homework goes into building a community where economic development can thrive. And part of it is do you understand your role in it and the role of your people and all of your different departments? For example, if you’re going to work with an outside agency that’s looking at some resources within the reservation, like mining, do you have your regulatory capacity there to look at environmental issues, for example? So, identifying those initiatives and seeing what you have within tribal government that needs to be involved, having them all on the table up front, and identifying your gaps, and either developing it or bringing in consultants who have it so you can have informed decision making.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of, or the importance of investing in social capital, particularly among your young people. Not only finding out what their interests are, but saying, ‘Hey, we have needs in this area.’ That’s, but that, isn’t that the first step because then you have to make sure that the opportunities that are available are stable, that they’re consistent? That you’re not going to have the political turnover, ripple effect where the administration comes in and they clean house, which our research has shown causes this horrible problem of brain drain where people say, ‘I’m not going to invest my time and resources in the future of the nation because I can’t be certain I’m going to get a return on that investment.’ So I was wondering if you could speak to that issue of making sure that those opportunities are stable and that the environment in which you’re asking them to participate is reliable.”

Karen Diver:

“Once again, I think if you start to change and really have a conversation with your community about what do they feel is the appropriate role in tribal government in their day-to-day life, that then starts changing the stability of the workforce. And you’re right, we’ve invested heavily in education, both by creating our own institutions and through scholarship funds and telling people, ‘There’s a big world out there. Go learn things and bring it back home.’ Only for them to not be able to have the ability to worry about their sacrifices of their own stability in their family, and that’s sad. It’s sad and it’s unfortunate because you’re right, it creates brain drain. With the capable institutions, and with some emotional maturity and changing your expectations of what tribal leaders should be both personally and professionally, I think you get towards the bigger picture of, ‘If I’m here to serve my people, that means also dealing with my political detractors, as well as my political supporters,’ and they still end up being tribal members and deserve service whether they like you or not, whether they care about you or not, or whether they believe in you or not, you do your best by them. And I think it’s developing some political maturity to say, ‘Yes, I may not be meeting your expectations, but over time, can we find your place here within this community as well?’ So I think it’s a little shortsighted. We think we want to be surrounded by loyalty, but that’s a moving target. On any given day, you’re going to make a decision that may affect people in a way that they may not want, but it’s whether or not your transparency of government helps them understand why you’re doing it, that it’s not personal, that you were going to make this decision because it’s good for the whole and yeah, it might not work for everybody. So I think a part of it is just your skill at the politics of communicating why decisions are made and whether the transparency was there in the decision making so people understand why and then don’t take it personal.”

Ian Record:

“And doesn’t that really get to this issue of rules? The NNI/Harvard Project research clearly shows that rules are more important than resources in terms of building vibrant economies. Can you speak to that issue?”

Karen Diver:

“Yeah sure, it’s interesting because when I talk to folks and I’m in the unfortunate position of having to tell them I can’t do something for them, one of the things I usually preface it with or end with it is, ‘I know you want this, but one of the rules we follow here for this tribal government is if we can’t do it for everyone, we can’t do it for one. And so if…do you think if I ask the tribal membership if we should do this for you, what do you think their answer would be? Would they be supportive of this decision?’ And generally, when you put it in that context, people will understand that you are making rules for all, not the few. On the other hand, sometimes you come up with one where you say, ‘Geez, we should do something about that and would we be willing to do it for everyone? Maybe, maybe not because the circumstances matter, but it’s justifiable and you knew if you put the whole circumstances out there, our community would say, ‘Yeah we don’t maybe don’t want to make that a practice,’ but in this instance, for their set of circumstances, it’s the right thing to do because we do care about our community. But it’s justifiable in a way so you almost have the litmus test of community voting. And you’re saying, 'How would people think about this?' And if you constantly keep that in mind, and the fact that it doesn’t matter who’s in your office, assume you’re telling everybody because everybody will know. Your actions are public and if someone asks, ‘What’s going on with tribal government?’ you have to be willing to tell them. That transparency is what keeps government honest. So day by day, you take it as it comes and take each circumstances, but if you use that litmus test of, ‘If I put it to a referendum vote, or no matter who walked through the door, would you behave the same?’ generally, you’re going to get pretty close to what you need to a capable government whose rules are not only transparent, but consistency ends up being the biggest key.”

Ian Record:

“And when you have those consistent rules in place that are consistently enforced, isn’t that liberating for you as an elected official, because you then are in a position where you can say no to someone and have it not be personal? And say, ‘Here’s my reason. We have, for instance, a hiring and firing dispute, which I’m sure you encounter in an economic development entity of the tribe or within tribal government. You say, ‘Hey, we have a personnel grievance process for that. I’d be overstepping my bounds as an elected official to take on this issue, to even consider your complaint.’”

Karen Diver:

“Very much so. It is liberating in a way and it’s something that the current tribal council, in terms of building our own capacity to govern and also for our own stability in making sure we’re all behaving in the same way even when we’re not in a meeting, when we’re having different interactions, is to actually have those conversations with each other, have a set of board norms, take some planning time and say, ‘here’s something that you don’t necessarily need a policy for, but it’s something we’re confronted with. How do we behave? Let’s be consistent, all get on the same page.’ Your answer then can be, ‘Gee, I hear you and I understand but the council made a decision that this is the way that we’re going to handle it,’ and speaking with one voice. A lot of this goes to whether or not you’re building a capable board that’s cohesive and all operating off of the same page, so speaking with one voice. You have those arguments. It’s kind of like mommy and daddy, you argue, but you don’t let the kids hear you kind of thing. We have that time where we work things out amongst ourselves but once we come to talking about them in a public way, whatever answer prevailed, we all stick with and support and so a lot of it goes to good governance from an internal perspective as well. And you’re right, it is liberating. It gives individual members a way to say, ‘We all stick together.’ You can’t go from one to the other and try to get a different answer because we’re all going to talk about it and then give you our decision as a whole rather than an individual.”

Ian Record:

“One final question I wanted to ask you, and it was interesting, we were interviewing another tribal leader earlier this morning, and he likened being an elected leader of a Native nation to drinking from a fire hose, which I’m sure you can identify with. I was wondering if you could talk about, how can leaders manage the often overwhelming pressures they face, in order to lead effectively? How can they manage that load, forge ahead, implement that strategic vision, guide that strategic vision, so that the nation can achieve the future it wants?”

Karen Diver:

“I think it’s management principles, and I think as we develop our own folks and they decide to serve through elected leadership, they’re going to bring different management capabilities to the table. And I usually tell new managers or people who are also feeling that -- because it happens all through the organization, not just at the top -- is prioritize, delegate and advocate. You prioritize. I liken it to going to the casino’s buffet. You only get one plate at a time, but you have all those choices so you pick that first plate carefully. When things are going well, you might even start with dessert, but when they’re not going well you might start with your meat instead of your salad. So you prioritize and pick that first plate very carefully. You put out the fires, but you pay attention to what precedent are you setting. Don’t just make it go away for going away’s sake 'cause you’re setting precedent, but you put out the fires first and you kind of look at your organization methodically. Right now we’re lucky; we have no fires. So what we’re looking at is that middle layer of management that is actually broader than the emergencies, but has more long-term impact. Does our organizational structure fit the service delivery we need to do, are there gaps, are there efficiencies to be found so you prioritize and you clip your way through it. Delegating is you don’t have to do it all on your own. You have a hierarchy in place. Make sure the hierarchy is working for you. Use content-area experts; hire them if you need to. I think one of the biggest failings of tribal government is to not admitting what you don’t know and asking and listening to those who do. I couldn’t have done a lot of the work in the last year without listening to my environmental staff, my education staff, my health staff. In many ways I take my orders from them. What are your priorities? What do you need me to talk about? Who do you need me to call? And let them do their jobs. Advocate ends up being important, because a lot of I think doing with tribal government work is educating people around and within you of the role of tribal government. What are our boundaries? How do we get partners in to do our work? We’ve been so busy building our self-governance, we forget we have allies out there, different funding sources, the legislatures, building relationships with townships and counties, which I think is actually going backwards lately because of cuts in local government aid and the economy and they see tribes not as partners anymore, but how do we get into their pocketbooks. So maintaining those relationships and advocacy sometimes happens in a crisis, sometimes in a proactive way, but really saying, ‘Hello, we’re still here, we have an impact, we have a role to play. It might not be the one you define, but there are areas of win-win, let’s talk about those,’ and telling that story. And if you can slowly clip through it that way, it becomes a little bit more manageable. What I usually tell people is tribal government, we’ve only really been self-governing in any meaningful way, probably for thirty years. We’ll continue to get better at it and we’ll make mistakes along the way, but it’s what works and so we have to prove that. So prioritizing and making sure you’re hitting those things and trying to prevent them from becoming those fires ends up being really important.”

Ian Record:

“Well Karen, I appreciate your time today and thanks for sharing your wisdom and your experience with us.”

Karen Diver:

“Thank you, my pleasure.”

Ruben Santiesteban and Joni Theobald: Choosing Our Leaders and Maintain Quality Leadership: The Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Ruben Santiesteban and Joni Theobald of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians provide an overview of how Lac du Flambeau developed a new approach to cultivating and then selecting quality leaders to lead the Band to a brighter future.

Resource Type
Citation

Santiesteban, Ruben and Joni Theobald. "How Do We Choose Our Leaders and Maintain Quality Leadership?: Lac du Flambeau." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 4, 2013. Presentation.

Joni Theobald:

"Again, my name's Joni Theobald. I'm the Education [Lac du Flambeau language] and Workforce Development Director. Part of my work with the tribe and with the constitution started about three years ago, actually a little longer than that, but really more intensely with...a lot with our tribe and my role...I guess I'm pretty direct, I'm pretty...for me, it's all about process and that's kind of my fit with the constitution, the policy, and the tribal council. So with the Education and Workforce Development, our goal, our mission, one of the first things that...I brought my slides and I'm going to probably jump around a little bit just to kind of give you an idea of the background, but also what is the process and how we came about where we are today.

When I came home maybe a couple years ago, actually I had grew up in Lac du Flambeau, went off to college, spent some time in different capacities, work capacities before coming back. Our tribe was going through a lot of difficult time and it was kind of a synchronized I guess of what had happened. There was an opening, the Education Director. There was a takeover within our tribe. There was a lot of turmoil, but it was kind of a new term for the tribe where I moved in the director, new council members came on board, and it was still some existing council members as well, but what we came into is...along with interestingly enough was the Native Nations Institute kind of was a couple of years ago coming around, they were in Lac du Flambeau. So again all these synchronized things happening with our tribe. We brought into the light for us the constitutional reform and someone again, in some of the tribes I know we all face is communication, transparency and just basically engaging and looking for solution-based...

So back to my real direct and one of the main things that I was brought in to along with and asked to help was just kind of organizing and creating a process for change. Change in a sense that was very task- and action-oriented, I guess you would say. Again, my background is when I look at trying to take a lot of what was going on and how do we look at communication, how do we look at making informed decisions, this kind of led to the path of where we started creating a process, whether it was developing and maintaining our leaders through education or it was developing and trying to make change in mindset or if it was a change in our constitution, it really followed what I say and some of the documents I put in here kind of represent that change and that's where I wanted to kind of focus my...what I would talk about today.

So I'm just going to go through. One of the things that...well, just to back up a little bit. One of the main things when I started...I have family on the council, many of us do, started getting calls about how do we create change and how can we bring an educational piece? My background also was that as Director of Indian [Education] on Madison, Wisconsin before moving home for a while. And so there was...just coming back and forth some of my family members and some council are reaching out and talking to me about, "˜What can we do to bring this type of training and understanding as we go throughout reform? We've got to make sure we bring along our tribal members in understanding preamble all the way to the different options for membership.' So one of the things we talked about was, how do we communicate, how do we create [a] classroom situation, but how do we look at what do we look like today and then where are we trying to go? One of the things that our tribe maybe some that we weren't doing and some of you may be already involved in it is looking and collecting data, really looking at, 'What do we look like?' And then from there, really having really great discussions about who do we want to be and then how do we get there.

So one of the things we decided...we're in a...we're a per cap tribe, but one of the things we haven't done was on per cap we really haven't had a way of collecting data or opinions or what are some of the ideas of what our tribal membership was thinking about. But as a baseline, one of the first things, I was moving home and it happened to be the Education Director job opened up in our community, was to take a look at who are our tribal members, who were they, how old were they? And so I'm not going to go and talk through all the tribes, but I just wanted to give an idea because I think really giving the council a good understanding of who we are and what were our ages and what we represent was the first for us. We do have the census, but again it wasn't...it wasn't -- sometimes it's skewed. It really didn't break apart some of the off rez/on rez of what we were looking at. So housing again I know with a lot of tribes is always...it generates a lot of discussion and interest. One of the unique things about having our survey, it was...we also -- which Ruben will talk about a little later -- is we created a youth council. We strategically set that up because what we're doing, we thought about our youth in about 10 years according to our criteria could run for council. We have a large learning curve and there's so many things you need to know. Let's start, let's create a council that looks at tribal governance but also is uniquely involved in this process of informed decisions and looking for solutions to different issues that we have. So they were instrumental in the data collection, the formulation of questions, what's a valid question, and it was just a learning process for all of us. So I'm just going to go through a few of the slides that we created.

So we looked at employment and I'm just going to...and mainly for me coming as education [director], there really wasn't a strategic purpose to our department. It was all about give out the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] grants. So we really expanded, worked on a strategic plan of our department of what was the purpose of our education and workforce? Workforce came about six months later underneath the education department along with Head Start. So I have the full gambit from the pre-K to senior college that we have in place. So it was really neat to see the patterns and to watch as we develop and leaders as we started our pre-K was does a leader look like, what does it want...where do we...what do want our leaders to be, what are the characteristics and what do we have in place in our systems, whether it's governance, whether it's schools, whether it's just ethics? So again back to our survey, it's looking at our educational levels.

One of the triggers as well, we had...at the same time that I was moved into our Education Director position our tribal administration position was up as we...I don't recall, but we were looking for a replacement and it was vacant. We had three tribal members apply for tribal administrator and one of the policies that we have is a tribal member needs to be the tribal administrator. Well, we had three candidates, but only one candidate had the educational criteria to take the job and at the time the candidate wasn't the preferred choice given our turmoil, things going on. So that kind of also...we looked at...again, but the education, what we found out of our 4,000-member tribe, we had about 60 tribal members with bachelor's degrees, maybe I think 30 with master's, and about seven with a Ph.D. Of those, as many of you may have experienced, is most of them didn't live on the reservation, kind of had a disconnect and weren't home and again, strategically with our department we were looking to groom and develop leaders who were going to stay home and help us in the trenches. You can feel free to...I think they have these all on...if you would like to take these. I know some of your copies are hard to read.

Again, one of the key things that we looked at is, as we think about developing leaders we think about someone, we think about culture and languages always out on our strategic plan that we started implementing as language revitalization was key and very important to a leader. So having this data and having these, so council can make informed decisions on budget and on programs, was real critical. This wasn't a process that was in place, looking and collecting data. Internet access, I think...we talk about...this is looking at our distance learning, bringing college to the reservation. That was really important as well. Again, we broke it off to on- and off-reservation. But again, that was kind of our key, our start, and later on I can talk more about our candidate and our training and educational programming. As you look in your binder, we started creating and prioritizing what were key topical areas, areas of need in tribal governance and in employment that we were looking to train and develop leaders, managers for our projects. So that led into more of our really formalizing and structuring the educational programs that met the needs, what we looked for, addressing barriers of place-based education as free as possible. I pitched that to many colleges, they didn't buy it, but they at least gave us a discount and we had collective contracted classes.

One of the main things is though is the mindset of the council and the newly formed was really education always was critical in importance and so they supported and backed and invested in developing our capacity. That was instrumental in getting off the ground and moving this into a real formalized educational process. One of the documents we have is the resolution for council and that was a key of making college in the workday for all tribal members' employment. We are the largest employers in our region and the tribe employs...almost half of our employees or actually 60 percent are tribal members, so we created college in the workplace where it reduced travel, the barrier. Our closest college was an hour away. We developed our broadband fiber system so we could have distance learning in real time, kind of what we are watching here today. We had the same issues with the real time. And also the cost factor -- so we wanted to make it very affordable because one thing we talked about is many of our tribal members are very knowledgeable. Had they had the opportunity to build college within and make it applicable to work they could have easily in 30 years had their master's or doctorate degree and we wanted to find a way and create that opportunity at home. I'm sure we'll have questions about it, but I'm going to give some time to Ruben. Again, this is...he's going to speak about how this transition, how we strategically pulled in the youth in this process as well."

Ruben Santiesteban:

"Thank you. I just want to thank everybody. [Lac du Flambeau language]. My English name is Ruben Santiesteban and my Indian name is '[Lac du Flambeau language].' It means 'King Bird' and '[Lac du Flambeau language]' is 'Lac du Flambeau.' I just want to say [Lac du Flambeau language] to all our veterans and elders here and I'm just really thankful and grateful to be speaking to you today.

How do we choose our leaders and maintain quality leadership? What an excellent session to be a part of. Our constitution criteria, blood quantum if you have the IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution, you have to be at least 25 years of age, quarter blood, 25 signatures from the community, and at least living on the reservation for one year. There really isn't a lot of criteria there, but it's what we have. You can change some of those things through your election code, just to give you an idea of where you can kind of make those changes. Now in Indian Country, what we see that's trending always and you all know this, last names in family members. When it comes time to vote, who do you vote for? Well, if you don't know who you're voting for, who do you vote for? We don't have many voters out there, but we do have some and when they do go to the polls, if they don't know anything about anybody, who do they vote for? You can assume that they'll vote for a cousin, uncle, auntie, grandpa, grandmother. That's the way it goes in any country. That's just the way it is. I wanted to speak about that because one of the greatest things about being a leader in any country on your reservation is that we all have the same issues, we all are facing the same things on each reservation with our people.

I'm one of the youngest leaders ever voted to council and I had the highest vote count in Lac du Flambeau history and part of that was from the candidate endorsement training. That training gave candidates the opportunity to state their positions in current affairs and what they hoped to accomplish in their term in office. And we don't get to see that in Indian Country. We need to do that. How do you know who you're voting for? I'm Ruben Santiesteban, definitely don't have the strong name on our reservation, but through the candidate endorsement training [it] really gave me an opportunity to state who I am, where my family comes from. So it was...if you have any questions about that, we'll be available to you. You should do that, implement that on your reservation if you have a constitution and you choose your leaders the same way in which we do in Lac du Flambeau.

Now to move on to talk about the Waswagoning Youth Council is also part of UNITY. This young group of leaders has been such a positive force in our community. They have a unique understanding of treaty rights and tribal governance. The youth council travels state and nationwide networking with new youth groups and tribal leaders in Indian Country to help rebuild Native communities. This leadership team consists of youth between the ages of 12 and 24, because at 25 you can run for council. They attack issues like youth engagement, teen suicide, and substance abuse among teens and I'm truly honored to be mentoring our future-generation leaders. If you want to make change in your community, start promoting things like youth councils, immersion, community events, after school programs, leadership conferences, cultural activities we do need to promote in our communities. It's vital to our family asset building and I hope all of you are doing that and if you're not get to it.

I want to talk about the Expo, it's in your binder there and the [Lac du Flambeau language], which stands for "˜We Are All Doing This Together.' It was named by one of our spiritual leaders in the reservation that gave us [Lac du Flambeau language] to help me build this Expo. Now the parents knew the Connections Expo was an opportunity for our community to meet and greet with their tribal service providers, local area service providers and potential employers, college and recreational opportunities. This Expo also gives our tribal service providers a chance to build their brand awareness. We all know that we need that in our community. We know that we have the resources and the tools, but we need to get together. Most importantly these opportunities allow program managers and team members to network with each other and possibly collaborate on future projects. What do we know in Indian Country? We use our resources up all the time. Some of us have a lot of programs. In our case we have over 91 programs, and of those 91 programs I can tell you right now that a lot of them have the same goals, to make Waswagoning a better place. So to get together and collaborate and pull those resources together can be very beneficial to your change. There's some key components to the Expo and one of them was community development, building program awareness, networking, and also building capacity in the community. The Expo, in its second year this year, had the most families together in our history. That's important to me.

They had asked me to kind of talk about my story a little bit and I didn't kind of want to do that, but to talk about my upbringing. I grew up in both Lac du Flambeau and Milwaukee and it gave me a unique insight on small-town and big-city communities. My childhood was full of adventure and ups and downs, but encouragement to succeed from family members was everlasting on me. I'm sitting here in front of you and I'm going to tell you that I was an at-risk youth and I was going to be a nobody. I was told I wasn't going to make it, told I wasn't going to be able to make any change in my community, I was going to be in jail for the rest of my life, and really had no direction. And I persevered, just like Indian people have for the last 10,000 years. I was not going to put up with that and I created a new chapter in my career and it has been nothing short of the greatest moments of my life and I get to do things like this and speak in front of you, in front of tribal leaders, and I just really appreciate that. My whole life I've been a dreamer, but this time where I sit before you today, I get to live this dream.

To move on and try to move through quickly, I wanted to talk to you about personal branding and what that means. We all have a brand. People are making assumptions and perceptions of who we are and today it's going to be about your tribe, your reputation and actions that you take in your community. That's your brand, that's who you represent. My personal brand and how I carry myself, and hopefully I've left an everlasting impression on you today. I'm going to say a quote from someone who's been a real good mentor to me. His name is Brian Jackson. He's the President of the Wisconsin Indian Education Association: "˜What is good education? Is getting a good education mean getting good grades, or is it making sure students are motivated to learn? Education comes in all forms. We just have to learn to achieve the goals and help students be motivated for higher education after high school.' I think about that all the time and I think it's just positive and being where I come from and the upbringing and the struggles that I've had to face -- just like many of you have -- that it feels good to have words like that to be told to me.

I will speak a little bit on leadership. Communication, the fight against the silo effect...my biggest fear, we talked about this yesterday is we have council sometimes that rescind the things that we've done. That's a fear of mine. The work that you're doing, will it matter if we don't communicate better with each other when new councils come in, will they change what you've done? And will 10, 15 years later your great idea that you had will come back again and it'll seem new and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but we need to get out of that silo effect and that's part of leadership. When it comes to leadership we have to challenge the myth that it's about position and power. The truth is leadership is an observable set of skills and abilities. Leadership is learned. We don't just get to wake up one day and become the greatest leaders in the world or the greatest leaders in Indian Country. Learning to lead is about discovering what you care about and value, the kind of things we talked about. In Ojibwe country, we have the seven grandfather teachings and we have the clan systems, which we abide by. Those are the governing systems that we used before the 1934 constitution came and that's who we are. And as we become leaders, we're faced with some difficult questions and the one that I ask myself all the time is, 'Am I the right person to lead at this very moment, is it me, and why?' You have to remember, you can't lead others until you've first led yourself through struggle and opposing values. And I'm definitely not telling you anything that's new, but I will sit here and remind you of why you're here, of who you are, the choices that you make that represent your nation and your people. The most critical knowledge for all of us and for leaders especially turns out to be self-knowledge or personal brand and the most powerful leaders encourage others to lead. As we encourage youth to come and come lead our nation, are we going to be ready to hand off those leadership roles to them? Because that's exactly...the hardest thing we have to do is being able to let others lead.

Now I have a minute left. I want to make sure that we...I give a shout out to the Native Nations Institute and [the] Continuing Education and Certificate in Indigenous Governance. I was a part of that and I think it was fantastic. And I just want to say in Lac du Flambeau, the actions that we take today isn't just for tomorrow, it's for the next 30 years and that we are...we do have a sovereign attitude and we also are building education for capable institutions in our cultural match and using our seven grandfather teachings and instilling that culture into our people. I would like to end today by saying that leadership is in the moment and after speaking with Steve Cornell yesterday, I have a quote or a statement for you that I want you to remember: "˜Successful nation building starts with our greatest asset: our children, the youth. What are we doing to protect what we have built? Education and language revitalization are key components to the foundation of the survival of our community in improving the lives of our people.' With that being said, I just want to say miigwetch and hope I have a chance to speak with you more after we're done."

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Jamie Fullmer (Part 2)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Jamie Fullmer, former chairman of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, shares what he wished he knew before he first took office, and offers some advice to up-and-coming leaders on how to prepare to tackle their leadership roles. He also discusses what he sees as some keys to Native nations developing diversified, self-sufficient economies that can be sustained over time.  

Ian Record:

"So, Jamie, you served two terms as chairman of your nation. I was wondering if you could share with us what you wish that you knew before you took office that first time."

Jamie Fullmer:

"That's a great question. There's a lot of things I wished I knew before I took office, but when it gets right down to it I think that politics is a unique and challenging role, because in essence you're a public servant to the community, but you also have responsibilities as a public figure. And so I think one of the initial challenges was not recognizing how much of both of those things took of my time and my life and so had I known that before I would have been able to prepare for it before getting into office. But it consumes you rather quickly and your time becomes very precious because you have few moments of time to yourself and you have few moments of time when you're not expected to be in the public setting. And so with that said, I think that's the first thing I wish I had known before taking office. I think the other thing is, having never been involved in politics, not really knowing the process of any of the formal processes of running government, and so it was kind of a 'learn and lead at the same time' process, and if I would have been able to know initially what kind of steps I could have taken I might have been able to do some homework and really have a good feel of how to move the legislative process forward, how to take advantage of team building opportunities early on, and then also I think learn more about how to better enhance the institutional framework of information sharing. Not only being able to have access to it, but having everybody else have access to it so that we were on the same page when we were dealing with political issues or community issues or economic development issues in that sense."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned time management and we've heard this from other tribal leaders that that's one thing that you just...you can't anticipate in many respects coming into the job. I remember Peterson Zah, former chairman and president of the Navajo Nation, said once that that really puts the onus on you as the tribal leader to first prioritize your work and then in those places where you can, delegate your work to those people that are within the administration of government who've been hired to do those sorts of things."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sure. The delegation issue is sometimes challenging, because even in the delegation process you have to meet and learn and get to know the staff and they may not be staff that you've chosen. And some political systems have a system where a new leader comes in and they're able to choose their executive team. Our system wasn't like that. The executive team that's in place is what you work with and it's really a council decision to choose those folks. Of course the chairman has a say, but if there are people already in existing positions you'd like to hope...especially in my case, I believed that the chairman before me had good sense of who they wanted. And so if they felt it was good for the nation, I respected that I could keep that same frame of thought. That challenging part though is getting to know who has the skill sets in different areas. They might have a certain title, but they might have skill sets in other areas that are a good fit for delegation of duties. And I think the other process in that is that there's the time management issue, it's also important to have good support staff to help manage the front end, the telephones, the documentation that comes in in stacks daily, and kind of arranging a schedule that helps you to meet not only your daily priorities, but also to address any of the community issues that come up where members want to have some time with the chairman in the office, and then arranging that with the travel that's necessary to do business on behalf of the tribe. So you live in a suitcase part of the time and then when you're home, you're really relying on others to keep you on track and on task."

Ian Record:

"What advice would you give them? It's somebody that's never served in an elected office before -- what advice would you give them as somebody who's either considering running for office or say they do get elected and are getting set to take office, what advice would you provide?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"I think the best advice I would give in starting out is [to] remember the promises that you make you have a responsibility to keep. And so I believe that part of the political process is one of the challenges we face, because there's so many promises made in the pursuit of getting elected -- both in Indian Country and we've seen a lot of promises going on right now during the election season at large -- but when you get into office you are only a part of something that's much bigger than one individual and you can play an important part and you can play a very important role in the advancement of your nation, but the advice I would give them is, "˜Be aware and take the time to learn what the struggles are, take the time to learn what the system needs to help it move forward, and before you make any promises to the community, take the time to learn if those promises can be met.' And I think that's an ongoing challenge, so that I thin, that's an important part. It's also valuable and what I would tell the person is, be ready to commit your time. You're raising your hand and swearing an oath to your people, to your nation, and to God that you're going to follow through to the best of your abilities and it's a challenge to give the best of your abilities all the time. And so I think you need to figure out at the front end how you deal with your down time and how you deal with your low moments so that you can keep a good presence about you as a leader."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned the fact that keeping promises is really important once you take office, the promises that you make maybe on a campaign trail or as part of your platform to get elected, and you began to touch on this. Doesn't that make it your job to be very careful about what promises you make and really think strategically about the promises in terms of are they promises to maybe just a certain portion of the citizenry or are they promises to the entire nation, because as an elected official are you not representing the entire nation?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"That's a challenging question, because I think that obviously you serve your entire nation, but many tribes are organized where there are clans and there are familial priorities that take place, there might be village priorities, and so you may be really wanting to get in to address those issues. And depending on if it's a council position, that might be your role as a district councilor or as a village councilor, and so you do go in on those points that you're prioritizing. So with that said, I think the way that I reached out to the community was through goals. I had set goals based on what I had heard that the community wanted and that I felt like could be achieved in the period of time of the term in office or at least get some headway on historical processes that had gone on that hadn't been completed. And so there were some things that were challenges that I felt that I had the skills to help address and to put closure to that other leaders and other councils long before me had established and put into place and then there were other issues that had been initiated over time that I felt like needed to be at least started to being addressed. And so, rather than making promises because it's too difficult to make a promise, it was goals that I had set for myself and for our nation that if I were elected I would work on those goals."

Ian Record:

"And those two different terms send very different messages to your citizens, to your constituents don't they?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"I believe so because the goal is something you work toward, a promise is something that you try and keep."

Ian Record:

"Yeah. And you also mentioned this approach that you took when you took office which was continuing the priorities and the initiatives of previous administrations and that's not an approach that every tribal elected official takes. In fact, we've seen many that take the exact opposite approach. And I was wondering if you could talk about the difficulties you ran into with that or if it made your job easier, the fact that you were building on the momentum that had been generated before you came along."

Jamie Fullmer:

"I think there's a point that's important. Really for me it wasn't about having the credit for getting anything, it was having our nation have the credit. And so my role was as the chairman, in my opinion, was to go in and assess our government, assess our enterprises, assess our community, assess our programming and look for areas that I could help strengthen it. And it didn't matter whether I was to start it or if it had been started by somebody else. It was obviously a priority to the community if it was already in place. And so maybe those needed to be updated or changed or some of the structures needed to be adjusted, but the idea wasn't to do any of that with the intent of getting credit for it. It was doing that because it needed to be done and accepting on the challenges that the community had set upon me about getting...there were certain priorities that they wanted addressed and so I felt it important to address those that I could."

Ian Record:

"You've been working with a number of tribes across the country, particularly in the Southwest and Pacific regions, on diversifying their economies. In that capacity -- in working with other tribes and also based on your experience with your own nation -- I was wondering if you could paint a picture for us of what you believe a full-fledged Native nation economy looks like."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sure. One of the challenges, the initial challenge that I see is that people have a different viewpoint of what 'economy' means. There's a lot of different arenas that are placed around the idea of an economy, but from a governmental perspective and from a societal perspective, that economy is a tumbling effect whereby, when revenues come into the system, those revenues advance themselves throughout the system. And I'll give an example: money generated from gaming comes to run the government. There should be something...then the government pays its employees and then those employees use that money to buy goods and services or pay bills. And so from an economic point of view, your ambition is to keep the money that's generated in a nation in that nation as long as possible. And so from that point of view, the economies are built to create more opportunity and generate more cash flow and protect the money that has come into the nation and keep it there for awhile. With that said, economic development is the process by which tribes create those kinds of business enterprises that will generate that opportunity.

And a lot of times, what gets confused there is the idea of economy has taken on, at times, the viewpoint of small business development. And I am definitely for small business development, I think it's a central part of an economy, but there are also other ways that generate economy, like creating infrastructure creates a baseline to build small businesses on, building housing creates opportunities for people to stay in the community so that they can pay and live in the community, which creates another set of economic values. You also bring in your, you keep your talent pool localized when you have job and work opportunities for those folks; they don't have to move away to go get a decent job. And so there are a lot of things tied to economy but I think the...my idea as a strategist and what I do with my company is we really focus on where the tribe's at and its structure, because economies are really tied to strong structures and institutionalized systems. They're really planned out and thought because there's a lot of money at stake in any type of venture -- business venture, enterprise development venture, acquiring businesses -- and so government is usually a reactive type of system, most bureaucracies are reactive in nature because they're political and business is more proactive in nature because it's usually driven by goals and end-production processes. You want to reach a certain budget, you want to reach a certain level of profit, you want to reach a certain level of job creation. And so with that said, there's more planning that takes place at the front end.

So from a tribal perspective and looking at tribes as nations, as sovereigns with the ability to create whatever they'd like, economic development to me takes on a number of scenarios. One is developing a strong government of laws, which include economic development, commercial laws, corporate laws, zoning laws, taxing laws, any other kind of law that can benefit the nation as a government. With that said, then you also have to have the legal system that can enforce those laws. A solid legal system is another key component to a strong economy. Another piece to that as well as that is the ability to create opportunities for individual members within the tribe to build business and so creating programming that will raise the initiative to have small business and entrepreneurship in the community. Those are other opportunities. And the government itself being proactive in supporting and promoting business within the community really takes on another level of public relations and commitment to helping to share information about the tribe and the tribe's capabilities and abilities, because many times when tribes are trying to develop an economy they want income and finances from other places to come in to generate more income locally. And so if you're looking for investors or partners or joint venture opportunities, it's very important for a tribe to recognize that they're going to be scrutinized by outsiders if they choose to take that path."

Ian Record:

"So really what you're...within this discussion of laws and institutions and structures and infrastructure, you're really describing essentially an environment-based approach to economic development and not just a venture-based approach to economic development, where you as a tribal council are trying to figure out, "˜Well, what business are we going to get into?' But really what you're saying is that tribal leaders need to be focusing on, "˜Let's create this environment for economic opportunity, whatever that opportunity might encompass.'"

Jamie Fullmer:

"You are exactly right with that point of view, because the environment is where the government has the most control, creating the laws, creating the systems, creating the policies that guide the direction. With that proper environment, the tribe or its members or private investors who come in to do business in the tribe have an opportunity to actually be successful because the environment is an environment of success. And so with that thoughtful planning at that -- in the environmental process -- it allows your economic development arm or your planning arm or whatever a tribe calls it, some call them 'authorities' and some call them 'enterprises' or 'boards,' it allows that arm to really do a good and effective job, because first of all they have something that they can go and promote and secondly, it challenges them to stay strategic in their thinking. If you have a specific zone where commerce can happen, you know the limits and the boundaries of where to do the commerce. It's just one example."

Ian Record:

"I also wanted to follow up on another point from what you were just talking about and that is you were describing this tumbling effect that you should be building towards in terms of how you structure your economy and you mentioned this point where the tribal government, for instance, or the nation raises revenues through gaming or whatever other enterprises it may have. It may, for instance, collect taxes on sales by citizen-owned businesses, whatever the form of revenue might be, comes in the tribal government, it funds that government, it pays the salaries to those tribal employees and then you mentioned those employees go out and buy goods and services. And this is where the research shows, this is where that tumbling effect tends to stop in so many nations because there aren't places on reservation to spend money on goods and services. Isn't that really one of the biggest challenges that Native nations face is creating those on-reservation outlets for consumer spending?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"There is that challenge, but I think in that challenge there's also a broader challenge that we many times in Indian Country all over America don't view the value of us buying from each other, doing business with one another, purchasing goods and services from tribal members or Indian-owned businesses, because that's part of a larger economy, the Indian Country economy. And I believe that when Indian Country comes to terms with adding that type of value and seeing the value in really committing to ourselves and our own success that we will have the ability to create a very powerful economy, sub-economy in the United States. But breaking that down to the individual level and the individual tribe, if the money that is made from whatever enterprise the tribe has only comes in and it goes directly out, it only benefits the tribe in that one sense. If that money were to come in, for example...an example that's challenging, but that some tribes have done would be a valuable one is a bank where people, where the money's made and then they store their money in the tribal bank. Well, now the tribe has access to use that money to do other kinds of investment and lending and create another revenue stream. A mall that has groceries and services that the community and the employees of the tribe would use is another way because you create...the money stays in the community, people spend it there, and you create more jobs with the same original money that was brought in, but it has now doubled its value. And so the ambition of a tribe should always be to see how they can vertically integrate the economy so that it will...there's an opportunity for it to stay there and it can be broken down in a number of arenas. Tribes buy all kinds of different products and goods and services. It would seem reasonable that they are able to create business opportunities for themselves as a tribal government owning enterprises or for membership and buying and selling those goods and services from individual Indian tribal members or other tribal enterprises or their own tribal enterprise."

Ian Record:

"You're working with the American Indian Business Network, which is an initiative of the National Indian Gaming Association on this issue of Native nations and Native citizens 'buying Native,' and really on a more macro level where you're talking about an Indian country-wide proposition, where it's not just Native nations and people buying internally within their own nation but actually buying from other nations. So I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about the motivation behind that project and how it's taking shape so far."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sure. I'm real proud of National Indian Gaming Association's commitment to developing the American Indian Business Network firstly because they are very close to a very powerful economic tool for Indian Country -- which is gaming -- and they see the value in tribes diversifying their economies. With that said, the American Indian Business Network was created by NIGA as a separate entity owned and operated by NIGA to develop a network whereby tribes could partner and do business with one another, that they could promote and establish a way to sell their own products and services of their tribal-owned businesses that they have and then also to look at partnering with other Indian businesses and also really for the small business owner or the entrepreneur that tribes would consider purchasing goods and services from those Indian-owned businesses. And with that said, with all of those levels of involvement and investment, we're really ultimately helping Indian Country, all of Indian Country by doing that because all along that chain, that food chain, Indian households and Native American families are being fed. And so we're really being more self-serving and self-sufficient, but not only that, we're also able to help the non-Indian economy because many of our employees are non-Indians, many of the businesses that we have are in partnership with non-Indians, there's a lot of non-Indian investment in Indian Country, and so the idea is not to exclude people or to make it exclusive, but to make it inclusive where Indian tribes, their enterprises, their buying power and their selling power gives a value to sharing resources across the country in one form or another, which could lead to a number of different opportunities. But just the concept is a very powerful one where we're not just looking, we're not just saying, "˜I want to take care of my tribe.' We're saying, "˜We want to take care of all tribes,' not by saying we're going to have to spend all of our money on other tribes, but by saying that we're willing to commit to buying Indian goods and services when they're at the same quality and level of the non-Indian goods and services."

Ian Record:

"So it sounds like a rather immense, untapped economic opportunity that will have kind of transcendent benefits not just for Native nations, but for the larger economy."

Jamie Fullmer:

"I believe so, yes."

Ian Record:

"I would like to talk about another topic, broach another topic that's rather sensitive in a lot of Native communities, particularly among those who have experienced this newfound wealth and prosperity through gaming, and that's the issue of per capita distributions of tribal revenues. Yavapai-Apache Nation has a per capita distribution policy where it distributes a certain portion of its revenues to individual citizens, I believe on an annual basis, is that right?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"Yeah, that's correct."

Ian Record:

"On an annual basis. And I was wondering if you could talk about how Yavapai-Apache Nation went about developing the policy, what it took into account when developing that policy, and how the policy and how the process of distribution actually takes place."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sure. The per capita distribution and obviously the tribe's process of distribution was created for the membership -- and I won't get into any details to that because it's not my place or my authority -- but the distribution process was established because the community itself, as shareholders of the casino enterprise, felt as though there should be some distributions of that wealth. And the leaders over time had made commitments to doing that. When I got into office, it was very apparent that that was one of the things that was a priority to the people to get done. And so I made it one of my top and I think it was my first major initiative to move forward in office. The idea behind it was is that if we viewed the tribal membership as owners or shareholders of a corporation or a major enterprise -- which they are -- we viewed it much like a stock program in a private corporation whereby every year when business enterprises do well they might give their shareholders a revenue, a dividend, where they're sharing the dividend and that's how we really viewed it, that there's a percentage taken from the casino revenues and distributed to members each year at the end of the year based on the profit. And so with that said, I think the challenges; there were a number of challenges.

The first one is that when we put it together, there's the challenge of going through the process with BIA, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs takes its time in approving these kind of things, and so that was a challenge. And then internally the debate was, "˜How do we treat the dollars with respect to the individuals? Do we just give it to the adult members, do we give it to all members, is there any parameters that we want to put around the money?' Because it's not a lot of money. The council members at the time said, "˜We'd like to get the program started and we'd like for it to be shared and provided to all members.' With that said, we had to create a minors' trust program and so in that trust, there's an accountability of the money that comes in each year and how it's preserved for the individuals until they turn 18, which is the age that we gave and those dollars are accounted for by a separate accounting system. And I think the protections that we put into place or the monies don't come in through the tribal government, they go directly from the casino to the per capita account and then the money is distributed from there. And so that is helpful, too, to protect the integrity of the separation because it was approved, it was agreed on in our revenue allocation plan with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and so we really stay steadfast to that. And at the time, when we rolled it out, I think the challenge was is the people I'm sure wished that it was more than what it was and then I think the next challenge is that as we moved along we learned more about it because we would say, we would just...when we started, we wanted to get it out. And then along the way over the years we would kind of adjust it as needed, but the first year, the first issue was, "˜What if you turn 18 in the middle of the year? Do you get the money at the end of the year or do you have to wait?' And so that was one challenge. And then the next...so we had to set some timeframes on. If you turn 18 by a certain time during the year you are eligible for the dollars at the end of the year. So that was one challenge.

And I think another challenge was in dealing with elderly issues, that it might affect their Social Security benefits, and so we did try and find ways to manage that as well. But because it's young -- I think it's only been in place around four years or so now, maybe five -- but it was, we knew that we would have to work out some kinks and I think when it will be an impactful decision making down the road will be for those very young people that were maybe not even born or born when we started it that they'll have 18 years worth of revenue saved for them and at that point they may want to start considering some...putting in some safeguards for the individual, some requirements for them to get their money and those kind of things. But I think all in all, there's a lot of different positions on whether per capita is good or whether it's not good. I think in our case, because we viewed it as a distribution based on a shareholding, we had a little different viewpoint on it. Our ambition wasn't to subsidize the individual's life, it was to share in the overall profit of the, in our case, the casino. And so my own self, I have my own mixed emotions about whether it's good or bad, because I'm more in line with that the funds could be better spent providing programming, but I also recognize that the whole idea of gaming was to create an opportunity for quality of life of members. And so as you know and as we all know, every little bit counts, especially these days with everything being so expensive. And so if we create job opportunities, we create education opportunities, we provide social programming, and we are able to give distributions to help enhance the quality of life, then it's a positive thing."

Ian Record:

"You touched on a couple of the issues that the Native Nations Institute -- which recently published a policy paper on per caps and what Native nations needs to be thinking about as they develop their policies -- you touched on a couple of these critical issues. One of which is, when you issue a per capita distribution -- for instance particularly one that may fluctuate based upon the performance of the businesses or the enterprises from which the revenue for those distributions is coming from -- you have to be careful about what that's going to do to the eligibility of certain of your citizens for programs that they rely very heavily upon like Social Security."

Jamie Fullmer:

"The other challenge to that is if you expect...if you receive this much the year before and you only receive this much the following year, nobody's really happy about that. So one of the challenges as well is just growth, population growth. If you have a set percentage that you give and even if you make more revenues, if you have more births or enrollments in the year, it's still going to decrease the total payout. And so sometimes people assume that we are making less money when in fact, we're making more money, but we're growing faster than the money's growing."

Ian Record:

"Yeah and that's...I believe Native Americans are the fastest-growing population in the United States. That's going to be a huge challenge for those nations that issue per capita distributions moving forward, is it not?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"I would think so, and I'm not real privy to any other distributions and values, but I would think that just that natural growth, something's got to give. If you've got a limited amount and you're growing here, well, something's got to give, whether it's programming or actual dollar distributions or both. It really depends on how well the tribe is planning for the future and that growth."

Ian Record:

"And it really gets back to this issue that we talked about earlier in our discussion about citizen education really, that you have to...because these issues like per capita distributions, these governing decisions that you have to make or at least lead in as elective leaders that you have to educate the citizens about what exactly all of this means. For instance, why is the per capita distribution amount down this year, or what does it mean when we're doing a performance based per cap or a profit based per cap based on a percentage of the revenue versus a flat amount every year?"

Jamie Fullmer:

"That is again another struggle area because not everybody understands money, especially in the context of being one piece of a percentage. And it's challenging for those that understand money and so it's even more challenging for those that don't, and I'm talking about the percentages and how the common person in their thinking, they think about themselves and, "˜Hey, my check's less than it was last year. We must be making less.' That's the common sense approach to things, but when you look at the bigger picture and you realize and recognize that, as you said, if it's performance based, if the performance isn't as good, it's going to go down. If the performance is as good and you've grown and your membership has outgrown the dollar amount, it's still going to go down and so there might be two reasons that it's going down, two very different reasons. One is maybe a not so good of a reason, the other one is a good reason. Having great performance and growing as a nation is what we hope to do. So again that leads into the whole idea of diversifying where tribes should be considering, how do they create other opportunities, not just for per capita, but if the tribe itself is growing and continuing to grow then all of the programming is going to be effected: the education programming, the health care programming, the social programming, how the governments are staffed, staffing issues, the space allocations, the building sizes. You can go on down the list all the way down to the size of the pipes for sewage and water and it's not a bad thing to grow, but it's an expensive thing to grow and I believe that's one of the challenges, getting back to the challenge of the finances, is the common citizen doesn't take that into account. And sometimes when you lay it out there and it is statistically done and drawn out, it's hard for people to really connect to how those statistics affect the future growth."

Ian Record:

"So it seems to be two things that jump out of what you're saying about trying to meet that challenge or fight that struggle is strategic thinking and planning first of all: anticipating what the demands are going to be on tribal governance and tribal administration moving forward with the rapidly growing population, the strains that's going to put on programs, services, infrastructure, etc. And then it's the issue of not just citizen education, but education in laymen's terms, that most every citizen can understand."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Financial education is a very important next step for Indian Country, well, the whole country, but when we focus on Indian Country, that's a great next step because tribes have gone from over the last several decades, many of them were very poor and there was a lot of poverty. There still is a lot of poverty. I don't want to take away from that, but for those tribes that have been able to climb out of poverty, now they have to learn how to protect their wealth. It's not just a matter of generating it, but how do we protect it once we've generated it because it is very easy to spend. They always say, the more money you make, the more money you spend. It's very easy to spend the money when it comes in because there are always needs and there are always wants that people believe are needs and so there's a never-ending demand for services and programming and opportunities for members. But at some level, the institution, the government, the Native nation government needs to look at how do we prepare for our future growth. So they have to do some trending, they have to investigate their current size, they have to investigate their future needs, whether it's land needs or water needs or space needs, they have to look at the need for civic buildings and growth in that area and then they need to look at what kind of enterprises do we need to do. A couple of things: bring in more revenue to the tribe itself and bring in more opportunity for the tribal members. And so that isn't just increasing per capita, it's increasing the quality of life per individual. And that's I believe most of our goals as leaders is our ambition is to create a quality of life for our people that is comparable to what's around us."

Ian Record:

"And ultimately, as a nation, it's really about promoting independence and self-sufficiency not just as the collective, but among individuals."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sure. I think there's a little bit of I guess it would be backlash at times when a tribe becomes wealthy, people get angry about that. And it's really challenging in America that's supposed to be a country that is proud that people can go from poverty to wealth and they promote it in every other major arena and every other major setting, but when Indian tribes become wealthy, there seems to be a backlash that we don't deserve to be as wealthy as the other individuals that have wealth. I think that's another challenge that we face is we're still viewed as...that we may still carry on some of this second-class citizen status when we're well beyond that in the 21st century."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to wrap up with...first of all, I want to get your response to a quote and this is a quote that we heard first from, we've heard it from several tribal leaders, but we heard it from one in particular, Chief Helen Ben from the Meadow Lake Tribal Council up in Saskatchewan, and this really gets it back to this issue of governing institutions and she said, "˜My job as a leader is to make myself dispensable.' And really what she was getting at is, "˜My job as a leader,' and she expounded upon this, "˜is to put our nation in a situation where we have that infrastructure,' that you've been talking about, 'that environment in place of rules and policies and codes where when I leave office not everything falls apart.' There's a sense of stability and continuity there. And I was wondering if you could address that issue with respect to your own nation and what's going on in that respect."

Jamie Fullmer:

"I think that my nation has been around for a long time, and there's been a lot of strong leaders and it's traditionally and culturally appropriate for us to have strong leaders. I think there's a balance between leadership and having a strong institution. Ultimately, I believe you need both because you can have a great institution, but if there isn't leadership steering it and keeping it moving and accepting the challenges that come up, then it can also stagnate. So I don't think that leadership is ever indispensable in my opinion. I think that leadership is a necessary part of everything that we do. With that said, a strong institution sure makes it a heck of a lot easier to be a strong leader and because you know what it is that you're wanting to accomplish and you know how to put to work the institution so that it can bring about the changes that the people want and need. And I think finally -- in my own nation as I said -- my ambition as the chairman was just to be a part of the growth, the ongoing growth, and I've never seen myself as anything more than that, never wanted to be more than that. That if I could say in my life that I contributed to my nation's growth in some way, then I feel like I have done my responsibility, and that holds true throughout my life. I feel like I can offer those same kinds of contributions to Indian Country as a whole and that's why I do what I do as the owner of Blue Stone Strategy Group. But back to the whole point of, I do believe that you have to have leadership, but I also believe that if you have a capable institution that you can plug folks into leadership roles, and as long as they have the necessary skills and ambition that there can be successes."

Ian Record:

"So in a nutshell what you're saying is that good governing institutions essentially empower the leaders to be effective."

Jamie Fullmer:

"I believe so. And there are those magnanimous figures out there that can, they don't need all of that around them to make it tick, but most of the people that sure does empower them to make wise and thoughtful decisions as opposed to reactive and crisis-oriented decisions."

Ian Record:

"Well, Jamie, we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with us. I've certainly learned a lot and I think Native nations and leaders across Indian Country will learn a lot from your thoughts and perspectives on not only what your own nation has been doing, but what's going on in Indian Country. We'd like to thank Jamie Fullmer for joining us today on this episode of Leading Native Nations, a program, a radio program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit our website: nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us." 

Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: ONABEN: A Native American Business Network

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Former Executive Director of ONABEN Tom Hampson presents an overview of the organization's work to the Honoring Nations Board of Governors in conjunction with the 2005 Honoring Nations Awards.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Hampson, Tom. "ONABEN: A Native American Business Network." Honoring Nations Awards event. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Tulsa, Oklahoma. November 1, 2005. Presentation.

Tom Hampson:

"It's a great privilege and an honor to be here. My name is Tom Hampson. I'm Executive Director of ONABEN, a Native American Business Network. I want to thank the Harvard Indian Economic Development Project Honoring Nations, but particularly Amy [Besaw] and Jackie [Old Coyote] and the site review team of Jonathan Taylor and Joan Timeche. One of the most unexpected outcomes of this process was the fact that you guys were so professional as both counselors and cheerleaders and colleagues and now friends that as we work on projects together I'm sure in the future that this has been a real exciting process for us. [Thank you.] We'd not be here if it were not for the support of the guidance of our board of directors, who believe in our mission. Of course we would not be here at all if it had not been for the opportunity to serve Indian people as chartered by the sovereign nations that we serve. I'd like to list those: Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Colville and Cowlitz and some ten other tribes that we have done programs and associates with. I'd like to recognized Chairman Dolores Pigsley of Siletz who is here in the audience, Board of Trustees Chairman Antone Minthorn of Umatilla, Colville Business Council Chairman Harvey Moses, Jr., Sal Sahme of Warm Springs Economic Development Department and David Tovey of the Coquille Tribe and Umatilla enrollee. Dave is also a former ONABEN board member and represents the Economic Development Corporation of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and ATNI itself is the mother ship, which has been a very important and critical strategic partner for us as ONABEN has grown.

The evolution of ONABEN over the last 14 years represents a mix, a mix of opportunities, of Indians, of non-Indians, of tribal leaders and entrepreneurs, of technocrats and hundreds and hundreds of wonderful people and those of the Native American entrepreneurs, or as we have corned the term "Indianpreneurs." It is a mix that mirrors that marketplace in which we all must participate and in which we all must compete. ONABEN was chartered in 1991 by a guy named Mitch Connelly, who at the time was the Director for the Spirit Mountain Community Development Corporation, or Economic Development Corporation, for the Grand Ronde Tribe. And Mitch persuaded four Oregon tribes that it was in their interest to integrate their economic development strategy to include the kind of diversification and energy that can only come from creating a private sector on the reservation. And thus, the coalition of tribes was born in Oregon with the mission to enable Native Americans to realize their dreams for a better quality of life through owning and operating a small business, to strengthen Native American communities by building Native American confidence in their abilities to start and run businesses, to create comfortable and safe environments in which people can explore their dreams, to foster relationships which increase business survivability, and to contribute to the well being of the Native and non-Native communities around the area. That's an expansive and a very integrative kind of mission for an organization. And it was -- as you might think in the pre-gaming era -- a time in which discretionary income with tribes was very scarce and yet those tribes chose to make an investment not only in an intertribal organization, but most importantly in the creation of a small business center on their reservation, which was a prerequisite for joining the organization.

The organization has a service delivery model that is simple in concept, but very complex in operation as all intertribal organizations are. It features a network of...a small network staff to provide curriculum, provide expertise and support services to tribally run and operate its small business centers on the reservation. Over the years, we've discovered a number of principles that we think any Indianpreneurship program ought to have: that we need to provide services at the local level to match the entrepreneurs in that economy, in that place, in those industries and at that level wherever they are, given their level of aspirations, given their level of expertise, meet them where they are and provide environments in which they can explore their ideas, whether it's home-based businesses, expanding businesses, high-growth businesses, artists to engineers, contractors to inventors. The whole notion is to build a community around the entrepreneur and to integrate the tribe's economic development program with the individual private sector development. This all puts a lot of pressure on the network to make all of those forces happen, and because it comes down to building relationships that transcend these boundaries.

At the network level we are a content provider, a bridge builder, a product and service innovator and policy advocates to the tribes. Our classes are taught by entrepreneurs, independent business owners themselves from the local level that are selected by and in concert with the local tribe. These folks are local bridge builders to the local economy. In most recent years, we have focused our efforts on curriculum development for all levels of entrepreneurship and we're very proud to announce that as of November the 15th when we hold our annual conference Trading at the River, we are going to unveil our "Indianpreneurship: A Native American Journey into Business," our own branded curriculum based upon the stories of ONABEN clients. We support small business center managers in the tribe in evaluating and developing the most appropriate support systems for their private sector. We scan the environment for the best ideas and help the tribal managers apply them if it's appropriate to them. We bring federal, state, intertribal foundation, private sector resources to these collaborations.

So what has changed since ONABEN has been around? When I first came to the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation in 1972, it was just after a grand economic development plan to utilize the land claim settlement money for tribal enterprises had been thoroughly trashed by the electorate in favor of disbursements to per capita payments. The confidence level by the people was very low in the tribe and in themselves to pull themselves up by anything, bootstraps, moccasin ties and let alone an economic development plan. But as a student of my mentors, I listened to the stories of the prosperous times before contact and even into the early reservation period where rich traditions of trade and economic gardening supported the people. We went to work to recreate in some modern form the prosperity of those days. Visionaries like Antone [Minthorn], planners like Mike Farrell and project managers like Dave Tovey and hundreds more like them across the country went to work and sustained this renaissance for the last 30 years.

There were very few small businesses on the reservation in the 1970s when we started, but that began to change as the tribe's prospects began to change and I'm sure it's the same where you come from. As the more the tribe has succeeded, the more the confidence is built, the more you see people going into business for themselves. The length between tribal economic development and individual private sector hold the next key to this renaissance. We believe that organizations like ONABEN, the Lakota Fund, Oweesta, Four Bands, all represents opportunities to play an important part in foraging these linkages, individual entrepreneur to tribal enterprise to local, regional, global marketplace. I think...but we got to do it I guess by going back is the other thing that we have discovered and I think Bill Yellowtail, who will be a speaker at our conference this coming in November says it best. He says, 'It is only circling back to the ancient and the most crucial of Indian values and understanding that the power of the tribal community is founded upon the collective energy of strong, self-sufficient, self-initiating entrepreneurial, independent, healthful and therefore powerful individual persons, human beings, Indians.' We exist to celebrate the accomplishments of these Indian business owners, their enterprise managers and the tribal councils that support them.

Trading at the River embodies the philosophy that we can look back to go forward, we can listen to stories from people like Mike Marchant who can talk about the collection of salmon at Kettle Falls, the drawing and bundling of those fish and the transportation over to the Buffalo Country, to stories from Antone and others about the berry fields of Mt. Adams, the fishing platforms of Celilo, where people met and traded and made connections that lasted forever. Trading at the River allows us to come together and ask the difficult questions of how we can move forward. At Trading at the River, we dedicate ourselves to the question that Antone has asked for the last 30 years of 'what is an Indian economy? What is Indian economic development? What does that mean?' We don't know the answer to that question, but we know the people who will and those are the entrepreneurs, the tribal leaders, the enterprise managers. Our role is to keep the conversation going, to disseminate knowledge, and to keep the magic of the network alive, vital and growing. Our job is to help build a community of traders, people of commerce, Indian entrepreneurs. The journey has been going for a long time and we are looking forward to the next stage and we want to share it with you. The people of the Harvard Project have affirmed our work, your recognition has humbled and inspired us. Thank you very much."

Amy Besaw:

"We'll have a few minutes of question and answers. As we're doing the question and answers, if Flandreau would come up here and join us at the side of the stage that would be great. Thank you."

Elsie Meeks:

"My whole career and life and work has been about supporting entrepreneurship and allowing Natives to become entrepreneurs, and at the same time I really feel like it's important that through this there starts to be changes made at the local level in a real, systematic way. And my only real question about ONABEN, and I'm very familiar and you guys work really hard and you've done really good things, but how rooted in the community and how much difference does it make at each tribal level, and I guess the other kind of question around that is how much ownership do the tribes feel to this or is this just a regional organization that serves tribes?"

Tom Hampson:

"That's the essence of the question, I mean that's the essence of our management challenges, and it's true for every network kind of organization, 'cause there's always the natural tension between the intertribal network and the individual members of that network and how much autonomy does each one have, and so it's all about relationship building. And there's no question that just like business development or economies in general, they vary from place to place. We've had extremely positive and strong relationships and support at say for example the Grand Ronde Tribe, and then as inevitably happens, you get the winds of political change, bring a new council with new priorities and some programs are favored and some are not. That program was completely terminated about three years ago at the tribal level. We maintained our relationship with the tribe to provide the same classes and counseling using the same people actually as a contract basis, and we're seeing the Grand Ronde tribe's interest in that program rekindle and we see cycles like that all through Indian Country. The most critical part of that is that, and this is why if all we're doing is just putting on classes to whoever asks us to put on classes or send out workshops consultants or whatever, is to insist that the tribe make the investment in creating a small business development center of its own. Now those folks, they do all kinds of things. They just don't counsel entrepreneurs. They inevitably get drawn into, based upon whatever department they're located in, into the priorities of those departments and the priorities of that tribe so the small business center manager Kathleen Flanagan at Umatilla is working on a small business incubator program. She's doing cash-flow analysis for an enterprise for Wild Horse Resort. So she'll split her time as directed by the tribe. And so the ONABEN programs in entrepreneurship are only a partial priority but most importantly though they are a priority and sometimes it's lower and sometimes it's higher. Our job is in a diplomatic way as possible to try to encourage those tribes to elevate those priorities and that's what we've seen. I think more lately what we've seen the power of something like Trading at the River to do is to get in the policy makers' heads the importance of entrepreneurship as a tribal economic development strategy not just as a bunch of individual businesses that are always harassing them at council meetings about not getting enough tribal work. So we're seeing a change in that perspective at the policy level. But as you all know it's a very delicate walk to take."

David Gipp:

"Dave Gipp here. I had a question. What distinguishes ONABEN's efforts from other regional, tribal or even state strategies toward successful economic development? What makes your project and your strategies distinctive I should say compared to other regional or tribal or even state strategies?"

Tom Hampson:

"I think it's that process that we've just described. The metaphor for that process is or the catch phrase is Walking the Talk. Because we don't staff up, there's only four of us in the central office, sometimes three, sometimes five depending upon our funding sources. We have to depend on independent contractors to provide the bulk of the services and the tribal centers and so we have to facilitate a relationship between an instructor, for example Lou Blake, an MBA, Stanford MBA, ex-entrepreneur, sold out his company, moved from Seattle to Matheau on the Colville Indian Reservation, now drives over three mountain passes to teach classes at Nespelem. Lou represents an individual in a marketplace and another culture and a whole body of knowledge that he brings to that place, to those people and a whole new perspective. If he were a tribal employee, if he were our employee, he would not be the same person, he would not bring the same perspectives, and I think that's one of the unique factors. The other factor about that is from just a pure survival point of view has an organization is if our funding sources are reduced, we reduce the number of independent contractors we use and the number of classes that we can provide. So we can flex up and down and I think that...we try not to build empires, we try to build relationships and strategic alliances so we get the work done. We do a lot of work...it used to be that the small business development centers in Oregon particularly didn't serve Indians at all. And now when we go into a community like at Coquille, Coos Bay, Southern Oregon, we will immediately contact the SBDC, have them help us hire instructors, get them to co-sponsor our classes so that our constituents know that they have a whole group of resources that are available to them. So we try very much to walk our talk in terms of boundary expanding as well." 

John "Rocky" Barrett: A Sovereignty "Audit": A History of Citizen Potawatomi Nation Governance

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Citizen Potawatomi Nation Chairman John "Rocky" Barrett shares the history of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and discusses its 40-year effort to strengthen its governance system in order to achieve its goals.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Barrett, John "Rocky." "A Sovereignty 'Audit': A History of Citizen Potawatomi Nation Governance." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 11, 2012. Presentation.

"[Potawatomi language]. It's nice to see all of you emerging tribal leaders. That's wonderful. I like to think of myself as emerging, hopefully on a constant basis. I was first elected to office in 1971 as a 26-year-old whatever I was at the time. I was selected as vice chairman. I was named to finish a term and then I was...the two year terms back then. Then I was elected about seven months later for a two-year term as vice chairman. Vice chairman of what was hard to say at that time. My uncle was the chairman. My mother and her eight brothers and sisters were agency kids. We grew up...they grew up on the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] Agency. My grandfather was the BIA marshal then or the tribal...or the BIA police. And so that area...I am one of the eighth generation of my family consecutively to be chairman of the tribe. Back in those days when that vacancy came up, it came up because my uncle had been named chairman because...he was the vice chairman and the chairman had gotten removed from office for carrying around the tribal checkbook in his hip pocket and writing checks to the grocery store for groceries. And we only $550 in the bank and he used about $100 of it to pay his grocery bill and the feds got him. So he was removed from office and my uncle was made chairman, which created a vacancy in the vice chairman spot and so I was named to it.

And we went over to the BIA Superintendent's office. Now you've got to understand my uncle grew up on the Agency and the BIA in 1971 was the law. And he didn't believe you could have an official meeting of the tribal government without the Agency superintendent in the room and that the minutes of our meetings were not official unless they were filed with the BIA. So we went over to see the Agency superintendent and he was going to tell the superintendent that we were going...the tribe was going to appoint me as vice chairman. Now why, I don't know. But we go in and the Agency superintendent starts trying to talk him out of it and he finishes up by saying, ‘Now the last thing I want to do is hurt you guys.' And so as we're going out the door, my uncle turns to me and says, ‘That means it's still on the list,' to hurt us.

So I got the drift about then and, but...became the vice chairman and served two terms then I became director of the inter-tribal group. The State of Oklahoma forced all of the tribes -- the federal government forced all the tribes in the ‘70s to create inter-tribal corporations that were chartered C corporations or non-profit corporations in the State of Oklahoma. The federal government would not give money to an Indian tribe back in the start of the old [President] Lyndon Johnson program days. So you had to be given to a corporate entity that was in the state. And the state even tried to take 10 percent off the top of every federal dollar that came to Oklahoma as a condition. The issue back then was whether or not tribes were responsible enough to manage the money and everyone...I was the youngest person on the business committee. I was the only high school graduate; I was one of the three out of five who could read. All of the people on the business committee were smart but they were not educated people, but they had all grown up...of course, I'm not smart enough to know how to operate this damn thing. There we go. I did a good job of that, didn't I? Side to side or up and down? Ah, okay, that was the problem I went... I killed it. No? Ah.

But the Citizen Potawatomi Nation back then was the Citizen Band of Potawatomi Indians of Oklahoma, was the name of our tribe. The 'Band' was something the BIA stuck on us in 1867, actually 1861 when we separated from the Prairie Band when we were all one tribe. We tried to get Band out of our name for almost 75-80 years after that and finally were successful. We still can't get the BIA to stop calling us that even 20 years later. But we're the Citizen Potawatomi Nation; implication being that 'Band' is not a full-blown tribe.

But what's described as this audit of sovereignty -- we weren't that smart. We didn't just all of a sudden one day decide, ‘Oh, we're going to audit our sovereignty. Where are we sovereign? And where are we not sovereign? And here's what we're going to do about it.' We weren't that smart. We really didn't know what sovereignty meant. Remember, everyone on the committee, and this includes me, we were all children of the ‘50s and the ‘60s. Primarily, except me, were children of the ‘40s and ‘50s. You've got to remember what was going on about then. 1959, Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins of Utah chaired the Interior Committee of the Senate...Interior Committee on Indian Affairs and helped shepherd through House and Senate Concurrent Resolution 108 was provided for termination of tribes. The Secretary of Agriculture, who was also from Utah at the time, in the interest of doing something good for Indians, were tremendous proponents of termination and got it done. The McCarthy hearings were on about then and anybody who held things in communal ownership was probably a communist and that included Indian tribes. Yeah. And if you were an Indian leader and you didn't like the way the federal government treated you, it wasn't that you were saying that you didn't love the government, it's when you discovered that your government didn't love you is when all of a sudden things got rough.

And this was a tough period of time and everyone on the business committee, all five of us, were all a product of when self-governance and self-determination, that was the language of termination. Self-determination and self-governance meant termination. That's what they said they were going to do. And in those days you had to prove that you were going to be too broke and too incompetent to run your own affairs to keep from being terminated. If you had a business and you had money and you were conducting your affairs in some semblance of order, then you were eligible for termination and we were on the list. Why? I don't know because we had neither pot nor window. And it was...it was absurd that all the Potawatomis got thrown in there together 'cause we were down to $550 in the bank and two-and-a-half acres of land held in common, in trust, and about 6,000 in individual allotments. We were down to nothing and they were going to terminate us. And my uncle, listening to the Choctaw chief at that time who -- remember, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, Seminole chiefs were appointed by the president until some 20 years after that. They were not elected. So the Choctaw chief was a big proponent of termination. He believed that was the right thing to do. My uncle didn't think that we should be terminated but didn't even really know what we were being terminated from 'cause we didn't own the building where we met. It was a trailer that the [Army] Corp of Engineers had abandoned on a piece of land that the BIA had and they were letting us use it. We were pathetic, pitiful people.

And so when they started these hearings on Indian stuff and the outcome of it was Senate Resolution 108 and the Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Potawatomi, Turtle Mountain Chippewa and all the tribes in the State of California, New York, Florida and Texas were to be terminated. Now 108 didn't terminate them, but it authorized the termination and then the BIA started working up the list. When I said earlier that the BIA superintendent said, ‘The last thing in the world we want to do is hurt you, but it's still on the list.' So, that was the mindset of our business committee and when I took office of our tribal government. Senator Watkins had the support of Senator Robert S. Kerr, the owner of Kerr-McGee Oil Company, to date the richest man who's ever served in the United States Senate and was the most powerful man in the U.S. Senate and coined the phrase what we call a Kerrism and that's still in use in Oklahoma is that, ‘If I ain't in on it, I'm ‘agin it.' And that's how he got in the uranium business. All that saved us was we sued the government in 1948 under the Indian Claims Commission Act and that lawsuit settlement was pending and tied up in the courts and if it hadn't been for that they would have terminated us 'cause you can't terminate someone who's in court suing the government cause it looks like you're trying to get rid of them to get rid of the lawsuit and that's all that saved us.

Very quickly, we came from Newfoundland down the Saint Lawrence River 1100, 1200 mini-Ice Age, ended up in Michigan, split from the other...the Ojibwa, Odawa, Ottawa people. We were all one tribe called Anishinaabe, we came into Michigan and settled. In the war with the Iroquois over the beaver trade they drove us all the way around the lake until the French armed us and then we drove them back to the east coast. We were in refuge in Wisconsin from the Iroquois attacks when the French, John Nicolet showed up with some priests and we helped unify the Tribes of Wisconsin against the Iroquois invasion and that group was able to drive them back once armed with the French connection. The French connection through a series of alliances, primarily inter-marriages and the inter-married French and Potawatomi became the Mission Potawatomi who became the Citizen Potawatomi.

But this area was an area that we controlled quite a large area, though it didn't show up on the slide, but it was a very large area around the bottom of Lake Michigan and then because we sided with the French against the British, with the British against the colonies, we ended up under the Indian Termination or the Indian Relocation rather, Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and we got marched to the Osage River Reservation in a march of death along this route and the ones that didn't die on the walk, another fourth of them died that winter. My family survived it on both sides and in 1861 after the Copperhead [U.S.] President Franklin Pierce allowed settlers to come into Kansas on top of the reservations anyway without a treaty. We were on the Kansas/Missouri border. We were part of the Underground Railroad to help hide runaway slaves and transport them up north. And so we were part of the depredations of the Civil War from Missouri, a slave state, into Kansas.

And so we ended up getting out of there, separated from the Prairie Potawatomi in 1861, sold the reservation to the Atchison-Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1867, took the cash and bought this reservation for gold south of the Canadian River from the Seminole Reservation line to what's called the Indian Meridian that divides the state in half between the North and South Canadian rivers, became our reservation that we purchased. And we took United States citizenship as a body in 1867 in order to protect the ownership of that property as a deed. We were denied access to the courts in removal from Indiana. We had lawyers hired and people trying to stop the removal from Indiana and we were part of the group that was...the ruling was that because we were not United States citizens we could not plead our case in the United States courts. And hence the name Citizen Potawatomi was to defend the purchase of this property.

We came to a place called Sacred Heart. We had the Catholic Church with us and helped them form the first Catholic university and school, settled in Sacred Heart. We had a division over the Ku Klux Klan. We had a Protestant and Catholic business committee. Of course the Klan was as strong in Oklahoma and Indiana as it was in Mississippi and Alabama and it caused a great deal of trouble. The Shawnee Agency government in Shawnee where the Indian Agency was basically after the tribe was able to heal the split, we didn't have a headquarters after we left Sacred Heart. The trailer that you see on the bottom was a...belonged to the Corp of Engineers and it set on a surplus piece of property. I want to get a little larger version of that picture because it's so much fun. Car and Driver Magazine certified the three worst cars in U.S. history were the Ford Pinto, the AMC Gremlin and the Opel Cadet, and all three of them are parked right there. First thing we did was out of the 550 bucks, we spent $100 of it on that air conditioner 'cause it was too hot to sit in this trailer. The guy who got removed for writing those checks got drunk with his brothers and came to whoop us all at the first meeting and the chairman...I mean the guy who was supposed to succeed, because I got appointed he showed up, is how I got appointed. But he showed up to become the first choice appointee and he kicked a hole in the back of it right here 'cause this was the only door to get away from the impending fist fight. But it was mostly conversation, nothing happened. But that was us in '73 on a gravel road. That was all we had.

In 1982, I had left the inter-tribal group and left tribal office and gone back to the oil field and in 1982 my grandmother whose father and grandfather and great grandfather and great-great grandfather had been chairman and my mother's father and my grandfather also on his side had been and my grandmother called me up and told me that I needed to come back and I said, ‘I've already done my piece, grandma. You've got 26 other first cousins. Why don't you get them to do it?' And I got that silent thing and she scared me to death with that so I went back out there in '82, in 1982 because I'd had the previous history in office and as running the inter-tribal group. Became the tribal administrator in '82. I served until I ran for chairman in 1985.

But in 1984 there was a set of tribal statutes that were being promulgated by a now famous Indian lawyer named Browning Pipestem, the late Browning Pipestem. Browning Pipestem and William Rice, Bill Rice, made a presentation to us. Now I was the tribal administrator. The chairman at the time had a reading disorder so the way that business went of our tribe was he would go out in the hall and his wife would read it to him and he would come back in and reconvene the meeting and we would handle that piece of business. This meeting started about 5:30. It was about 1:00 am when Browning Pipestem and William Rice finally got the opportunity to speak. Browning Pipestem was married to a Citizen Potawatomi. He was Otoe Missouri and he started the meeting off, 'cause he'd been cooling his heals out in the hallway for about five or six hours, by saying, ‘I own more land than the Potawatomi tribe. I have more trust land than you do. My children have more trust land than you do. The area over which you govern, my family owns more than you do.' Well, it was kind of an odd thing to say, but I knew Browning was...he was a riveting speaker, and I knew he was going somewhere with this and he said, ‘You guys are known up north as the shee shee Bannock,' the duck people, because we were so good with canoes. Supposedly Potawatomis invented steam bending the keel of a canoe to avoid knocking a hole in the bough on rocks on rivers. ‘You guys are called the duck people by the other tribes 'cause you got around in so much active in trade and so much commerce and you got around so well on the water.' And he said, ‘Well, here's what sovereignty is. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it's a duck most likely, and sovereignty is the exercise of sovereignty. It's not something that you get, something that you buy or something that someone gives you. It's like your skin. You had it, you are a sovereign, the United States signed treaties with you, 43 of them, all of them broken, the most of any tribe in the United States, the most treaties of any tribe. And they don't sign treaties with individuals and they don't sign treaties with oil field roughnecks. They sign treaties with other governments. You are a sovereign government with the United States and sovereign means the divine right of kings.' Well, he lost us there and he went on to say that...explaining that ‘unless you take on the vestiges of a sovereign government and exercise the authorities of a sovereign and recognize where you can exercise your sovereignty and where you cannot and what it is, then you're not. But if you do, you are.'

Well, for me the lights went on about then because the Thomas-Rogers Act constitutions in the State of Oklahoma, all the tribes in Oklahoma adopted the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act Constitution and it basically...that was back in the days when it was the fad, we all had to be corporations. I'm the chairman of the tribe and we have a vice chairman and a secretary/treasurer and we have members of the business committee, like a board of directors of a corporation. And somehow they thought that our way...best way to govern is that we would all get together in this thing called the general council that would be the supreme governing body of the tribe and that we all got together and everyone had an equal voice, the 18-year-old had an equal voice with the 65-year-old and everyone would get together and democratically design the best thing for the tribe, which is utter nonsense. Absolutely utter nonsense. We never governed that way in our history. If you got up in my day as a young person and had something to say in council, your grandpa would and could and should grab hold of your pants and jerk you back down and apologize for the fact that you spoke at all without asking the permission of your elders.

Of course our government, because it was a meeting...now we didn't have anything, we were broke. We didn't have any land, didn't have money, we didn't have anything but we could meet in the one general council that we had annually on the hottest day of the year and the last Saturday in June at our annual general council that convened about 1:00 and we'd keep going ‘til about 7:00 when the low blood sugar kicked in and it would come to blows. And as a result of that, we couldn't get a 50-person quorum. We had an 11,000-member tribe. We couldn't get 50 people to come to council. We used to have to get in our cars and delay the start of the meeting to go around and force your cousins to get in the car so we could get a quorum so we could convene the general council meeting. No one wanted to come and I don't blame them. I didn't want to go either. If I hadn't been in office, I wouldn't have gone. It wasn't government. It turned into a bad family reunion. That's all it turned into. And so the...what happened out of that, calling that government, was the more acrimonious the meeting became, the less people wanted to come, and the less like government it was. And it wasn't a government. We weren't governing, we weren't sovereign, we weren't anything.

So first thing that came to us is, ‘We've got to change this Thomas-Rogers Act thing.' The supreme governing body of the tribe can't be a meeting, and we could call special meetings of general council with a petition and 25 people could call a petition and you could get another meeting and get 50 people there and 26 of them could change everything that the previous one did. So one family could all get together and we could back and forth have these special general councils and we could reverse this and change this and chaos, utter chaos. So we decided to redefine what the general council was, if that was to be the supreme governing body of the tribe, it had to be the electorate, it had to be the people who were eligible to vote, the adults of the tribe. And so that was the first thing we decided to do, but that evening it ended about 2:00 and we all went home.

But the next few days we started talking about, ‘What does a tribal government do? What are we supposed to be doing here? We're getting a few bucks from the government here and there to try to keep the lights on.' We had $75 a month coming in of revenue and it kept the lights on but, ‘What are we?' So we got it down to three things: the land, the law and citizenship. What land do we govern? What's a law? So it was about three years and I got elected chairman in 1985. I came back in '82, I ran for chairman in '85 and have been in office since then. We've amended our constitution five times since then. One really major one and we have been to the United States Supreme Court three times, to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals seven times. We have been in litigation every year since 1985. We're still in litigation. I'm a lawyer's dream -- not one penny in tribute and millions for defense. That's not my saying.

When we talk about the land, how much land do we govern? Now we had that two-and-a-half acres of land that was held in common, we had about 60 acres that was in fee that was old school land and then we had about 6,000 acres of land that was held in trust that had a whole variety of heirs, very few people living on it. And you could fly over the countryside of Oklahoma on our reservation and here'd be a whole bunch of land that was all in cultivation, people making hay and raising cattle and then there's be an 80-acre piece right in the middle of it that was overgrown with blackjack trees and weeds and trash and no fences and crummy looking un-utilized piece of property and that was a Potawatomi allotment. That's how you could tell because with so many heirs no one actually owned it, no one actually used it. It was in the fourth generation of ownership of a family that was split up to where it wasn't happening. Plus the fact the government at that time, there was a big move that tribes that were allotted tribes that didn't live on Indian Reorganization Act reservations like most of you guys weren't really tribes and really didn't have a definable jurisdiction. That was before the federal definition of Indian Country.

How much land do we govern, what are our boundaries, what authority do we have over our land, can we buy more and will it become subject to the authority of our government and what's the difference between allotted land and tribal trust land? We didn't know that. We didn't know. We didn't know that allotted land was subject to the authority of the tribal government even though the only thing we had were resolutions. We didn't have statutes, we didn't have a code, we didn't have a court, we didn't have police, we didn't have the vestiges of the government, but we had resolutions. That's how we decided what to do and we could do a resolution that would have an impact on tribal trust land if you could survive the political outfall. We didn't know that. We didn't know that our boundaries where we could take land and buy the residual interests in the allotted lands was the original jurisdictional boundary of the reservation, the 900 million acres that we lost. What authority did we have over the land? We didn't know we had authority over anything. Remember, we thought we had to have permission from the Agency to meet. So it was the discovery and the inquiries that we began about what our land base was, what our boundaries were, where could we buy land and get it put into trust; we were told by the Agency superintendent that no individual could put land into trust. And the reason was that you had to be incompetent for them to put individual land into trust. And if you were smart enough to ask to get your land put into trust, you weren't incompetent. Catch 22.

The law. We didn't know we could pass a law. We were passing resolutions; we didn't know they were laws. We have a resolution, ‘We're going to meet next Friday and have a pie supper.' We didn't know that was the law. We didn't know a tribal resolution was law. When we enrolled someone, we didn't know we were behaving lawfully. We knew we had to follow the constitution. We thought the constitution was the only law we had and if it wasn't in there it didn't exist. If it wasn't in the book, in the constitution book, it didn't exist. How we enforced law. We didn't have police. The BIA had police but we didn't have police. We didn't know you could have police. We didn't have a judge for sure. The CFR courts hadn't even been invented.

In CFR, the Court of Federal Regulations, that didn't really start happening until about 1981, '80, in Oklahoma. Can we make white people obey our laws? Can white people come onto our land and shoot game? Can white people lay a pipeline right across our land and not tell us or get permission? Can they run cattle on these allotments which they were doing. Can they produce oil off of those allotments and not pay us? All of those things, we didn't know how to do that. Does the BIA, whose law...do we have any impact on the BIA, do they have to do what we say? Does the State of Oklahoma? And if we have laws is there a Bill of Rights? Can we pass a law that says that my political opponent needs to be put in jail for being a fool and is there an appeal? And worse yet, the big scary one, the word, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the one word nobody wanted to use was can we levy taxes? Whoo hoo hoo. Taxes.

Citizenship. We knew we could amend our constitution because they told us that the only way we were going to get this payment from the 1948 Indian Claims Commission, the 80 percent of the settlement that had been tied up since 1948, in 1969 is we had to have a tribal roll and the BIA told us that the only way you could be on the tribal roll was to prove that you were 1/8th or more Citizen Potawatomi. Now the blood degrees of the Citizen Potawatomi were derivatives of one guy from the government in a log cabin in Sugar Creek, Kansas in 1861 who was told to do a census of the Potawatomi, the Prairie Potawatomi and the Citizen Potawatomi. And he told everyone that they had to appear. And as they came in the door, he assigned a blood degree based on what color their skin was in his opinion and full brothers and sisters got different blood degrees, children got more blood degree than their parents 'cause they'd been outside that summer and those were the blood degrees of the Citizen Potawatomi. There was a full-time, five-person staff at the central office of the BIA in Washington, DC, who did nothing more than Citizen Potawatomi blood-degree appeals, about 3,000 of the blood-degree appeals when I first took office. When I became chairman, it had grown to 4,000 or 5,000 and I was in the room when a guy named Joe Delaware said, ‘I have a solution to the Potawatomi blood degree problem. We'll resolve all this. The first mention in any document, church, federal government, anywhere, anyhow that mentions this Indian with a non-Potawatomi language name, he's a half.' Well, they were dunking Potawatomis and giving them Christian names in 1702, full-blooded ones. If you were dealing with the white man, you used your white name and if you were dealing with the Indians you used your Indian name, like everybody else was doing. And so it was an absurd solution. I told him, I said, ‘That's nuts. That's just crazy. You're going to get another 5,000 blood-degree appeals over this.' He said, ‘Well, that's the way it's going to be.' Well, that was the impetus for our coming back and establishing, ‘What are the conditions of citizenship?' And we stopped called our folks members like a club. They're citizens. And it finally dawned on us that being a Citizen Potawatomi Indian is not racial. It's legal and political. If they...according to the United States government, if a federally recognized Indian tribe issues you a certificate of citizenship based on rules they make, you are an American Indian, you are a member of that tribe. And you're not part one, not a leg or an ear or your nose but not the rest. You're not part Citizen Potawatomi, you're all Citizen Potawatomi. The business of blood degree was invented so that at some point that the government established tribes would breed themselves out of existence and the government wouldn't be obligated to honor their treaties anymore. That's the whole idea. That's the whole idea of blood degree and we're playing into it all over this country, now over divvying up the gaming money. But I'm not going to get into that. But the business of blood degree, the 10 largest tribes in the United States, nine of them enrolled by descendency and that includes us. We changed it from blood degree to descendency, which was the only reasonable way to do it because we had no way to tell because of this guy in the log cabin in Sugar Creek was what we had. And then we had permutations of that over the next eight generations that became even more absurd and Potawatomis had a propensity...we're only 40 families and all 31,000 of us had a tendency to marry each other. So when one Potawatomi would marry another Potawatomi, I'm not saying brothers and sisters or first cousins but when they'd marry another Potawatomi then you got into who was what and it was... And this business of the certified degree of Indian blood was ruled to be unlawful, to discriminate against American Indians in the provision of federal services based on CDIB. It's supposed to be based on tribal membership, not the BIA issuing you a certified degree of Indian blood card. A full-blooded Indian who is a member of eight different tribes, whose family comes from eight different tribes, not any white blood, would not be eligible to be enrolled in many tribes. They had absolutely no European blood, would not be eligible simply because he was enrolled in multiple tribes.

The other thing about citizenship is ‘where do we vote?' The only way you could vote in an election at Citizen Potawatomi was to show up at that stupid meeting, violent meeting, and the guys that were in office would say, ‘Okay, everybody that's for me stand up.' Well, nobody could count that was on the other side so everybody would kind of creep up a little bit so you could count. Well, they counted you 'cause you creeped up a little bit so you voted against yourself. So the incumbent would say, ‘Okay, everybody that's for this guy stand up. I won.' Well, that's not how to elect people. That's not right. Two-thirds of our population lives outside of Oklahoma, one-third of it lives in Oklahoma. Those people are as entitled to vote as anybody in the tribe, so the extension of the right to vote and how we vote and whom we vote [for] and what the qualifications of those people and the residency requirements of those, that was an issue of citizenship that we needed to determine.

So we went through a series of constitutional amendments. We redefined the general council as everyone in the tribe over 18, is the general council and that is the electorate, that's who decides all issues subject to referendum vote. Everyone in the tribe can vote by absentee ballot if they register to vote in an election. We established tribal courts that are independently elected just like the chairman and vice chairman and the members of the tribal legis...and secretary treasurer and the members of the tribal legislature and that the tribal courts have authority over all issues relating to law enforcement. We adopted a set of tribal statutes and we used the ability under the Indian Reorganization Act that we recede the authorities of the IRA in our new constitution to have a tribal corporation in addition to the tribal government, two separate entities. An incorporated entity and the sovereign entity is the Citizen Potawatomi Nation government. Next amendment was to change the name to the Citizen Potawatomi Nation from the Citizen Band Potawatomi. ‘Cause back then when you had Citizen Band, people would say, ‘What's your handle good buddy? 10-4. What's your 20?' Remember all that stuff that went on back in the day with the Citizen Band radios? Or what instrument do you play in the Citizen Band? That was the other one I used to get all the time. We changed our name and we went to descendency citizenship and we enrolled everyone that needed to be enrolled if they were descendents of the original families, 41 families that made up the tribe in 1861.

I issued an executive order that we would hold council meetings in every area, city or metropolitan area with more than 2,000 members of the tribe. And so we began a series of meetings in 1986 in Houston, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Kansas City or Topeka area, Kansas City/Topeka area, Portland, Oregon, alternating with the Seattle/Tacoma, northern California -- the prune-pricker Potawatomis. We met in Sacramento, in southern California -- the oil field Potawatomis. We met in Los Angeles or somewhere, Bakersfield or somewhere down there. And we met in Phoenix, Arizona, for the rich Potawatomis. But we started having these meetings and we started going to hotel rooms and ballrooms like this one and buying a meal ‘cause we had a little money coming in from bingo and selling cigarettes and we started having these meetings and we found out something, that if you have a meeting and you feed Potawatomis, they won't fight with you. So as soon as I started serving food at the general council back home, never another cross word, never had another fight, never any issues of that.

But the revision of 2007...in 1985 was the big one. I almost...I'm out of time. We separated the branches of government with a true separation. There is an executive branch, a legislative branch and a judicial branch. We now have 16 members of the tribal legislature, eight from Oklahoma and eight from outside of Oklahoma. While it's a one-third/two-thirds population, the way we balanced that is that of the eight from Oklahoma three, the chairman, vice chairman and secretary/treasurer, are elected by everyone in the whole United States. So there is a nod or an impetus or balance given to the population outside. The fact that our jurisdiction, that the area over which we govern, our revenue, is all based in Oklahoma on the reservation is recognized by the fact you have to be from Oklahoma to be chairman or vice chairman or secretary/treasurer. Legislative districts. The whole United States is represented. We eliminated the grievance committee. The grievance committee existed because we didn't have a tribal court and the grievance committee created grievances. We had staggered terms of four office...for four-year terms of office, staggered terms of office. The old two-year terms of office where we turned over the majority of the government every 24 months, crazy. The legislature has total appropriation control of the money. But the legislature can't even answer the phone. It speaks and acts by resolution and ordinance only. They can't run the government ‘cause they can't even answer the phone. The legislature speaks and acts by resolution or ordinance. They appropriate the monies for a specific purpose, but the executive branch spends it and runs the tribe. I have a veto, I have 10 votes out of 16 not counting mine so 10 votes out of 15. And the BIA no longer has to approve our constitutional changes. Each of our constitutional changes took the BIA over four years to consider.

So that's where we are, that's the old bingo hall, that's Firelight Grand Casino. It's $120 million operation, we're doing $150 million addition to it now. Everywhere in our tribe we have these symbols of corn plants. Don't eat the seed corn. We do not make per capita distributions. We fund 2,000 college scholarships a semester, we provide free prescriptions to everyone in the tribe over 62 wherever they live, we do home loans for people, we do all of those things based on need, not actual checks. We believe we're like a family. No one comes homes, sits down at the table, brings the kids and wife and sits there and says, ‘Okay, I'm going to divvy up the paycheck.' They don't do that. They pay the bills first, they address the needs of the family first, and then if there's discretionary income they decide whether to save it, invest it or spend it and that's the way we do ours. But we consider the money from gaming to be found money; it's seed corn.

We bought this bank on a gravel parking lot. It was a prefabricated structure and it was failing. We bought it from the FDIC, the first tribe in the United States to buy an operating national bank. It took the government six months to decide whether to let the bank fail and break all of the depositors or let us put a million dollars in it and save it. They finally decided to do that and now First National Bank is the largest tribally owned bank in the country. We have seven banks, seven branches and it's $250 million back from the original $14 million. If you're going into the bank business, be a little more financial healthy than we were ‘cause if the tribal chairman has to go repo boats and cars at night, that's an ugly business. That's no fun. We had a repo guy named One Punch Willie and boy, he was a tough...he could steal a car in 30 seconds and I went with Willie out...Willie Highshaw, went out on the lake with Willie Highshaw, a great guy. We went out and repoed cars at night when people wouldn't pay us.

These are our businesses. We have a $50 million-a-year grocery business; we have a wholesale grocery business. We have Redi-Mix Concrete. We have a number of enterprises of 2,040 employees. These are our government services. We operate the largest rural water district in the area. We are retrofitting all of our facilities to geothermal, ground source heat pumped geothermal with our own business.

This is my advice: press on. Three steps, two steps back is still one step forward so just stay at it. I've been at it a really long time. I love what I do. I'd do it if they didn't pay me. The first 11 years, by the way, they didn't pay me. But plan. And once you get plans, decide. Even if you decide wrong, it sets in motion the mechanics to get something done. But indecision just locks you up. Fix your constitution. Don't try to patch around it. We did it for years. Fix the constitution. If you have problems with not getting process at your tribe and it's because of the structure or because of something that is happening with the government that isn't fair or right or honest, fix the constitution. If you're not in the constitution-fixing business, you're not in economic development, you're not in self-governance, you're not a sovereign. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Rick Hill: Sovereignty Today

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Former Oneida Nation Business Committee Chairman Rick Hill offers his perspectives on sovereignty today through the lens of the challenges facing his nation and the strategies theyr employing to achieve their nation-building goals. 

People
Resource Type
Citation

Hill, Rick. "Sovereignty Today." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Presentation.

"Well, good afternoon to you all. I'm glad you're still awake here. This kind of reminds me of the Mo [Morris] Udall statement, 'Everything's been said, but not said by everyone.' So, here we are. I think if you get a copy of this book, it has a great explanation about the Oneida Farms and it's very well written. It's basically my speech, so you guys can read that on your own time and I will do some other things here.

I really enjoyed the humor today. It kind of kept me awake. The teepee creeper story, the other lady that was, the co-mingling thing here, and I say, 'More warriors, more warriors, more warriors.' So I thought that was good -- that we're a dying race of people. And I liked the other thing that our friend, Manley, said about being at Harvard. Indians gathering at Harvard, we should all run. Manley, I enjoyed that, I thought that was good and I'll borrow that. And then when I walked in I seen the commander. I was like, 'who in the hell's the commander? What's this about?' So then I walked through the halls here and I see it's George Washington and he's the commander. And so it made me think about what my elders taught me about the history.

Basically -- and Oren [Lyons] knows this story better than I do -- but they know that Oneidas gave George Washington and the Continental Army -- we were the first allies of George Washington. And a lot of us went to Canada, decided not to be in the war, and others stuck around and were the first allies of George Washington, if you didn't know that. And fed his army at Valley Forge [because] the colonists couldn't afford to give them their little bit of food that they had. So it was a matter of survival. And so the Oneidas brought 500 bushels of corn, as the story goes. And they taught them how to make cornbread and corn soup, [because] those guys were just gobbling it up when they received it and their stomachs swelled up -- they were just looking for something to eat. And so that was the staple that was the turning point in the war. Otherwise, we'd all be speaking French. That would really be the case. But somehow those chapters are left out of our American history, and that whole big chapter about genocide that happens to be missing in the curriculum, [because] actually, it was to start out to wipe us all out, right? That was the whole thing. It went from our people, to the buffalo, to whatever staple we had to build our economies, to feed our people, was to the first issuing of the small pox blanket, was the first form of chemical genocide, right?

That was all strategically done. We started out in the War Department [because] they were trying to kill us all off and figure ways to do that: exterminate us. And then we ended up in the Interior Department -- no coincidence there, right, because it was about the land, and then it's about all the resources. And then the history goes on about the policy. So that's what we're up against, in terms of our communities, when we exercise sovereignty. We were always running against the grain relative to those policies. So I used to do the gaming speech and I always went back to like, we've been reduced to gaming. We owned all this territory and all these resources. They had the weapons -- that was the whole thing. They had superior weaponry. It was our families against military force. And so here we fast forward to gaming and the dollars that gaming gives us for economic development that allow us to do a lot of the things that we can do today. So that's based on demographics and hopefully the other Indian communities and nations will have some form of economic development, less a tax base, to run your governments. So I always like when we can all get together, because it's sharing ideas and sharing resources and getting new ideas to bring home to advance your community and to protect your inherent sovereignty and all that. So that takes a lot of infrastructure to do all that kind of stuff. So I wanted to put that out there.

The other thing that I came here is, I was like, 'Wow, I'm in Boston.' And then I thought about our senator friend Kennedy who just passed on, Ted Kennedy. And several years ago, I had the opportunity to meet the Senator. And so we flew here and then we went to a reception where all the other mucky mucks here and we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited. So he worked the whole room and then he finally came over to say hello to us and we were all happy that it was our time. And then he started telling a story about Bobby Kennedy. Their family always wanted to help the less fortunate or the different races of people and they have a legacy of that. And so he just shared the story about how him and Bobby had a conversation one day and he actually asked him to help the Indian folks out. And so I guess some history would speak to that, I don't really know that in detail, but Indian education and health reform and all these other things and he had a hand in it and he had us in mind to pass some of those kind of things. I thought that was kind of an interesting moment for me personally. And then later on to meet his son Patrick, I think that's a good thing. I think Patrick's a solid guy and I feel for the family and all that stuff.

But there's always the Kennedy jokes, right, the Kennedy stuff. Like, a guy will walk into a bar, a regular old guy will walk into a bar and see a woman sitting on a stool and say, 'Why?' Then Ted Kennedy walks into a bar and sees a woman sitting on a stool and he says, 'Why not?' Or it was so quiet in the room you could hear a Kennedy's pants drop. I always like that one, yeah. So we'll save the late show for later. I have to get the mood of the crowd here. Oh, wait one more. I can't escape this. How about, John Kennedy should be in heaven because any man that would share Marilyn Monroe with his brother Bobby should be in heaven. So there, I had to get that off my chest.

There's a legacy there and who's going to take this spot? Who's going to fill this void up on Capitol Hill? So everybody will be vetting for this new senator position, but who's going to lay on the tracks for the Indians? So we have to go and develop and educate. And my buddy Tim Wapato -- he's passed on -- he says, 'When we educate white folks, it's a lifetime commitment. And then it's your kid's lifetime commitment.' And that's what we're up against. [Because] if they don't live next door to Indians or have these disputes with our communities -- these local units of government and county governments and state governments -- they don't have an idea, but yet they're going to vote on major pieces of legislation -- the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act or education act comes up, or you want to resolve your land claims, that kind of stuff. That's all. We need to develop friends and new friends and it's a continuous process.

So I see Oren -- and I think about land claims a lot of times when I see Oren. And the Haudenosaunee had a certain position, we had our position on land claims but yet, there was over 27 million acres of land. And that conversation, after 200 years is still occurring. So in terms of exercising sovereignty we're still in that conversation. Who knows how it's going to come out, but yet that's still pending after 200 years. So for us to have the staying power to stay in these conversations is important as we develop our communities and our educational systems, and teaching about sovereignty and the importance of inherent sovereignty, that this fight goes on and on and on and on and on.

My traditional chief told me -- when I was recruited to run for chairman last, I was in office a year, we have three-year terms. So I started when I was 23, I'm 56 now. So I've seen different leaders through time. I was happy to see my father Norbert, Purcell Powless, Roger Jourdain, Wendell Chino, Oren and a lot of folks. I was really blessed with seeing how these guys protect sovereignty and the fire and brimstone routine that Chairman Chino used to represent. It was all about sovereignty and his territory and 'you'd be damned if you do something in my territory, over my dead body,' it was like that. And now I think I kind of feel like that's kind of missing. I don't feel the fire in people's belly anymore. I feel a little bit here when I hear some of the speakers, but I don't oftentimes feel it.

And then as I go back home, we have 16,000 members, we have 3,000 employees, and we have a large general tribal council, which is the ultimate body. And so with that -- $100 a meeting for our members to come to the meeting -- we get anywhere from 1,500 to over 2,000 people at a meeting, but they all left because of relocation programs and survival reasons. So like a generation and a half, they're back home, so to speak. And so when they drive up, the infrastructure's there, the casino's there, the bank's there, the industrial park's there, all these kinds of things are there. So they didn't have any sweat equity into building this, so they have a different mindset about what that's all about.

But I have a fond appreciation, [because] when we had our debate about the per capita issue more recently, they were going to issue, they emptied the coffers at one time -- like you said, the other council -- but the other general tribal council took the position that they were going to pay themselves first. And so they emptied about $89 million out of the coffers that took us generations to build. And then more recently, we had a conversation [because] there was another petition for another $160 million for our 16,000 members. And so I asked if they would suspend the rules. And so as the meeting went on, they eventually suspended the rules. We had great testimony then [because] they knew -- when we talked early on at this conference here about traditional values and way of discussing and consensus building, that's what we ended up doing. So we had a lot of testimony about [that] land was important, health care was important, educational resources are important and all these kinds of things were more important than the dollars as an individual member. So it was nation first and then let's talk about, 'Can we afford the per capita later on?'

And so that was important in terms of – [Because] in 1934 we went through, you guys understand the Allotment Act. And we lost most of our land and we went down to a few hundred acres. And with the advent of gaming we were able to buy land back, and tobacco sales, we were able to buy a lot of our land back. So that builds more the foundation of what we do in the community and the institutions we put into our community. The importance of nation building, to get everybody on the same page in terms of the allocation of resources for certain priorities for the nation, and that's the challenge that we have now. What does that look like? What are the priorities? There's only so many resources. And how do you allocate them on priorities?

So when I got into the office a year ago or so, we had a 100-day plan, and it evolved to the 200-day plan, [because] there was so much to vet, in terms of what we're going to do. So we established three standing committees on quality of life and economic development, commerce and land development. I think was another subcommittee. So I think we got a way to funnel our issues in and they're vetted and then they're brought as recommendations to the committee later on. So we've been able to at least go in that direction.

The other thing I think it's important to mention, at least I think it is, is about what Oren kind of alluded to early on in his open remarks. And there's an urgency about all this subject matter we're talking about here. There is an urgency to get things in place and to find the best talent to protect your inherent sovereignty. And a lot of it is related to the climate changes and stuff like that, and then it relates back to health of the community. And I think on the climate change issue, I don't know who this group of people is, but I heard about a group of elders and medicine people one time who were discussing that. And we need to demand to get into that conversation [because] they probably can help position us with that message and how we should prepare for that time. And then I look at our farm thing and I was thinking about that too. And our farm is to have more of a traditional way of agriculture. And then you look at, I go to my health center, and if you want to campaign, you'll see everybody at the health center. We have a huge health center, but you'll see everybody there, right? We've got heart issues, diabetic issues, we're a sick people. We are. And the only cure for that is really, good eating and a healthier lifestyle. The other subgroup we have is called the Quality of Life, so we're trying to look at the quality of life for our people. Although we have this great farm, not everybody uses the farm [because] it's a lot easier going to Walmart to pick up your frozen food, right? So to me it's about, food is the medicine, the fresher the better. And if we can, like I said, the farmers' market should be right next to the health center. So people can get their medicine or more traditional forms of medicine should be in the health center. So these kinds of things, we've got to breath more healthier lifestyle into our people and if you have strong individuals then you've got stronger families then you've got a stronger community and those kinds of things. So I think in terms of what the message Oren was talking about -- the climate and the health of the people in the community -- it starts on the ground. And we need to really make a bigger push urgently to try to get that done. I think that's an important thing to advance here.

I had a lot of other Kennedy jokes to share with you. However, my time is limited and they're really for late night. The other thing that we're doing, we know we don't have resources to do the things, [because] we don't have tax bases as governments, so we're in the process of really working with our corporations to try to monetize what we're doing within our corporations. And then some of you asked me a question about the silos in the communities, and we're bringing groups together to break down the silos and collaborate to really have a stronger more vibrant economy. And more recently we started businesses in the environmental arena, and it does environmental engineering, construction and management services. We were able to buy a golf course that was bankrupt and to expand our hospitality business, to go along with our casino and other things we do well. We're looking at the biomass projects, and [I] was happy to work with Chief [James] Gray here [because] he's the present Chief of the Consortium of Renewable Energy Nations. So I wanted to put that out there. If you're interested in that, we can get you information. By us coming together to define the organization and to address the federal legislation on citing and permitting, and get some of these federal citing and permitting issues, impediments lifted, have some kind of one-stop-shopping thing. Because on the investment side, we've got to be competitive with the commercial side -- no one's going to invest in our renewable energy projects. So we've got to work hard on that legislative piece and we all need to come together to help do that.

One last thing is our committee decided to address Public Law 280 and retrocede [jurisdiction] from the State of Wisconsin. And that happened when I was 23. Now they're going to revisit that folder and try to build a plan to move towards that. And I think that's a good thing in terms of what are we doing to address sovereign issues and exercising our own sovereignty. So that's really important that we get all of our infrastructure. So we're really looking at our judicial system and giving them more authority and more power and those kinds of things. The other thing that's kind of a thorn in their side and John -- [I] was happy to see John after many years -- after the gaming wars, to come to our community and talk about these anti-Indian groups that are rearing their ugly heads again. We should all be aware of that. I think up north in northern Wisconsin there's actually billboards from the...from the fishing wars to more sophisticated ways of campaigning to change federal Indian law and Indian policy. They're more sophisticated in their messaging and their networking. They have more expertise to try to disrupt Indian tribal governments, as we want to exercise our sovereignty. So they don't like land into trust. They don't like you to have jurisdiction. And all these battles go on, so we need to all pull together.

In Wisconsin, we're working with the 11 nations there to organize and do something that John has done in the past, that have proven to be successful, some public service announcements regarding our communities and what we're capable of and what we can do. But we need to be aware of that, because that's just an ongoing battle. I guess they figured they job ain't done. They didn't exterminate us yet, so they're going to figure to try to change Indian federal law and policy to thwart our governing authorities, our inherent rights. So be aware of that, if you haven't noticed it. But that's something that will affect all of us -- if they can change Indian federal law and policy, that's going to affect all of our communities. So they'll be trying to find a court case that they can advance and the courts. My dad always told me, 'It's really hard for an Indian to get a fair trial on a court that sits on stolen land.' So there's enough case law to support that theory my dad was trying to teach me when I was much younger. You can't get a fair trial in a court that sits on stolen land.

So we need to be careful about when they think it's a controversy and they want to raise it up to the area and raise it higher. We got a case that was about condemnation in our community and we thought we had the set of facts on our side. And we usually do when we want to advance something, and only to have Judge Griesbach look the other way and be political and say they could condemn our fee land. So we stopped there [because] it affects us, but we couldn't advance that [because] then it'll affect everybody else, right? So even when you've got the facts on your side, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get a fair day, so be conscious of that as we get challenged by these rednecks to get us into a court situation. As Charlie would say, 'You should never judge a man by the color of his neck.'

All right, so I guess these remarks didn't do me any good today, but I wanted to put that energy out there and hopefully get your attention on some things here. And I appreciate the good work of my niece here, Megan Hill, and all of your good work. Don't take no prisoners, and don't become one. Thank you."

Patricia Ninham-Hoeft: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (2009)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Oneida Nation Business Committee Secretary Patricia Ninham-Hoeft reflects on her role as a leader for the Oneida Nation and offers advice for newly elected leaders.

Resource Type
Citation

Ninham-Hoeft, Patricia. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2009. Presentation. 

"Thank you. And I want to reiterate what Mike [Mitchell] had said too. Welcome and congratulations to many of you who are new leaders and many of you who are continuing on in that position. I am the Tribal Secretary for the Oneida Business Committee in Wisconsin. We're located about eight miles west of Green Bay. The reservation is overlapped with several competing municipalities, two different counties, I think five municipalities. And our kids, we have our own tribal school but yet we still have five different public schools, districts that divide up the reservation.

As I said, I'm serving my second term. I was first elected to the tribal secretary position in 2005 and was recently elected seven months ago to a second term. And it's that second term that really poses some new challenges for me. Mike, before we had talked, Mike had reminded me when he first met me I was here at this event and talking about my experience and I was a very frustrated person, very frustrated council person. And it's funny that after the new elections, our new chairman Rick Hill was looking at the photographs that the council that I was on when I first got elected, looking at those photographs and he saw mine. And I looked very different three years ago than I did today. And he laughs and he says, "˜What is this, your high school picture?' It's because in those three years the work was very demanding. And the role was a very big burden that I'm not complaining about but just, and I know you all know that, that it's a big responsibility.

I always wanted to be the tribal secretary, or on the business committee. I always wanted to be on the business committee since I was a kid. And it's because of my mother, Sandy Ninham. And my mom as a young woman started working in her community, she was working in the tribe's civic center in their recreation, youth recreation program. And she and another woman, during that time, liked to play bingo at the local VFWs. And the civic center was having trouble getting its utility bills paid. So she and Elma Webster started their own bingo game in the gymnasium. That was in 1975-76. And today it grew into the Oneida casino, which now employs 3,000 people, 1,500 of those at the casino and 1,500 staffing different programs and services for our community. And it's my mom's can-do spirit, her entrepreneurial spirit that has always been my guide. And always in our house, either at my mom's kitchen table or her mom's kitchen table, relatives always gathered there to talk about and complain about what the tribe was and wasn't doing. So that's the story about why I'm here today.

Serving my second term as a tribal secretary comes after three years of being really frustrated. And I think this last seven months I've calmed things down and have learned a bit about how to be more effective. And that's sort of the basis for my story today is how to become more effective. Well, I'm going to talk to you about some of the things that I was surprised about when I got elected and then talk about some of the skills and maybe experiences that are helpful to someone if you're going to serve on the tribal council, some regrets or things that I wish I would have done differently, and then I'll end with some tips of things I've learned the hard way.

So getting elected, there were some surprises. One was, once I got elected it was the feeling of fear that I had, which caused me to be paralyzed at times and resulted in -- and I think a lot of the people, we have nine people on the business committee and I just wonder if they all had the same feelings -- because many times we'd have group think. And I don't have a good explanation for it now, but it's one thing that if you are working on a committee to know what it is and to know how to prevent it. Because oftentimes you're faced and confronted with many problems and you end up looking at each other not saying anything, no one's saying anything, and everybody wondering who's supposed to do something.

The other surprise I had was just learning how to become confident. That you sort of have that new honeymoon period of three to six months in your position, and you feel awkward and new, and you're trying to live up to that perception that everybody wants you to do something, but it's in that period where if you can relax and allow yourself to find your voice, but it's normal.

I've learned that you can't make promises. That no matter how small it is, do not promise anyone anything. Promise that you'll get their issue heard, promise that you'll present their request someplace, but don't guarantee that you're going to solve it. That's also advice from my mom who, my mom went on and served on the tribal council for three terms for nine years.

One of the things I also was surprised about is the amount of meetings you attend per day and night. And the meetings are important. You have to know the different kinds of meetings. You have informational meetings, meetings where you make decisions, meetings where you just, it's team building, but you have to come to those meetings and you have to come prepared.

Resistance was a big surprise for me when I got elected, because I thought once you got on the business committee that automatically everyone would embrace your ideas but that doesn't happen at all. You have to earn it from your managers and you have to earn it from your peers, especially. And it takes work and it takes a lot of time.

High expectations is another surprise and that one I get and I've gotten from myself: high expectations from my myself, from my peers, my friends and my own experience. High expectations, it's like the constituents, they think you can fix anything or they think that the business committee is responsible for solving all their problems. And you oftentimes disappoint people by what you did or by what you didn't do. The great story I use for myself is with my mom when she was on the council, and oftentimes she'd come home and want to vent or complain or have someone to talk to about maybe an issue she and the council were struggling with, but yet she didn't come home to a supportive daughter. She came home to a daughter who was criticizing my mom and telling her what she should have done and as a result she came home but she didn't talk to me anymore. And so now as I'm going through that experience and having it happen to me by my friends who pushed me to run, "˜We'll be right there for you, Patty.' And when I failed to do something right or failed to do what they thought I should do, they weren't there. And we're just recovering from that, my friends, we're just talking about that. And so it's important that you find somebody who's going to be there for you regardless of what you do, you need that person. And then to be easy on yourself, because oftentimes you're the biggest critic and then also, with your peers on your council 'cause they're probably feeling the same thing and they don't need their peer to be hounding them.

Skills and experience: before I got elected I wish I was better at conflict resolution as a skill. And the biggest thing about conflict resolution is how to avoid it in the first place, how to have the skills that you listen first, have the discipline to not react, have the respect to see all sides, know it first. And then if you are in conflict -- and I think Mike gave some really great examples of all that -- is work hard to find ways to resolve it and never give up in trying to find that common ground. Because I think with politics people forget that politics is about dealing with conflicts but using words to do it instead of violence and guns. And so you are in the business as a political leader to work on conflict.

Know the difference between governing and managing. Oftentimes, at least in Oneida, I see people crossing the lines in day-to-day business. Oftentimes, I see the elected officials getting involved in the day-to-day business. And I think it's because you don't know the difference between the questions of what to do and how to do it. And as an elected official your responsible for, I feel like I'm responsible to decide with my committee what gets done, what are we going to do, what are we going to accomplish, and then being able to articulate that so that your managers then can figure out how to achieve it. But that one question is hard and I think it stems in vision and strategy. And it's hard on a day-to-day basis to think about strategy. It's not sexy. It's easy to talk about, "˜Well, let's have a PR [public relations] campaign, and let's write five articles, and let's build a hospital, let's have an oxygen chamber for diabetes.' Those are all tactical kinds of things and our job is to focus on, 'What is our community going to be in 25 years or 100 years? Who are we?' And oftentimes too you'll hear managers accuse you of, at least I have, of being involved in day-to-day. And that's usually a red flag for me that either I am interfering and messing up my role or that they want to keep me out. And so that's where governing comes in that you have to know that you're responsible for governing, which means setting the direction and the vision but don't forget you have to oversee things. Oversight is especially important, that you have to make sure that your managers are doing what they said they were going to do, that the money that they got budgeted to them, that they're spending it the way they're supposed to spend it.

And then know what success looks like because you'll be given balance sheets, you'll be given financial reports, you'll be given reports to look at and you have to know what success looks like. The financial area is a big thing that I recommend everyone, if you're on a tribal council that you have to know the difference between a budget and a fiscal responsibility role. Budgeting is about spending. You start, you make a prediction about how much you're going to spend in a year to accomplish a certain number of things and you watch that, just like you would your own checkbook at home. But it's the balance sheet; it's the income statement that you get that is intimidating. So find, maybe there's somebody in your community who's a CFO of some local business or a non-profit and reach out to that person for advice.

Relationships is important, especially in a community like mine where we have all these different competing municipalities around us, that we have good relationships with various people in the community there. Also having relationships within your own tribe, be involved as best you can and within your own committee, that the relationships that you have with each other are important. That yeah, you're going to disagree and you're going to vehemently disagree, but in the end you still have to be kind to each other because you live with these people. For me, I've grown up with the people I serve with. They've either been older people who served as my mentor or we went to the same high school and college together.

And know the rules of your tribe, know your constitution, know your treaties, know the rules that your committee uses to operate and know the rules of the municipalities that are around you. Facilitating is another good skill to have and then also as I said earlier, knowing how to work as a body because for me, I'm one of nine members that serve on the committee. I don't have any authority as an individual. That authority only comes when we convene as a group and as a body.

And then finally look around, make sure you're always learning and look around the world. There's some great books out there about what other nations, what other Indigenous communities are doing to grow their communities. And look at that because I often hear the expression "˜power likes a vacuum' and you can see that, but "˜ignorance creates the vacuum.' And that's a phrase I just learned from a book about the cultural impact on development and prosperity in developing countries. Ignorance creates a vacuum. And I see that a lot when you're with people and they're not learning and they're not reaching out looking for new ideas and they're stuck in a mindset that doesn't work today.

Things I wish I had done differently: I wish I had held my tongue and controlled my emotions. There's a difference between being passionate and angry. And there's a difference between being persuasive and argumentative. And you just don't talk behind someone's back because you're trying to win people over to your ideas and they're not going to listen to you if you act with disrespect.

I have a great experience. When I first got elected there was a person on the council and I hadn't even started my first day. I was so full of energy and I was going to change things and do things differently and I just, I yelled and screamed in this meeting with her. And I still have not forgiven myself for that experience yet. I think she has of me, but if you can avoid having that happen to you, hold your tongue and control your emotions. It takes a lot of discipline, but it'll benefit you in the long run.

The other thing I regret, I wish I would have done differently is taking a public stance on per capita in my community. In 2008 last year we had a general tribal council meeting. And I don't know how many are organized the way Oneida is, but we have the IRA constitution, we have a general type of council that convenes. Everyone 21 and older, regardless of where they live, when they convene, it takes 50 people to sign a petition and then you have to call a meeting and a minimum of 75 have to show up for that meeting. Well, I could see this coming, many of us did see this coming that when the business committee became or wasn't dealing with the right problems, factions got very powerful. And so we had a petition for a per capita payment of $5,000 to people who were, I forget what the age, 55 and younger would get a one-time $5,000 payment and then everyone older would get $10,000. And more than 800 people came out for that GTC meeting and it passed. And all of the debate leading up to it, no one, I don't think any one person really stood up against that idea. And I was on the council at the time and sat back and let it happen. And I look back and I try to examine why I did that. And I know one of the reasons why I think it was fear. I was afraid to stand up. I was afraid to stand up against a popular interest. It's important when you have your family and your friends who are going to support you, that's when they're important and necessary [because] then they'll help you; so you're not alone, so you can do what's right.

And then wisdom to share: some tips. It's be dependable, be consistent, be transparent, accessible and prepared. That's how you gain trust. Right now in Oneida, we have this fantastic blogger who is very critical of the business committee and tribal government. And they're always talking about, "˜That business committee is corrupt, it's the good old boy system and the good old girl system, and they're secretive.' We're always getting those accusations and in fact, and daily. So the internet has been a good thing while bringing openness but it goes both ways. You get that feedback right away. But as long as you're dependable, consistent, transparent, accessible and prepared, you may not have to worry too much about that.

Know that you can't do it by yourself -- especially if you're on a committee, as in my case -- that you've got to change their minds too and being persuasive is the key, not attacking them; and knowing that to get your idea across, it takes time -- it may not happen the first meeting or the second or the tenth, but eventually it does happen, you can see. And you can't do it all at once, plant seeds -- and I've learned to be very excited about small changes, seeing that incremental change. And then embrace resistance -- you'll get a lot of resistance but embrace it, don't run away from it and don't be afraid of it: use it. Learn what they're saying, why are they resisting it, use it to help fashion your idea and make your idea better because -- like Mike said -- it's about building community and it's about building a people. And for me, it's about building a place where my kids are going to want to come back to and invest their lives and their grandchildren's lives forever and ever. So, good luck." 

Deron Marquez: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Chairman Deron Marquez reflects on his experience as the chief executive of his nation, from his unexpected return to the reservation to building a sustainable economy essentially from scratch.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Marquez, Deron. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2009. Presentation.

"Should I stand up now, take a...thank you, thank you. [Because] as a tribal leader, or in this case former, we never got applauses. We always got yelled at, screamed at, told how we're doing everything wrong, so every applause I get I take and go, 'Thank you.' [Because] you didn't know my council. When I was first asked to present here today I jokingly sent back to, I can't remember who it was now, a while ago, the question was, ‘What I wish I knew before taking office,' and I said, 'Tylenol, and how many Tylenols I can take at one time.' Because before I realized what I was getting myself into, it was...Tylenol became my best friend right behind tequila. I think for us...how many of you here are from California? One. Two. Three. Oh, okay, good. Four. Well, California is unique in their situation because its reservations are quite different, as we heard this morning about other reservations being discussed with these very large populations and very large land bases. My tribe, which was established in 1891 by executive order, is a very, very small tribe with roughly 641 acres, roughly one square mile, situated on the side of a hill with about 20 acres of useable land. So we don't have a lot of land to use. It always represents a unique situation when it comes to economic development for our people. With that being said, I was asked to talk about when I first came into the office. What was my expectations, what was it like, what was I doing?

Ironically enough, I came into office in 1999. And at the time I had just returned from a little short stint in Washington, D.C. as part of the Udall group. And so I had my internship in D.C. I returned back from D.C. My family just moved down from San Francisco where I was doing some graduate work. And I was actually sitting in my Ph.D. program, in one of my classes, when my phone started ringing. Now I have two younger kids. So my first thought was something's wrong with my children. So I pick up the phone and it's my mom who just told me that our chair and vice chair just resigned and they're wondering if I would be interested in finishing out the term, which would end in March 2000. Well, to me that was very interesting. And I say that because for myself, I was 29 years old at that time and I never ever lived on the reservation. I used to work there for about a year. In fact, when I left Arizona and went back home for a year because they asked me to come back to work, it got so political that my wife and I left. And probably true and you've heard these stories before, returning back home with an education was I thought a good thing, but at every step of the way my education kept getting thrown in my face. So I basically said, ‘The hell with this,' packed up my family and we left to San Francisco. I went to grad school.

And so now when I come back home, out of the blue, there's this request from a group within the tribe who wants to know if I'll be willing to run for the highest office we have. So it was very confusing to me at that time, especially...like I said, my mother, in 1965 or around there, left the reservation as well. And she didn't return back to the reservation for 30 some years. And she did this on purpose [because] she wanted myself and my two brothers to grow up off the reservation and not grow up on the reservation. People always said, ‘You're lucky not to grow up on the reservation.' I don't know; I grew up in Fontana. For those of you here from Fontana, go watch an old episode of COPS and you'll see Cherry Boulevard and Valley. And about a block-and-a-half away is where I grew up. And so it wasn't that much better. But for my mother, her desire was to have us grow up off the reservation and so we did. And so when this request came in, I was just really confused why they would be asking me, as I just said, who didn't grow up on the reservation, who always had my education basically thrown in my face [because] that's just kind of how it was then.

And so I went home to my wife and I asked and pondered what she thought and what we thought. And my mom obviously raised us with the expectations of never to get involved in tribal politics, find myself being asked to do what we were told never to do. And so for me, what it boiled down to...here's a group of people, regardless of how they treated me and how they thought I was or was not, a portion of them were asking me to fulfill something. And so I turned to my wife and I said, ‘How do you tell your community no? How do you stand there, in good conscience, tell four, five, six people, whomever it may be, ‘No, I don't want to do this?' So I decided to do it. And at that time, I thought it was just going to be until March 2000 and I could go back to my Ph.D. studies and be on my way on that track.

Six-and-a-half years later, I finally returned to my Ph.D. program. I took six-and-a-half years of my life and developed, I believe, a very solid core government practice, economic development practice, and an infrastructure that our tribe has never seen before. When I took office in October of '99, we had seven people working in our tribal government. It was funny [because] when I first arrived on that Monday morning after the elections to introduce myself to my staff, whom I've never met and who have never seen me, I walk into the tribal office -- at that time it was a HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development] house, it was just a HUD house converted into an office building -- and the very nice lady working as the receptionist; I walk in and she says, ‘May I help you?' I said, ‘Well, I'm here to start work.' And she thought I was a grant writer. So it was interesting enough that it was a nice introduction by way of, ‘No, I am now your boss. Nice to meet you.' The good news was there was only seven people to meet. So it didn't take very long to get my feet wet about who was doing what.

I think what was interesting, when I first went into the office -- and getting back to what I wish I would have known before I started -- was the budget process. The first thing I did as a chair was to freeze all spending because there was no budget. And I could not figure out for the life of me how can you have an operation with no budget? Well, there was a ledger with handwriting about what was being spent where, but there was no set amount. And it was basically free game for those who wanted to spend money. And I also should say that we have a gaming operation, at that time, which opened up back in 1985 -- bingo parlor, some slot machines. They too didn't have a budget, which I found very interesting. Now, when I took over and I froze those budgets, I did make a lot of people very upset because this was a new way of doing business. And they felt that I was stepping on their toes.

I think one of the things that I first realized very early in my days as a chair, is that...I obviously gained the support of my community, who elected me and again who didn't really know me but they still trusted enough in me to put me in office. And now there's a difference between being the elected leader and becoming the leader. And I had to basically encounter the established; I call it the established regime because they've been there since day one. They've actually been on the reservation a lot longer than I've been on the reservation. And so now I had to turn my attention into courting these individuals to start to believe what we were doing was the right thing to do. And what we were doing was putting in a system, a system of a formal process by which things were moved through. And as we all know with anything new comes resistance.

And so when this started to go into practice, the first reaction that a lot of these upper management individuals had from the casino operation was to run to their tribal friends, who then would come to council and start to maneuver with the council about how to get around, for example, creating budgets. Well, I didn't realize at that time how strong these ties were. And one of the first things we did after that was implement a handbook by which we sought to end or at least quash some of the interactions between the community and the employees, which didn't go over very well, but nonetheless it started to change the culture for our community. And it allowed the alliance between employee and tribal citizens to start to come more in line with the tribal community. And interesting enough, they being the directors as well as the general council themselves, started to realize and believe that a system in place is a good thing to have. And once we were able to change this culture and put into practice a system of operation, we started to see things happen.

Now in California we had this big series of gaming initiatives and battles that took place. And once we got through with those initiatives and the ability to operate, one of the first goals of my office was to move away from gaming as fast as possible. We always talk about seven generations. We talked about two generations. Our goal was to get away from gaming in the next 20 years [because] that's when our compact came up and we always believed gaming was only a fad; it's not going to be here forever. And so we started to develop economically. Now the talk this morning was about economic development. For our reservation, given the fact that we have no land, the majority of our economic activities is off reservation. One of them happens to be with the Oneida of Wisconsin and a hotel in D.C. We have hotels in Sacramento, office buildings in D.C. and in southern California. So we had no choice to move this forward, but we had no mechanism to do that, so we had to create a system by which these things can be vetted through and that meant development: hiring development people, hiring lawyers. And as we started to look at the bills through our budget process, we started to realize we're spending a lot of money on consultants. And the more we started bringing the operations in-house the faster, the better and the more crisp these policies began to form. And the community started to buy in, mostly because this wasn't a lawyer sitting in Boston or L.A. or New York; this was a lawyer sitting in our community center who is able to get yelled at just as we are able to get yelled at by the members of our community.

Long story short -- [because] I know my time's short here -- when I took office there was seven individuals working in the tribal government side; when I left my office, there were over 500 people working on the government side. And this is only because, when I came into office, public safety, our security force -- we're a Public Law 280 state so we can't have a police force -- was under the umbrella of the casino, which made no sense to me whatsoever. So we took that over. Human Resource was under the umbrella of the casino and we took that over. In fact, at one time we had five different handbooks under our government operation. And it was schizophrenic about how and what and who -- what book do you follow? So when we started to basically get these things in line with the tribal community, the tribal culture -- and once we got the tribe to buy in and see that this is going to work -- again, the community got to witness this explosion of growth.

Now one of the things that was asked about, ‘If there was something I could have done different what would that have been?' And for me, looking back at what took place, I wish we would have done things slower [because] we did explode. We did a lot of things very, very fast. And with success becomes responsibility, or comes responsibility, I should say. And unfortunately, you guys are familiar with per capita, right? I've been known to say, if you want to see the quickest death of your community, start the per capita system because nothing goes downhill faster than the per capita disbursements. Once these individuals get these monies, what do they have to work for now? It's amazing and I can share these numbers with you because they've been in newspapers. And if you haven't followed it, here is the things I could have and would have and wish I did change, was not allowing per capita to take place at the rate it did. We have now a monthly per capita payment of $100,000. You wake up every morning and you receive these funds for absolutely nothing and it drives me absolutely crazy. And I say this because, if you haven't been following the newspapers in California, if you look at what's taking place on my reservation, it's a huge problem. It's because of these monies we have individuals who are heavily involved in gang activity. Whenever you have the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobbaco and Firearms], the sheriff's department, and the FBI roll onto your reservation with tanks and raid homes and council sits back -- I'm no longer in office -- and they sit back and they say, ‘Boy, that's just two individuals. There's nothing wrong.' That's, in my opinion, a very sad statement to make.

In fact I'll share a quick story with you. The last council meeting I attended over a year ago now, I asked the question -- so we're talking about disenrollment -- I wanted these members disenrolled. I wanted them out of our reservation, off the reservation, away from our community. In fact, they should have been in jail, but they're not. They plea bargained. I think the tribe's influence was very helpful when it came down to these plea bargains. And I asked the question of one of our elected officials, I said, ‘If somebody walked into this room and started shooting people around this table,' which was our council table, ‘you're saying to me that they should not be disenrolled?' And her words back to me were, ‘Yes.' And so when you have a failure of leadership, in my opinion, as I told my mother, ‘That's no longer my community.' Now I never grew up there, I don't live there; my kids don't go there now. And so with leadership you have to be responsible for what you do. And I think in time, when this new leadership's in place and they are actively not seeking to remedy these situations, and not go out and capture these kids from our community before the gangs capture these kids from our community, that's a huge problem. And it's something that leadership needs to tackle.

Now, in closing I was asked, ‘If there was something I could share with potential leaders, what would I share?' And I think it's kind of what we already heard this morning. As a leader, you have to be a good listener; and as a listener, you have to be a good follower. Being the chair doesn't make you right. As much as we would like it to make us right, it does not make us right. And once I was able to get the buy-in from our employees who -- once they understood they can come to me and share with me, challenge me, tell me 'no,' and then from that process a superior product emerges -- that is something that I think really helped our tribe explode into something that it is today. Unfortunately, it was too much too fast and I wish I could change that, but that's neither here nor there. And my time is limited and I think I'll go ahead and leave it right there."