Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

Diane Enos: Endurance through Native Leadership

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Native Nations Institute
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Diane Enos is an Attorney, Councilwoman & Former President of Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. She has also served as Vice President of the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, Chairwoman of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association, and as a Western Area Delegate to the Tribal Justice Advisory Group, U.S. Department of Justice.

Diane draws from decades of service in tribal government, sharing key insights related to the challenges that Native peoples face in developing effective partnerships with local governments. She also discusses her path toward leading her Nation as a Native two-spirit woman.

In this interview, Diane offers her years of perspective an experience on what it means to engage and govern through Native leadership. Especially in the environment of her tribe that is constantly navigating their indigenous governance within areas of non-Native institutions and residencies.

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Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Diane Enos: Endurance through Native Leadership.” Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, January 15, 2019

Transcript available upon request. Please email: nni@email.arizona.edu

Diane Enos: Native Women in Governance

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Diane Enos, Attorney, Councilwoman & Former President of Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. In addition to her tenure with the Salt River Pima – Maricopa Indian Community, Diane has served as Vice President of the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, as Chairwoman of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association, and as a Western Area Delegate to the Tribal Justice Advisory Group, U.S. Department of Justice.

Diane draws from decades of service in tribal government, sharing key insights related to the challenges that Native peoples face in developing effective partnerships with local governments. She also discusses her path toward leading her Nation as a Native two-spirit woman.

This speech was recorded as part of the Native Women in Governance Speaker Series presented by the Native Nations Institute’s Indigenous Governance Program in collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Diane Enos: Native Women in Governance" Native Women In Governance Speaker Series. Tucson, Arizona. January 15, 2019

Transcript available upon request. Please email: nni@email.arizona.edu

Diane Enos: Building a Sustainable Economy at Salt River

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Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative interview with NNI's Ian Record, Diane Enos, President of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, discusses some of the many significant steps that Salt River has taken over the past few decades to systematically build a self-sufficient, sustainable economy.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Enos, Diane. "Building a Sustainable Economy at Salt River." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 28, 2010. Interview.

Ian Record:

Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today’s program, I’m honored to have with me President Diane Enos of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. President Enos has served in that capacity since 2006 and recently won re-election for another four years. Previous to her becoming president of her nation, she served for 16 years on the tribal council. And in terms of her other current responsibilities, she’s president of the executive board of the Intertribal Council of Arizona, and past chairwoman of Arizona Indian Gaming Association. Diane, welcome.

Diane Enos:

Welcome to you.

Ian Record:

Well, I just gave a few highlights of your very busy life and I was wondering if you could just share with us a little bit more about yourself.

Diane Enos:

Well, I am the parent of two boys, ages 6 and 7. So that is really my driving force in addition to my community. I became their guardian after their mother passed away in my family. So they are a source of life for me now. So as you can imagine, in addition to my job duties and my other responsibilities, to me that is the most important job I have right now, as a parent.

Ian Record:

So you don’t, you probably don’t sleep very much do you?

Diane Enos:

I try as much as I can [laughs], but I get up early!

Ian Record:

Yeah, I bet. Well, we’re here today to talk about economic development in Indian Country and focus specifically on what your nation, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community has been doing in that area, one of the progressive leaders across Indian Country by all accounts. But first I’d like to talk a little bit more generally about economic development and get your thoughts based upon your vast experience in this area and essentially get your, some food for thought from you that other nations and other leaders might learn from. And my first question is, how do nations move from a dependent economy, where they’re heavily reliant on the federal government, to a productive one, where they themselves are in the driver’s seat?

Diane Enos:

That movement depends on the nation itself. It depends on the resources that are available. It depends on the drive to do more than survive the colonization that we’ve all undergone. But a lot of times you have to be, as a nation you have to be willing to take calculated risks. For us, what we did in 1987 was purchase the Phoenix Cement Company with the guaranteed loan, just guaranteed by the federal government, and that enabled us not only to create jobs but to also create an enterprise that had a, it’s returned the amount of money we had to borrow many times. So, it’s an example of having to take risks.

Ian Record:

I assume coupled with that was a movement on the part of your nation to essentially build up the capacity needed to make economic development happen, both human resources and institutional resources, wasn’t it?

Diane Enos:

When you look at what’s available to you, a lot of tribes, like I said before, you have to look at where people live and what kind of resources are there. For us, we had the dry riverbed as a source of aggregate for sand and gravel mining, so we use that. Now some people might think that that’s contrary to our values to, in some senses, deface the earth, but we look at things in terms of gifts from the earth and from our Creator to help us survive in this world. Whether you go and kill a deer or kill an animal and eat that animal to survive or whether you go and dig up aggregates from the riverbed and turn around and market those in order to provide for your people, are two very similar things. So it’s a matter of being able to consider what you have to do to help your people out to make things better for them.

Ian Record:

So you mentioned that the community in 1987 purchased the cement company,

Diane Enos:

Yes.

Ian Record:

And prior to that would you say that your tribal economy was essentially a dependent one, as I mentioned?

Diane Enos:

I would say so to some degree, because when I grew up here, when I was growing up as a child here, we didn’t have, for instance, indoor plumbing. We didn’t have paved roads. We didn’t have telephones. Few people had electricity. We didn’t have, I think we had maybe a couple of police officers. We had the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] school, which I went to, and the Indian Health Service. So, yes, dependent, the tribe wasn’t in a position or at that time wasn’t actively pursuing economic development. We were fairly isolated, I would say, for the time.

Ian Record:

So back during that period, essentially a dependent economy, you were relying, I would assume, primarily on the federal government for transfer dollars,

Diane Enos:

For programs, yes.

Ian Records:

For programs.

Diane Enos:

But I think for people, in order to make money for your living, people have always gone off the reservation to work. And I know that my father, my own dad, worked in construction and in order to do that, to provide for his family, he would go with several other men and live in Tucson and do construction work during the week and come home on the weekends. And I remember that he did that for several years and they even went to Kingman, I think. They went where the work was; a lot of people did that. So as far as a dependent economy, I think we’re talking about programs for the tribes as a whole, yes.

Ian Record:

So what were some of the drawbacks to having that dependent economy in terms of being reliant, so reliant on outsiders for essentially the tribal government,

Diane Enos:

You have no control over it. You have very minimal, if any, control over where those dollars are directed. And it doesn’t empower your people to achieve more and it doesn’t, it keeps you down, so to speak. It’s another arm of the colonization I mentioned earlier. It’s very limiting. You don’t get to strive for more, because all you do is when you’re a dependent economy is wait for the next turn of funding and if, that’s unpredictable and it certainly isn’t a way for you to expand what your resources are capable of doing, because you’re dependent on direction and programming from the federal government.

Ian Record:

We’ve heard, and other leaders I’ve sat down with, I’ve heard them speak of a couple of other, I guess, dynamics to that dependent economy, which is that the measurements of success, the criteria for determining whether a program or the dollars that are being spent in a particular community are having, are achieving their intended goal, those are being set by outsiders not by the people themselves. And those criteria may be very different. Is that something that you saw back then?

Diane Enos:

I’m not sure back then, since I wasn’t in government, I’m not sure how that actually worked, but I do know from those periods of time...I had an interesting experience one time. I remember talking to the tribal chairman when I was 16 years old. I went into his office and I asked him about programming and the information that he gave me was very limited. And it appears to me now, in retrospect, that people in elected positions at that time, and I’m talking about tribal positions, didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge anyway about what the programming system was. It appears, it looks to me like we were just there applying for money and getting whatever we could and directing it where the program made us. So as far as that kind of comparison, I don’t know that we were able to make that even.

Ian Record:

We’ve often heard this, this term thrown about with respect to this dependent economy -- which fortunately, we’re seeing a lot of tribes, including your own, moving very deliberately away from -- of the 'project mentality.' And it centers around the kinds of grants that you would get from the federal government that, that there wasn’t an overarching movement toward, you know, for tribal government. It was all essentially dictated upon what could get funded from one year to the next, and there was not kind of a strategic direction to the operation of government. Is that, that sounds a little bit like the story you just related.

Diane Enos:

It is, and a lot of that started to change in 1995 when we signed our self-governance compact with the federal government. And what we do now is, it’s demonstrative of where we’ve taken it, because what we’re able to do now is to manage and direct our own programs. We receive funding and of course, you know, in the recession we’re experiencing right now, that funding has become lesser and lesser, and we’ve relied more on our own tribal funding. But I always like to think about what kind of situation other tribes are facing, because we’re in a unique position. Because of our location, we have more opportunities, not only business development, but gaming as well. But with Self-Governance, the monies that we do receive from the federal government, we’re able to program those in according, kind of in tandem with what we’re able to provide as well. So that the program, programs that we create and further are a combination of our own resources and limited federal resources. But we’re able to decide how to spend those monies and where to direct those to what we see as a greater need.

Ian Record:

So, back in ‘95 you were on the council at that time, when you signed the self-governance compact.

Diane Enos:

Yes.

Ian Record:

And so, you know, we’ve talked to a lot of tribes that have gone that route, self-governance compacting, and leaders of those nations have talked about, you know, it was one thing,  it was quite one thing to actually make that decision and say We want to go Self-Governance do that compact and quite another to actually build the governing institutions you need to essentially carry out the expanded, the expanded ability to exercise your sovereignty, if you will, under that compacting system. Can you talk a little bit about the challenge that it presented for Salt River?

Diane Enos:

We’ve always, and I have to look back at the Indian Reorganization Act, and that didn’t happen too very long ago. At the time of the Indian Reorganization [Act], prior to that, we had a chiefs system and what it consisted of were representatives that were there in council and I will call it that to further the needs of the people as a whole. So the system of sitting down together, like we have today with the tribal council, is really not a new system. It’s just that when the IRA came in, it changed the process of how we do it because we have an IRA constitution. So, going into the self-governance process, signing the compact for us as a community was clearly, I think, it was not a big struggle for us to make that decision; it was something that we were eager to do. And I know at the time, former President [Ivan] Makil who is, and is still well known as a proponent of self-governance, was really critical in making us aware as a council of the need for us to, it’s almost like stepping back in time, and the term 'self-governance' is you take care of yourself and that’s something that tribes always want to do. We’re not any different in that sense. We know what’s best for us and I think that we always will. We’ve dealt with the federal government out of, we didn’t have a choice and I believe that that’s something that we’ve always looked forward to is the opportunity or at least the, how shall I say, the willingness, the desire, the drive, if you will, to be who we are and to be what we can be for who we are.

Ian Record:

So what were some of the formal governing institutions that the council decided was, and President Makil back at the time, decided was necessary following Self-Governance. Like, what were some of the governing, formal institutions you put in place to say we need this, this, and this if we’re really going to carry this out?

Diane Enos:

The compact that we signed then as time has passed has changed. Right, way back then, and forgive me for not remembering the specifics, but I do know that some of the programs we are now are responsible for are public safety, for instance, fire and police, education, health and human services, and we go back and look at some of the things we need to have done then are still the same needs we have now. But it’s like, it’s like, and I hate to use this term 'growth' because it really is 'regeneration' almost. So, those are the programs we, the initial push was to redevelop those programs.

Ian Record:

Let’s turn now to, let’s turn our focus a little bit more directly economic development. You mentioned previously that the purchase of the cement company was a key first move for the nation to essentially move from that dependent economy to one predicated on self-sufficiency. And since then, your nation has been very aggressive in developing essentially, what we like to call, a diversified or thick economy; where you have a robust mix of nation-owned enterprises and citizen-owned businesses. Why is creating a diversified and thick economy so important?

Diane Enos:

It’s common sense. It just makes sense, because you can’t put all your, what’s that saying? Putting all your eggs in one basket? They taught us that at BIA school, just kidding. It just makes more sense, because you never totally rely on one resource because you never know when that one resource is either going to dry up or not be there or become more challenging. And I mentioned earlier the opportunities we have here because of our location. We had the dry Salt River bed, so we had Salt River Sand and Rock developed at that time as well or a little prior to that; and we’ve had the opportunity to develop our own phone company. We also have, and I’m speaking of today, we have some land that’s very choice for leasing. So we’ve developed the Salt River fields, which is the Major League Baseball spring training. And obviously we’re a gaming tribe, so we’ve gone further and developed a resort. We’re looking at developing a hotel right now separate from the resort. We’ve got the Talking Stick Golf Course that the tribe is the developer on and that started in the very early 1990s. So diversity means that you get to have all these different pockets, these different sources of revenue. Oh sure, they present different challenges, but you get to do, it’s not just one game, it’s many games, if I could call it that. But the return, it’s like betting, almost. If you are a gambler, so to speak, you want to have different options, and it’s always good to have options in life because when one doesn’t come up, the other may be there, and so on and so on. It just makes better sense, especially for us, that are located, the location that we are in.

Ian Record:

So, within that mix of businesses, both those owned by the nation and those owned by your citizens, there are certain businesses that, I mean, makes more sense for the nation to own. Then there are other businesses that it makes more sense for perhaps a citizen to own. Can you talk about that dynamic and, you know, for instance are there certain types of businesses that maybe the tribe should think twice about owning? And maybe say maybe this is better for a citizen to own that kind of business?

Diane Enos:

I think that depends on the size of the business. For instance, some tribes go into farming and that’s something that we’ve been looking at. I think the more that time passes, if an individual wants to go into that, they’re going to have to have a lot capital. So, I would say that right now, what we’ve done to support small businesses is to really, to develop what is called Salt River Financial Services Institute, and that provides loans for people as a jumpstart to open their business. But as far as what should we, what should a tribe not operate. Well, I don’t think you want to get into things that have a moral question and, like massage parlors, things that take too much capital and they’re too risky. Obviously, again as I mentioned earlier, we’re a gaming tribe. And back, I believe it was 1987 again, the national Indian gaming act came into place, we as a tribe didn’t take advantage of that until the 90s. So it’s been a constant struggle but that’s an opportunity for us. Some people may say tribes should not be involved in gaming, but when you don’t have much else, what are you going to do? It’s one of the most regulated businesses. It’s more regulated than Las Vegas, I would say, so it’s been an opportunity for us.

Ian Record:

Within that, within the economic development arena, particularly with nation-owned enterprises, the Native Nations Institute has done extensive research. And one of the things we’ve identified as a key to success for nation-owned enterprises is effectively managing the relationship between business and politics. You know, your predecessor Ivan Makil, I know, said it very well. He said, you know, 'We’re unique among the governments of the world in that we’re expected to govern but also turn a profit. You know, we had that dual role where most of the governments, they’re not expected to generate economic development. That’s someone else’s job.' Yet, you have the dual role. How do, how can tribes effectively manage that relationship where business is business and politics is politics and not let the politics creep in, and how has your nation approached that challenge?

Diane Enos:

It’s always a challenge where you have humankind. I’ve thought about that a lot and I have to go back and think about what it must’ve been like for our ancestors, because collaboration and cooperation is critical to the survival of any people. You’ve got to look around, like where we live in the desert, we couldn’t have achieved what we did without a sense of collaboration and a sense of depending on each other for the interests of the group. We still have that mentality, I believe. So making money to help out our community is a job that we have and it has to be a challenge. Of course, you’re going to have politics; people are always going to want their personal interests, but I believe we’ve been able to, as best we can, deal with that by setting up what is called the enterprise system. We have several community-owned enterprises; they’re businesses. And what we’ve done is set a board for the enterprise directors. And we’ve balanced those boards out by putting on the boards professionals -- and they can be outside people who are not tribal members -- but also some of the members of the community who also sit on the board and they govern through the policies and the procedures and the interests of those particular enterprise boards. And they, in turn, report to council on an as-needed basis, but also ultimately in the ordinances they answer to the council. So, council answers to the people generally and I like to refer back to what’s called the political process. If they don’t like you, the people don’t like what you’re doing and they don’t like the way you’re doing it, they won’t re-elect you. It seems almost simple, but accountability is always going to be a challenge to any government. And I believe that we’ve done well to try to balance that out in our system.

Ian Record:

Right. So, the way you described your board is a description that we’ve heard from other tribal nations in terms of how they’re setting up their nation-owned enterprises and the relationship they’re formalizing between those enterprises and the elective leadership of the nation. That board is, from what you’re saying it sounds like it’s set up as a firewall to insulate the day-to-day operation of those businesses from any sort of political interference?

Diane Enos:

Right, because under our ordinances, which is our law, so to speak, the boards are set up to have oversight over management of the particular enterprises. Management answers to those boards and if there becomes a situation where it gets to council and it affects the interest of the community, tribal government as a whole, that’s where council has the authority and the oversight to step in, but that’s very rare, very rare. In fact, one of the things that I think a lot of boards have learned, and we’ve certainly learned, is to not, what we call, 'micromanage.' Because if you get into micromanaging, you take away from policy-driven decisions, and really that’s what the authority of the council is under our constitution is to develop and make sure that all the policies and the laws are followed. We can’t do that if we start nitpicking and getting into the little things, I call them little things, over business. You just can’t do that. That’s what the boards are there to make sure that management does. So in some sense, yes, there’s a firewall because it keeps that arm’s length unless there’s a critical situation.

Ian Record:

But the council and you, as a president, have a very vital role to play. You mentioned formulating those policies, establishing a strategic direction. I mean, you have a vital role to play to ensure that there’s accountability there, that those businesses are performing but on a, kind of a larger picture and that they’re carrying out the nation’s larger objectives, correct?

Diane Enos:

Yes, yes they report to council. In fact, we just finished a series of annual reports to council on budgets for all the enterprises. They come and sit down with council and present their budgets. At that point, and there’s several points, other points during the year where council sits down with these boards and asks, and management, and asks them specific questions: 'What are you doing in this area? Why are we seeing this over here? What are you going to be doing in the future? What are your projections as far as the health or the, on health of a particular enterprise?' We get to have those discussions periodically, and I think that that’s really important because they understand who is doing the oversight over them and we understand how we should not micromanage or try to stay away from micromanaging.

Ian Record:

Okay. So your nation has set up an economic development corporation called Salt River Devco. Can you talk a little bit about what the overall mission and goals of that corporation are?

Diane Enos:

That was initially set up to be a clearinghouse for economic development. When I say 'economic development,' I mean actually that. The community decided in 1991 that development, and when I say development I mean it’s building buildings, creating businesses, creating an enterprise area; that only ought to occur on the perimeter of the community. So Devco was set up to manage that and to be a clearinghouse for all sorts of proposals. It was also set up to be an asset manager. Not only do we have the Chaparral Business Park, we have a large lease -- I think it’s 120 acres if I’m not mistaken -- in that whole area there. We also have a signage, outdoor signage company. We also are looking to put other small endeavors under the Devco umbrella. And now as time passes, we’re starting to move towards the development of limited liabilities corporations under, I believe it’s Section 17 of the federal government’s regulations. So it’s a...you have to be flexible when you talk about the kind of enterprise development that we do, because things change and you have to allow for those changes to occur. And the developments of limited liability, LLC, let me just say that; LLCs have to be considered ultimately because what you got to do is you got to not only change with the times, but you have to protect the tribal government as a whole, protect that interest.

Ian Record:

We’ve touched on this a little bit, but I’d like to ask you a question directly about it and: How do you see your role and the role of the councilors at Salt River, the elected councilors, in terms of your nation’s enterprises? What is your fundamental role in terms of ensuring that those businesses take root and grow?

Diane Enos:

Are you talking about tribal businesses?

Ian Record:

Tribal businesses.

Diane Enos:

Under our constitution, the council -- and that includes the president and the vice-president -- have the responsibility to do a whole list of things for the people. And not only do we provide for court systems and for the laws of the community, but we’re supposed to take care of the people, essentially. So our role, as far as being in the positions we’re in, in order to take care of the people we have manage our assets. We have to take care of the assets. Not only taking care of those assets, but making sure that they grow. It’s kind of a fiduciary relationship. And you don’t have a fiduciary that just sits there on his hand, his or her hands. You have to be active and you have to look for more opportunities. And ultimately, the goal is to help your people, is to make sure that there’s a resource for not only the people that are alive today, but the people that are coming. So that’s essentially what I see our role as, as a council.

Ian Record:

You talked about the obligation that you have as president and the councilors have to the people of the nation. Let’s talk a little bit more about that. Can you speak to the role of citizen support in the development and operation of nation-owned enterprises? You know, it’s quite one thing if you guys as a group say it would be a good idea to get into this new business area, but it’s quite another to get the people behind that idea and to really support it, you know, long-term. What kind of, what kind of challenge does that present and how important is transparency and citizen understanding of the economic direction you’re going?

Diane Enos:

You have to, you have to have citizen support for any ventures that you do. You’re not always going to have 100 percent citizen support. You have detractors, that’s just part of, part of life. For instance, let me use the Salt River Fields examples. The idea came up pretty quickly and the council started discussing it. And obviously we knew it was going to take a lot of input in terms of capital, so we had to discuss how we’re going to do that. And right away we started talking about this idea to the people. We started putting the idea out in public, in public meetings. But this particular proposal didn’t provide enough, a lot of time. It’s like we had to make decisions fairly quickly. And those decisions, because they involve our finances and our resources, which are not public information because for a lot of reasons, some of the discussions that we had to have had to occur behind closed doors in executive session. So when this plan was finally unveiled, and I would say with pictures and what not, some of the people were saying, 'Why are you doing this? Why are you not asking us? Why didn’t we take this to a public vote?' And we had to tell them there wasn’t enough time to do that. We have to make some decisions; we have to make some commitments. So explaining that part of it to the public was critical. And the other thing that we still do -- we just had an update on the progress last week -- is to continue to have periodic updates and the resolutions that we pass towards the development, you know moving it to the next stage, were done publicly. Everything that we had to do, we have to tell the people why we’re doing it, and sometimes we have to just tell the people, ‘We don’t have enough time to take a community vote,’ and people have to understand that. And I’m sure there are still some people who don’t like that and maybe didn’t vote for some of us in this election because of that, but in order to get the confidence of the people you have to demonstrate a track record that shows stability and shows calculation and an ability to move towards transparency. It’s difficult to have total transparency when you’re a tribal government, because you have a lot of non-members, the out, let’s call them the outside world, who may be interested in your financing and your finances for many reasons. Some of those aren’t good reasons. So when we talk about transparency, you’re talking about money, but we’re also talking about process. The ability to tell, discuss those issues, we do and have done frequently with community member-only meetings, where if you’re going to come to the meeting you have to show your enrollment card. That’s, to us, the best way to be as transparent as we can, because it’s really our membership that has the most stake here at hand in any particular proposal.

Ian Record:

Let’s talk about another aspect of successful economic development in Indian Country and that is a neutral dispute resolution. And you have a, you have a legal background; you practiced law for many years so you have a keen eye on this particular area. Why is neutral dispute resolution important to successful nation enterprises?

Diane Enos:

Sovereign nations, tribes, cannot be sued because as a sovereign you have a shield around you. But people will not want to do business with you if you cannot, if they can’t take you to court, if you have an argument with them or if you have a dispute with them. What we’ve done -- and I know lots of governments have done this -- is having to do what’s called limited waivers of that sovereign immunity. Part of that, to do business with an outside entity, involves which court are you going to go to if you have a problem, if you have an issue. A lot of outside businesses do not, for many reasons, want to take a dispute to tribal court. So what we’ve done is set up an arbitration clause in our agreements, in I would say just about most of our agreements that we do with outside entities. That gives assurance to them that if there ever is a problem, that we have a process laid out where we can take a dispute and have it resolved by a third party. And it gives a lot of comfort, because you’ve got to have that in business and tribes have to understand, we don’t like it, every time we do the limited waiver of sovereign immunity. It makes us a little bit uncomfortable because we’re giving up some of our shield, but in order to properly advance our business interests it’s almost like, I’m trying to think of an analogy and it escapes me right now, but you have to consider the worst-case scenario in any, in any venture that you go into. What will happen if this worst-case scenario occurs? What are we going to do? And you always have to have, in the back of your mind, how are we going to protect the tribe, ultimately? And the arbitration clause is a way for us to achieve that.

Ian Record:

So there’s these disputes that tend to arise big-scale when you’re talking about, you know, you the tribe in a joint venture with an outside partner, say around a major development. Then there’s kind of the day-to-day, personnel kinds of disputes. I assume you’ve had to build in some, some neutral dispute resolution mechanisms for things such as personnel disputes that arise from one of your enterprises. I mean, that’s equally critical, is it not?

Diane Enos:

It is. It is because those enterprises operate in any kind of business relationship that they have to develop or whether it’s with a particular employee, there has to always be a way to resolve a dispute. Right now, I don’t know if you know this, crimes do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians, but we still retain a measure of civil jurisdiction and authority over non-Indians so that if you have a non-Indian employee, we still have civil authority over their, over the conduct. And as you know, or you may or may not know, most disputes are civil in nature and when I say civil, the law’s divided into criminal and civil, so you have a forum to resolve those disputes with an employee and that would be tribal court or the human resources department.

Ian Record:

So how is your tribal court system grown? How has it grown and why has it grown in the fifteen years since you forged your self-governance compact?

Diane Enos:

The tribal court for any nation has to grow. With us, particularly, here, given our broad range of development here and the amount of employees that we have and the number of people that live in the community we have had to allocate more and more resources to the development and the strengthening of our tribal court. Tribal courts really are a strong basis of our sovereign authority here, because they spell out directly the power that the tribe has. If you can take somebody physically into custody, adjudicate a matter against them and jail them, I mean it seems to me short of execution there is no greater example of authority over a person, and we have that authority over all Indian people that live here or come here and we all also have had to develop our police department so that we’re able to exercise the state’s authority in certain areas of the community. But our tribal court has had to be flexible. We’ve instituted some changes. What we do now is we’ve opened up the application pool to sister tribes to become judges so now you don’t just have to be from Salt River to be a sitting judge here and they’re appointed by council. You could be a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Gila River Indian Community or the Ak-Chin Indian community because we have a lot of the same cultural values and systems. That’s one example of how we’ve grown.

Ian Record:

So in terms of trying to foster an environment for the success of your nation-owned enterprises, your citizen-owned businesses, what key laws and codes and policies have you put in place?

Diane Enos:

One of the big things we’ve done recently over the last several years is the procurement policy. And what that does is it enables certified tribal member-owned businesses to move ahead in the line. If there’s a contract that is to be let out by the tribe they have preference: tribal member-owned businesses and then Native-owned businesses and then other owned. And what that does is it enables them to, if you can get certified -- and certification has certain requirements to make sure that this isn’t tribal member owned business –- then it’s only proper that they step ahead of our people in the process. And again you’re going to look for how the service benefits the tribe and you have the spin-off benefit that occurs when you have a tribal member-owned business get priority.

Ian Record:

Okay. So one of the things you did, one of the things the community did a few years back was zone the entire community, in terms of its land, and you developed what is referred to as the General Plan. Why did the nation decide to take that step and what impact has it had on your ability to develop economically?

Diane Enos:

The community’s been doing that for many, many years, prior to me ever coming on to council. And what it does is it sets our roadmap and the people have input through the council representatives. We have also had several meetings over a period of time where people are able to give their input. I mentioned earlier that in 1991 we had the vision meetings, strategizing, and right now we just finished, my gosh, probably about seventeen or eighteen community member meetings with various segments of the community -- the youth, the seniors, general district meetings, general meetings -- to ask the people, 'What do you want?' And what the result is is to impact the general zoning plan because it’s the citizens of the tribe that have to decide where development occurs, because we live here. And it’s the citizens of the tribe that have to decide where education’s going to occur and where certain things are not going to occur as well. Because where we live, we live right in the middle, almost in the middle of metropolitan Phoenix; we’re on the edge. We have to have a better handle. We have to make sure that the people feel like they have a say. And when I say 'they,' I’m one of the people. I like to sit back and think of myself as just a regular citizen and the things that would annoy me on a day, you know, day-to-day basis living here and the things that would make me feel comfortable here and my children and my family. Those are the things that continue to be important as time passes, and certainly if I see change occurring in my community that I don’t like, I’m going to say something about it. Conversely, I would like to be able to say something about what I want my community to look like.

Ian Record:

One of the things that struck me in reviewing the General Plan and the map that you’ve developed that shows where development will happen and not happen is the fact that you have a very, I think, confined area for development and there’s essentially a segregation between the development zone and the living zone, if you will, where development’s going to take place adjacent to Scottsdale and then where the people are going to live and carry out their lives and I assume that was very purposeful, wasn’t it?

Diane Enos:

It was and that started in 1991. It started prior to that, but it was formalized in 1991 with the creation of the vision statement. And the project that we are in right now and just finished the meetings that we had is called Vision 2020, because I believe we need to go back 20 years and sit down with the population of the people in the community and ask them. Well, the big push for that 1991 discussion was the development of the Pima Freeway. That was a very, very divisive issue. When the State of Arizona decided that it wanted to build a freeway on tribal land there were a lot of people, and I was one of them, that was told that was absolutely against this proposal because it was felt at that time and I still, I know that it was going to change our community and it has, but I also believe that once a decision’s made by the majority of the people, we have to fall in step with that we have to make the best use of it that we can. So back in 1991, the people knew that this freeway was coming and in fact it had I believe been decided on. So people started saying, ‘The intrusion into the community of the freeway, the 101 Freeway, we don’t want it to go any further, we want this to be the line right here.’ All the proposals for businesses, stores, retail, development and all other kinds of fixtures, I mean just call it that, are going to stay over there because we want to be able to walk down our roads and we want to be able to look at the sunrise and we want to be able to look at the mountains and we want to be able to have our children play in our yards and we don’t want no stores, no businesses, we don’t want a lot of things that economic development has -- we don’t want that in our backyard. It’s the ultimate 'NIMBY' ['Not in my backyard'] type of posture and I think we’re very happy with it.

Ian Record:

Several years ago your nation established a sales tax. What prompted the nation to establish a tax and where’s the money go? What benefits has it brought the nation?

Diane Enos:

Every government considers taxes and every government has to tax in one form or another. Whether it’s part of your crop, whether it’s part of your seeds, you know back in older times, and the tax that we levy right now on our own members is small compared to what the state levies. We don’t, we’ve had to do it as a matter of necessity. We don’t share in the revenue with the state and the county that is collected on state’s sales tax; tribes don’t. If we didn’t collect our own tribal tax, we wouldn’t get that money, and where that money goes, it goes into the general fund and it goes toward our general budget, our operating budget, it goes towards things like social services, police and fire protection, education, the cost of this building, the cost of paying our employees, just in the general fund it helps our government.

Ian Record:

And was there an education effort that needed to take place of your citizens to say this, we really need this?

Diane Enos:

I don’t remember when that tax was set up. It’s been so long and it’s just been a part of, part of our government. I don’t remember a specific time.

Ian Record:

I’d like to wrap up with a short discussion of small businesses -- businesses owned and operated by tribal citizens. Just a first, general question: how important an economic engine can citizen-owned businesses be for your nation and others?

Diane Enos:

As far as being able to provide government services, they pay taxes, but the other part of it that’s really important is that they can be employers of our people. They can, not only, what do they call, recycle the dollar in the community, but they also provide modeling for our youth and our children. Because if you’re going to go into business you’re not, you’re going to have certain qualities as an individual. You have to be able to take risk, but you’re also going to be able to manage what you have in order to be a success, in order to function as a successful business. And for our children to see our own people doing that I think that that, to me, that’s one of the best things to come out of seeing and supporting community member-owned businesses is that modeling. Because without it, you’re only seeing success and risks being taken by non-members and non-Indians and what does that say to a child? So that’s, to me, that’s the key concept.

Ian Record:

And it also gives them a sense of what’s possible in terms of their futures, their careers, you know. There’s other things out there than just maybe going into tribal government, getting a job there, or going to work for the casino.

Diane Enos:

Absolutely, Yup. They keep us on our toes.

Ian Record:

How does your nation work to cultivate and foster small businesses owned by your citizens?

Diane Enos:

We have what’s called the Salt River Financial Services Institute, which offers loans. We also have procurement policies, which provide preference to them for contracts. We have employee preference policies in place. We also have, there are businesses here from their own organization. In fact, I just met with one of the key officers in the Salt River business owners and encouraged them to come to council and have a dialogue with us: that dialogue has to continue because since tribal government sets up a lot of the regulations and frankly has the keys to some of the opportunities, we have to partner up with them. So the idea of partnering up with them is to figure out how we can do better as a tribe to encourage that growth and support that growth and how they in turn can tell us we can do that better. So it’s really a partnership that I’m anxious to see continue.

Ian Record:

So, you know, this thought process that you and your, that you and your councilors here at Salt River have about consciously incorporating small businesses as part of your overall economic development strategy, that’s not something that a lot of nations do. I mean, are some nations and nation leadership missing the boat by not consciously considering small businesses as part of the economic development process?

Diane Enos:

I would say if you don’t encourage and further small businesses you are definitely missing a boat there. And what I mean by that is missing the opportunity to do those things we just talked about. You’re also not utilizing some of the best talent that your people have. You’re also failing to provide opportunities for tribal government, because if you encourage businesses to flourish and you encourage them to participate in a dialogue with you, they can tell you how you can do your business as a tribal government better. And that’s your own people talking to you. So, yeah, I definitely think that the pluses far outweigh the minuses there. So, yeah, you’re missing a big boat.

Ian Record:

As you mentioned earlier, you’re also keeping those dollars when you have those local outlets for spending by your people, you’re keeping those dollars circulating within the community.

Diane Enos:

Absolutely. You’re keeping employment within the community and just making more opportunities for your own people, ideally.

Ian Record:

Well, President Enos, we really thank you for your time and thank you for sharing your experience, wisdom and knowledge with us.

Diane Enos:

Wisdom? [Laughter] I don’t know about that.

Ian Record:

Well, that’s all the time we have on today’s program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2011. Arizona Board of Regents.

Diane Enos: Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Economic Development

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) President Diane Enos provides an overview of SRPMIC's effortto build a diversified economy, the institutional keys to make that effort a success, and the cultural principles SRPMIC abides by as it engages in economic development.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Enos, Diane. "Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Economic Development." Building and Sustaining Tribal Enterprises seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 29, 2007. Presentation. 

"Thank you for inviting me, Joan [Timeche]. I'm really honored to be here to be able to talk to your conference or seminar. By way of background, a little bit of what Ms. Timeche just said that I am an attorney. And sometimes that's a blessing and sometimes it's a curse, because today it's a blessing, because as you all know attorneys never lack for anything to say. I have a lot to say, but I'm not so sure that I've got it in order so please bear with me. What I like to do when I speak to groups such as this and actually any group and even to myself is sometimes I have to say a prayer and I ask for help that I may say something that's relevant, something that's helpful, and certainly most of all something that you can remember and take home and use. Joan had asked me... before I get started I've got to mind my manners here. I would like to acknowledge some of our staff that are here today and some of our community people.

Ruben Guerrero is seated at the table. Mr. Guerrero is a young community member. He works with [Congressional] Representative Raul Grijalva's office here in Tucson and he is going to be a future leader of our community and he's been a friend of mine for years and a vital part of the community and a good example of what our youth is. Next to him is Michelle Clark. Ms. Clark is also a community member. She works with our Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs for the community. She also works with the Community Manager, she also works with me, the president, and the vice president. She is new back to the community. While an enrolled member of the community, also seated next to her left is her sister Cindy Clark; they did not grow up in the community. But like a lot of people did not have the opportunity to do that, but are coming back to the community and offering themselves to help us out. And we anxiously look forward to having membership like the Clark sisters. We're anxious to have them come back to where they came from and help us out and become part of us again. So again I wanted to acknowledge them. We also have some staff people here today. Ms. LaFrance is with the Salt River Financial Services Institution. It's our ninth enterprise and what they do is they're in the business of loaning money to membership in terms of small business loans, home loans, and we're working on developing all the loan possibilities. With her are her staff members. I know Ms. Deer is here and I forgot your other name. Mauri, how could I forget? Are there any other staff people with you? That's it. We're well represented here today. I also wanted to acknowledge Cecil Antone who is a brother, he's related to us. He's from the Gila River Indian Community, a fellow O'odham, as well as Mary Thomas, who is also a fellow O'odham from Gila River.

Joan had asked me to talk about basically about the idea, the concept of keeping politics out of enterprises and in order to even begin to address that question what I wanted to do is tell you a little bit about our enterprises. As Joan mentioned, we are close to the City of Scottsdale. We're also a door to the City of Mesa and the town of Fountain Hills. So we're very surrounded -- in fact we're landlocked -- but what that has done is, it has it's challenges, but what it has done is offered us significant, a very, very significant development opportunities. And what Salt River has had to do over the years is attune itself to our location, and again that's another example of a blessing and a curse, because while we've had to endure the problems of the metropolitan area such as the drugs, the crime, the traffic, the smog, all the negative things, we've also had a blessing to be in a most, most opportune place for economic development, which is we're next to the City of Scottsdale. There's a nine-mile corridor which the community has termed the economic development corridor, and we've done that because the community has wanted to not let development encroach in the interior of the community. We're rural, we have a rural lifestyle, we live in the open area where there are a lot of fields or desert, and so people have decided that they wanted to keep it that way, and in doing so we've dedicated the western portion of the reservation, which is again the nine-mile strip to economic development. But also in doing economic development, what we have done is had to create enterprises which are tribally run businesses. We have nine of them today, the SRSFI is the ninth one, and we started diversifying a long time ago.

Before I get further into my discussion about what we've done in terms of economic development, I want to tell you a little bit about Salt River, about who we are as a people, because that's really important and those of you that come from tribal communities know that we cannot be anything but tribal people if we intend to survive as sovereign nations. A little bit about the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community: we have been here since time immemorial. The O'odham people -- as Cecil and Mary know -- have lived here, we have mountains that we have songs about, we have origin stories, we have migration stories that play into the location that you are in right now because this is all our territory. The four southern tribes of today the Tohono O'odham, and the lady sitting at the table here is from Tohono O'odham, I forgot your name already, but you're our relative as well. Gila River Indian Community, Ak-Chin Indian Community as well as Salt River today comprise the four tribes and we've lived here forever in our history. And what we have done in terms of dealing with the Europeans is we've never fought a war with the white man, we've never fought a war with the invaders. And some people can look at that and not think well of that, but for us what it basically says about us as a people is that we have learned over the centuries that one of our methodologies to survival is negotiation. That's a value to us, it's a value in our way of living, which is referred to as the Himdag. And I know we have two tribes, now we are Maricopa and Pima, O'odham and Peeposh. And the Peeposh people came and joined the Pima people both at Gila River and Salt River around 1800. They migrated here because they too wanted to be peaceful and they wanted to avoid warfare and those sorts of activities. But we never fought a war with the United States. What we did instead was sell them...here you go, economic development way back then. We sold wheat to the army, we sold wheat to the Mormon battalion, we traded with the Spanish people when they came through to set up the missions and we got some of our most prized food from them like peaches, figs, pomegranates, those sorts of things, but we also helped them survive. So our opportunities and our taking advantage of economic opportunities began historically a long time ago and it began with the Europeans coming here. But again, it's in keeping with what we value as a people in terms of our survival. But it's more than it, it's how we not only survive but thrive, and that's to take advantage of an opportunity for the people.

Now getting back to keeping politics out of our enterprises, as I indicated, way back when before gaming even came up. We have to acknowledge gaming because it's a reality for a lot of our tribes and again it's a blessing and a curse, because right now it affords us the opportunity to do things that we only even could even dream about years ago. I've been in tribal government for 16 years. I was part of tribal government before gaming came into the picture and as all of you know, those of you that are gaming tribes, know that it has changed our communities sometimes for the better, sometimes for not so good. But back then what we had to do before gaming was we had to diversify. Salt River knew that it had to diversify if it was going to continue to provide services to its membership. And I'm talking about services like police protection, fire department, sanitation, tribal government itself, housing needs -- all kinds of normal services that tribal governments provide to its membership. And the only way we're going to do that was to make money. We knew that we could not rely on the government or the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] or anybody for our livelihood and being in the location that we are we again took opportunity of it, we created enterprises. And what we did way back then, and I think it was fairly new at the time, one of the first things that we did was set up what's called the Salt River Sand and Rock and the Phoenix Cement Company today. Back then it was Phoenix Cement Company and I would say back in 1987 the community bought Phoenix Cement. We took out a huge loan. For us it was breathtakingly huge, today it isn't. It was $78 million to purchase the Phoenix Cement Company. Today that is one of our most successful enterprises. And just because we've gotten into gaming we haven't ignored the need to maintain those enterprises and to keep them flourishing. The main reason for that is because we know that gaming is not guaranteed forever. It's just an opportunity and it's a sure opportunity for us to continue to diversify as I'm indicating here.

We have several enterprises, and I will say right now that you cannot keep politics out of enterprises. You cannot keep politics out of anything and I say that from experience having been in tribal government for 16 years. But I'm not so sure that that's a bad thing. Politics, if you really think about it in terms of well, what does politics mean? Politics really means a personal desire to see something done your way and that's not anything new to human nature, but it's how you go about achieving that. How do I go about getting what I want to have happen? Am I going to step on people to get there? Am I going to hurt somebody to get there? Those are challenges that leadership always has and I think that the membership of any tribal government, any tribal entity in itself has to think about that. But we're coming into a time -- at least at Salt River I believe -- we're coming into a time where we're starting to say, "˜Why am I voting for this person? Why am I voting for that person?' and it's something that leadership has to remember and it has to stay focused on because when you talk about politics, politics as I'm saying today is never going to go away, it's never ever going to go away, so the best thing that we can do again is to negotiate with the situation, take the best that we can from it because...And I was talking to some of the membership this morning, you're always going to have that, you're always going to have somebody opposing your ideas but that's a good thing. That's only a positive thing if you can eventually be able to work it out with them and come up with the best solution.

I think that's what really Joan was asking, how do you keep things legal and keep things working well? So what we have done for our enterprises, we've done several things and I wanted to show you just as a matter of demonstration what I brought today. I'm not going to go into this book; I'm not going to read it. This is called Our Enterprise Ordinances. This book is full of all the ordinances that Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community had to create in order to monitor, in order to manage, in order to help all of our enterprises grow and flourish, and this book is tabulated, full of the rules. I just want to tell you some of the rules that we've had to adopt and to establish and further to keep things legal, to keep things moving along, to help things flourish. Some of the things that our enterprises have been enabled to do are limited waivers of sovereign immunity, and those of you that are in tribal governments understand that the waiver of sovereign immunity is something that tribal councils themselves only have for the most part, I'm sure there are exceptions, but for the most part, Salt River tribal council is the only one that can waive sovereign immunity even on a limited basis. But what we've started to do for our enterprises is allow them to contract. The only thing that they cannot do is encumber land. They can encumber property, they can encumber equipment, and they can take out all these loans and to that degree they have the opportunity to do a limited waiver of sovereign immunity. And that's a scary thing because what you're doing as a tribal government is you're giving up some of your power and some of your authority. But you have to monitor those enterprises. You have to make sure that what they're doing is in compliance with your ordinances and you have to be really critical and careful when you create those ordinances to begin with. So if you want to keep things legal, you've got to keep an eye on it. The other thing that our enterprises are able to do is that they can, they have the authority to...the boards have the...I've written down some things here and I can't even read it 'cause it's dark over here. The council doesn't micromanage, but the boards do have autonomy for the most part, and again that's the giving up of some of your power as a tribal government. For instance, they can contract, technically speaking, the enterprises are able to contract. They have disclosure requirements. If I have a contract or if I have a relationship with a provider, I must disclose that and I must sign a form if I'm on a board. We have all these boards that disclose any potential conflict that I might have. The other unique thing about our boards is what we've done is we've made them up of not only professional membership. For instance, Salt River Sand and Rock we have people that are in the industry that know something about the cement business or the sand and gravel business, about commerce, people that are generally for the most part non-Indian because they have that expertise. But the other part of that is we also have to make sure the boards are made up of the membership, and these may be people who have no business experience, but they've got a desire to serve the community and they've got a track record or they've got an experience where people understand who they are, people understand that they will do the best that they can, and that doesn't always work out well. Sometimes you can have the nicest people, the most honest people, and they're totally ineffective as board members. So again, you have to go back as a tribal government and monitor what they're doing, make sure that they are performing and doing things to the best of their ability to serve not only government but the board. And the other thing that the community has done is it's unleashed these enterprises to some degree and their sole reason for being is to make profit, their sole reason for existence and doing what they do and for us having some degree of arm's length from them is so they can make a profit for the community. Again, because we understand that in the future we may not have gaming to rely on, we may not have that huge cushion that we have. So while we're socking away the money and putting it into investments and other safekeeping, taking other safekeeping measures, we still know that we have to make money in the future. So setting up these enterprises is one way to do that.

Now again, back to Joan's question, how do we keep politics out? How do we keep things legal? And I mentioned a little bit ago, like if I wanted to appoint...as tribal council they select the board members. If there was an individual that I wanted to put on that board just because I was friends with that person or I had business dealings with them or they're my second cousin, you know, all the wrong reasons, well, let me say maybe not the best reasons, that can still happen because if you're able to convince other people to vote for this person you can put somebody on there. But the proof is, how are they going to perform as a board member? And that's the responsibility that tribal governments have not only to make sure things are legal but to make sure that they're performing. And if we don't monitor these board members and make sure that what they're doing is what they're supposed to be doing then we're going to lose as a government and again that goes to responsibility of leadership.

What I'm describing to you, there is a lot, a lot of concepts that go with being in office, with being in tribal leadership. But I also wanted to tell you that one of the best things that I find now as being the president and supposed to be a council member, and I was mentioning this to Mary just a little bit ago, is that you can do a lot more now. You have a lot more flexibility, like coming here today and being with you and being with some of the membership of my community and spending time with Dr. [Joseph] Kalt and talking to him is an opportunity that I might not have had if I were a council person. I could have chosen to do something else. Today I could be sitting at my desk or I could be doing something else. But leadership really has the opportunity to do what you think you need to do. And one of our young attorneys with our Office of General Counsel, who gave me some of these notes to keep in mind when I talked to you today, said that it's important and I want to say that it really is important, what we've done as a community is establish what's called a vision statement for our community.

Years and years ago, I would say probably about 15 years ago, we started having meetings with our membership and we started asking them, 'What do you want to see for the future?' Now remember, this is all pre-gaming, there's no big money in the picture. We simply said, 'What do you want as people that live in the community, as people that are membership have rights to vote, people that have membership rights to have a say in tribal government, people whose children will inherit land in the community, people whose children and grandchildren will continue to be part of our community forever, hopefully?' We asked them, "˜What do you want to see? What do you want your community to look like?' And we had a series of meetings with all the districts and this went on for probably about maybe a year and a half or so. And what came out of those meetings and those discussions is what's called a vision statement. And they told tribal government, I'd say we told tribal government, we all sat down and talked and came up with the vision of what we want for the future. And what I talked about a little bit earlier in terms of the economic corridor was one of those concepts that came out. We said, the people said to tribal government, we do not want development in the interior part of the community. We want tribal government to make them money but we want to have a say in it. And that's one of the reasons that our enterprises have developed the way that they have because the people told us that that's what they wanted us to do. You cannot have a government, you cannot, we cannot continue to exist and flourish as a government unless we communicate with our membership, unless we take into consideration what our membership says and why they say it. We at Salt River hopefully in the future for the most part the tribe, at least I tried, my administration to work like that, to listen to the people and to try to take into consideration what they have to say. Not only is it very smart politically, but it's very smart in terms of the long-range view for our people.

I also wanted to leave with you today, and I touched a little bit on it, in talking about a visionary type of leadership that one of our attorneys reminded me that I should talk about. I wanted to say to you also that it's really important for us at Salt River -- and I think those of you that are tribal leaders -- to remember that we have to be who we are not just in a business sense, not just in a government sense but as far as a cultural sense. And I hate to use, I kind of squirm every time I have to use that word cultural. I was talking to Dr. Kalt this morning just a little bit. What I mean is who are we? Who are we as O'odham people? Who are we as Peeposh people? And that goes again to what I started out when I started talking to you when I mentioned about remembering who we are. Why are we here in this particular location at this particular point in time? And it goes back to where did we come from? Who came before us? And when you start thinking about that, you've got to think about who's coming ahead of us. And that's what makes us separate, that's what makes us separate from other governments, and what we were talking about was the concept of separation between church and state and state government and county government, city governments, you have that clear division that you do not respect any particular established religion and I think for the most part they're talking about established religions. We don't have that concept in tribes. How come we don't have it? Because who we are is very tied into what we believe in and once we get away from that, we're not going to be a people anymore, we're not going to be a tribe anymore, we're not going to be a viable reservation anymore because the federal government in my opinion -- and here I am talking as a lawyer again -- is going to say, 'What right do you have to have this land? What right do you base your claim on to have sovereignty? What right do you claim to have to have courts if you're just brown people living there?' The only way that we're going to continue as Native people, as tribal people, is to remember who we are and why we are what we are.

And I'm going to leave you with a little quote today. It goes to the concept of really what I'm talking about when I say, "˜Who are we?' It goes again to why do we do what we do? Why do we run for office? Why do we set up these enterprises? Why do we have all these employees? Why did we get into gaming? Why am I here today? Why, why, why? Unless we go back to who we are. A thing that I want to say, too, is not only who are we, but why do we further that, why do we want to keep being tribal people? Isn't it easier to just go out somewhere and maybe make a nice living and hang out in resorts like this and have all the things that America has to offer if you're successful economic-wise? Why do we want to even be tribal people? Why do we want to stay who we are? I will tell you that we can't do it unless we love who we are, we cannot do it unless we love the land that we live on, and we cannot continue to do this unless we truly love our people. And unless your tribal government comes from that angle, it's not going to be really helpful to you in the future, so we must demand that of leadership.

The quote that I wanted to leave you with here, and it goes to again economic development; it also goes to what I've been talking to you about today. And it's a quote we have...it's a hero, it's almost a mythological hero, but this was a man that lived who knows when. His name was [O'odham language], and he's part of what I'm wearing today. He's part of what Mary Thomas and Cecil know about, and it's this maze here that is our tribal seal. He was a magician so to speak. He did a lot of things for the people, he was a hero and saved the people at various times and a lot of times was himself criticized, people tried to kill him, very much like a human being, very much like the lives of some politicians. Anyway, he was going away and he was going away and the thing that he said -- it's a prophecy -- he said to the people was, and I'm going to quote from him, he says, "˜And they will kill the staying earth. You will see it but you must not do it and you will be feeling just fine.' Now what that says to me as a tribal leader and as somebody that's involved in economic development, it says that we should never do anything to harm the earth because it's our sustenance, it's our substance, it's where we came from. And we're going to see it, we're going to see it happening, we're seeing it happening with global warming, we're seeing it happening with all the pollution that's occurring in this world. But we're not supposed to participate in it if we're going to survive and he says that you will see it and you will be feeling just fine. In other words, this is coming and it's already here, but if we're going to continue to love ourselves and love each other as tribal people, we're going to survive it, but the thing we have to remember is not to kill the staying earth. So all of our economic development ventures that we go into we must keep that concept in mind. Thank you. That's all I have today."

Martin Harvier: Building Sustainable Economies: The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Story

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Vice President Martin Harvier offers a brief history of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa's efforts to cultivate citizen-owned businesses and then do business with those companies.

Resource Type
Citation

Harvier, Martin. "Building Sustainable Economies: The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation.

"I'd like to welcome you all here this morning. I'm grateful for this opportunity I have to speak. Again, my name is Martin Harvier. I know this conference is for newly elected officials so how many of you are actually newly elected officials? Do you know what you're getting yourself into? Actually I'm in the last year of my four-year term. This year my term expires, and I've already decided to throw my hat back in the ring and see what happens. But it's been an experience. To be honest with you, the position that I'm in I didn't expect to be here. I went the night they had nominations for the positions that were being offered that night -- the president, vice president and council members -- and an individual got up the night of the nominations and pronounced my name as a vice president nominee and I was kind of surprised and taken back. And I just thought about my life opportunities that I had that I didn't take and I thought, 'You know what, I'm going to go forward with this.' I felt very humbled that I was picked.

I was actually born in Parker, Arizona. I'm not sure if you know the state of Arizona and where Parker's located. It's actually on the western boundary. It's the boundary of California and Arizona. The tribes that are there -- the Chemehuevis, the Mojaves, the Navajo and the Hopi tribes -- are located in La Paz County in Parker. My dad was a full Native American. He was Tohono O'odham and he was Pima, half and half. And my mom, she was actually born in Fort Worth, Texas. She's Anglo. She said she's Cherokee, but they all say that. I'm a quarter Pima and a quarter Tohono O'odham. I was actually enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community, which is actually west of here also. The tribes that are represented in Gila River are represented in Salt River where I reside. In 1996, I relinquished my membership from Gila River and I was adopted into the tribe of the Salt River in 1996. I'm not sure how many of you know one of our former presidents Ivan Makil. He was the president at that time and I call him daddy because he was the president and he accepted my enrollment. So I call Ivan my father since he adopted me into the tribe in 1996. But I've been a member of that tribe ever since then and like I said, I feel very humble to serve in this position, being an adoptee into the tribe, and it's been I think a learning experience for me. And I'm sure all of you will have a good experience and there'll be some bad experiences, but I really enjoy it.

I'd like to go ahead and get started. Just a little bit about our community. Again, there's two tribes, the Akimel O'odham, which are the Pima tribe, and the Xalychidom Piipaash, which are the Maricopas. The Maricopa tribe actually resided in the Yuma area again, which is along the Colorado, which is the western boundary of Arizona. And the history says in the early 1800s there was an uprising in that area and that the tribes that were located there were chasing the Maricopa people wanting to kill them, to destroy them and when they chased them as far as into the Pima territory, which is now Sacaton, they said that the Pimas made an arrangement with them that if they would help, if the Pimas would help them, that they would help the Pimas fight their enemies, which at the time were the Apache tribe. So what happened, the Pimas and the Maricopas banded together and they killed all, the history said they killed all of them except one, and they sent him back to the Yuma territory and told him not to come back here because the Maricopa and the Pima were now one tribe. So that's how the history tells us that the Pimas and the Maricopas came together. And they resided in the Gila River Reservation, which is Sacaton and the reservation is pretty large. The Pimas and the Maricopas are known as farmers and they farmed that area. And the settlers, when they came in they were really impressed with the produce that was produced by the Natives there, the irrigation systems. And so that's what they did until the settlers came in up east and they started damming up the river and so the water stopped flowing. And when the water stopped flowing a group of the Pimas and the Maricopas headed north up to what now is the Salt River Reservation.

Right now we have, as of December 31st, 2009, our enrollment stood at 9,110 members. And I'll just kind of give you a view of our community. I want you to kind of look at this outline right here, this red area. I do that because in our community, in January 10th of 1879, [President] Rutherford B. Hayes by executive order gave this land to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and at the time it was 680,000 acres of land, which encompasses Phoenix, Tolleson -- if you know that area -- all the way down to Chandler. And actually boundaries of the Gila River Reservation, it comes up and it follows the canyon, the Salt River all the way up into the Salt River Canyon. Again, it was 680,000 acres and approximately six months later, because of pressure from the settlers that were in that area, it was changed to this, which we now have our land and again that piece was established June 14th 1879. Again, six months later it was changed to what we have now, which is 52,600 acres. So in the span of six months we lost approximately 630,000 acres. I wanted to show this picture to you also and just keep in your mind this area right here, the western boundary. Again this is Scottsdale area. As far as location to our community this is Scottsdale, you've got Tempe boundaries here, Mesa, Fountain Hills, and so we're surrounded by these surrounding cities here. So that's our community and again I want you to think about this part when we go into our discussion.

As far as our enrollment, the 9,000 members, half of that, 50 percent of that we are told is under 18 years of age. So our population, a lot of it again is under 18. As far as our land base, again there's 52,600 acres, 19,000 of that is held in natural preserve and that encompasses our sacred mountain, which we call the Red Mountain. If you go into that area, you'll see the Red Mountain, it's very beautiful. And behind the mountain we have only a portion of the river now that flows. Right now the river is actually flowing pretty good because of the rainfall and the snow that we have. They're releasing water through the river. So the river through Phoenix is actually running right now, which is really nice. And right now we have about 12,000 acres that's under agriculture. And just to let you know, right now we do not have any community members -- like I said the Pimas and Maricopas were known as farmers -- we do not have any community members that farm. The land that's being farmed is from outside and they're leasing the land from the community members.

Just wanted to go back here now and talk about our for-profit enterprises. We do have a casino. We actually have two casinos. It's called Casino Arizona. We're actually right now in construction. We have a soft opening, which we'll be opening April the 15th. That's tax day, so if you guys want to spend your tax money or you need tax money to pay I encourage you to come to our new casino that will be opening. It's actually a 15-story resort with 498 rooms, with restaurants, everything you can think of that's there. That's the two casinos that we have. And we also have Saddleback Communications that provides communication to our community members and all the businesses that is encompassed in our community. We have the Salt River Materials Group, which is a sand and rock operation and also with that we have a cement plant, which isn't located in our community. It's approximately 120 miles north in the Prescott, the Cottonwood area, but our community does own the cement plant. We have DevCo, which is a real estate management and development [company]. It goes out and finds those that are interested in developing in our community and they work with them. We have the Talking Stick Golf Course, which is two 18-hole golf courses that's located right next to the new resort that's coming up; it's operated by Troon Golf. And the spring training facility that's under development, I don't want to say this too loud because the two teams that will be housed in our facility is the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks who are in their last year of being here in Tucson. And I know Tucson got kind of upset when they found out that they were leaving. Next year they will be down in our area and that's the first time that any spring training facility has ever been built in Indian Country so we're pretty happy about them making the agreement to build in our community. And then we have a Salt River Landfill, which has been in our community for quite a few years and for the longest time that was the moneymaker for the tribe until the casino came along. We do have non-profit enterprises. Our Salt River Financial Services Institution, we'll get into that a little bit more. Our Salt River Community Housing Division, our Salt River Education Department and the Salt River Community Children's Foundation. The Children's Foundation organization has been put together, employees are able to, if they wish to donate through their payroll and it goes to a foundation that helps the youth in our community and things that the children need. And then the other governmental services that the government provides for as far as public works, just the regular government services and programs that we have. Again, that's the map.

Today we're going to be talking about, as far creating an environment for a community member-owned business, the opportunities, access to contracting, technical assistance, coaching and education, financing, access to capital and the policy making, the procurement and vendor relations. Since the 1990s in our procurement policy for the tribe, community member preference was included as far as language in the procurement policy but there was never another step, it was just there. So nobody really knew what to do for the community members that wanted to start a business. They didn't know what to do; they didn't know the process. But even though there was no process we just wanted to point out that even though that wasn't working we have two community members that have nationally recognized companies. One of them is Pima Awards and the other is O'odham Ki and they're a construction company and the other one is awards. I think anything that we get in our community as far as when people come and they give them gifts, little trinkets and whatever, our Pima Awards, which is our community-owned business, provides those, tournaments that they have, T-shirts they give out. We got to Pima Awards, which is a community member-owned business. The O'odham Ki Construction, they've built a lot of buildings in our community. Not only in our community, but they've done a lot of business off the community and they got their business started off the community. They got started off the community and then they're coming back on to the community. Requests were made to support building community-owned businesses and that request came primarily from these two individuals that started. And they knew how hard it was to get started and how hard it was to work through the government to get things going. So they came back and they requested to the community that we need to start supporting the community-owned businesses. And then the council created a technical assistance and lending entity to support the development of the community-owned business system. We'll get into that as far as the technical assistance.

From 2000 to 2006, the Community engaged in the planning and development of the Community Development Financial Institution. The CDFI, the Community Development Financial Institution, is part of the U.S. Treasury and its funding is given, but there has to be a certification that has to be done by the tribe to receive that type of funding. So the community went through the process and they were given some funding underneath that program of the Treasury. The goals of the CDFI included development of full-service financial education programs for all community members. And I can tell you that through that program there have been numerous individuals, community members that have received education on financial education on how it works as far as trying to get a business started. And they also provide the loans, home loans for the community members. A lot of these things weren't available until this institution came about. Then the council created a non-profit CDFI on April 5th, 2006, called the Salt River Financial Services Institution and that's put in place again to help community members understand what they're getting into. A lot of times, community members know what they want to do they just don't know how to get started so that was put in place for the community members to go to get information on what they need to do. And a full-service individual and group technical support financial education and entrepreneurship classes were also offered. Next was the financing. The community member-owned businesses and people wishing to be entrepreneurs were missing access to capital. A lot of time our community members had no relationship with banks. They didn't know how it worked. When they tried to go get money, if you do not have credit history, we all know that they are not going to give you a loan to start anything up, so a lot of them fit into that category. They didn't have any banking history. That's what the next bullet point is, they were un-banked. That's what that means. They didn't have any type of credit history. The technical assistance allowed the creation of a lending program.

The technical assistance -- here we're talking about again is the Salt River Financial Institute. It was created to provide micro-loans to launch new entrepreneurs from ideas to action. And these micro-loans were loans that were for $50,000 or less, and sometimes that's not enough to get a business going, but at least it's there to help them to get started. Again, a lot of them had ideas, but they didn't have the finances to do it so it helped them act on the action that they had. The next one is the community and the policy making to support the entrepreneurship. The community is home to an active association of business owners. Again, the two individuals that I had talked about, they started the Salt River Business Association. We used to call it the Small Business Association. They got onto us. They said we're not the Small Business Association; we're the Salt River Business Owners Association. They made that clear. And so in 2005, the organization continued to work with the Salt River government to find avenues to create policies that community member business owners are friendly and by that meaning preference. They're given preference. One of the things that's kind of hard is that a lot of times the businesses that are coming in that are trying to get work didn't have the experience and a lot of times as an example of building a building and you want the best. You want to make sure they have the experience and know what they're doing. So a lot of them didn't have that experience and it was kind of hard for them to get started, the opportunities were hard to come by and so the community staff worked with the Salt River Business Association. In 2006, again the financial association was created to lend us support and right now the institution, the Salt River Financial [Services] Institution has a staff of about eight people and again people go in, if they have questions, they're there to help them. The Salt River government purchasing policies, again when opportunities are there, they go through the list, they see the community-owned businesses and they're given preference to have opportunities to do business with the community and again I kind of made example of the Pima Awards. When something comes up, they're given preference because they're a community-owned business.

The community office staff also developed a procurement preference language in the master commercial lease language of the Pima Corridor. When we started -- and I showed you the map of the community -- I made reference to the western boundary. The western boundary of our community, there's the 101 Freeway goes through there and when that was put in, that was strategically put in to create an economic development corridor through there. It's about a quarter of a mile in some areas, it's a nine-mile stretch and it goes from the southern boundary up to the northern boundary. In some areas it's wider than a quarter of a mile, but that area has been set up for economic development. We really feel it's important that since the community developed this corridor that we educate our community members on the potential opportunities that they're going to have in that area to have a business or to provide service for people that have businesses there. So that was some of the things that the staff has worked with as far as the business association.

The community and the policy making to support entrepreneurship, the procurement policy was written to be specific about what preference means and how it is implemented. Preference is given in succession. First, community-owned businesses. And in talking with staff...okay, well, second, the community member-owned businesses and third, other Native American-owned businesses. The community-owned businesses like we pointed out the enterprises that we own like the Salt River Materials Group. If there's anything that goes on construction wise, the community-owned businesses have preference. If there's other things that come in that we do not supply, just say like paper, if we need paper. If there's a community-owned, member-owned business that supplies paper, they get preference and that's the way it's been set up. And if we don't, if there's another Native American company out there that has it, it goes through the succession and then it just goes down the line, then we go to another Native American, if it's not out there, then we just go out and get what we need. The certification process was created. The intent of the certification process was to insure that organizations are not fronts.

My previous job before I came to work for the tribe, I worked for an asphalt company. And when an individual found out, that worked for the asphalt company, found out I was working for the tribe, he approached me and he asked me if I wanted to go into business with him as far as doing roads, laying down asphalt. It sounded really good. He said that I would be 49-percent owner of the company and that way -- actually 50 percent -- and that way we could go in front of council when job opportunities came. And because preference was given to community members we would get those jobs. And this was put into place to insure that those things wouldn't happen and I think it's important when you see things like this. I didn't think about it, I really thought it was a good idea. I was thinking, "˜Wow, we could make some money here.' But somebody informed me that when you use a front, and say I'd went with this individual and we did a road, after the road's completed, my partner leaves. Say six months down the road, and it's a one-year guarantee on that road, something happens to that road. Well, they're going to come after me; they're not going to go after the other guy. So I'm going to be responsible. And I think that's important and I think that's why a lot of Natives were taken by this, is that they need to know that they're responsible for anything that they do in Indian Country. After it's put down that they're going to be responsible, not the individual that used them as a front to get that project. So that was put in to make sure that there wasn't any fronts.

Certification of community member-owned businesses is based upon the community member owned no less than 51 percent of the business, community members perform active day-to-day, hands-on role in the management and operation of the business and the community member is entitled to no less than 51 percent of the profits of the business. Part of the policy, the procedures that go through of certifying community-owned businesses is that they are asked to show their taxes from the year before. If they say that they're a business, they need to show their taxes to prove that they are the owner of that business. And we've had community members that get upset and they say, "˜We're not going to do it,' but the community has held fast to say, "˜No, you will show us just because of the fact that we do not want fronts coming in and doing business like this.' So that was put in to help make sure that there wasn't fronts.

Right now in our community there are currently 27 preferred vendors on our list. We have six community-owned businesses, enterprises, twelve community member-owned businesses, and nine Native American-owned businesses. And today, total value of the community member-owned business contracts since October 1, 2008, is $10,747,540.30, which is quite a bit of money. I think it just shows the success of our community members. And what's next for the community in this arena? Youth entrepreneur camp; again our financial institute puts on a camp at Arizona State University to help with our youth. We really feel that's important. Our tribe does pay per capita out to its members. We have a lot of youth that have trust money and by the time they turn 18 they have quite a bit of money. And it's very important we feel as leaders that they know what they need to do when they get that money. A lot of them get it and they'll just throw it away and it's gone. This is an opportunity for them to learn. If they wanted to get into business, they can learn these at an early age. Again, the financial institute, the researching, the development of the Future Business Leaders of America chapter, to continue financial education and lending opportunities and refining policies to support and manage the creation of new opportunities for the community-owned businesses. So these are some of the things that we are doing as leadership in our community. We know how important it is of our members that want to be successful and we know there's a lot of them that have ideas and they have goals but they don't know what to do and the process. So we've been trying to set up ways that will help them and we think that's very important and our council supports these departments in doing that. So with that, thank you."

Martin Harvier and Monica Simeon: Building Sustainable Economies: Approaches and Perspectives (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Martin Harvier, Vice President of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Communty, and Monica Simeon, CEO and Principal Partner of Sister Sky, field questions from the audience about their roles in building sustainable economies for their respective nations.

Resource Type
Citation

Harvier, Martin and Monica Simeon. "Building Sustainable Economies: Approaches and Perspectives (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation.

Stephen Cornell:

"We've got a little more than 20 minutes so please, questions for Martin about what Salt River has done or anything else, questions for Monica about Sister Sky and their experience. The floor is open. Any questions?"

Audience member:

"Martin, you're 51 percent Native-owned and your policy on purchasing or acquiring stuff through Native partners, correct?"

Martin Harvier:

"Yes."

Audience member: 

"How do you mitigate the price gouging or something around that area, because we had the same thing happen on our reservation?"

Martin Harvier:

"You know, that's kind of a concern right now. There are some...let's just take the paper like I said, somebody selling paper. There are some businesses that let's say they were in another area, but because of our policy and the preference that's given to community members, a lot of them will get into something that they weren't involved in because they know they have preference. It's been very difficult, but the tribe has had to look --especially with the economy, the downturn in the economy -- we still have to look out for the best interest of the community and there's been some that we've had to say, "˜You know what,' some of them are getting into it and they're actually the middle man. So they're purchasing the product and they're jacking the price up when the community can go directly to whoever is producing that product and get it cheaper. There's actually been a...the community has actually tried to put a price range that if they fall within that frame, they'll still use the community business, they'll still try to work with them. But we've actually had that, where some community members that are in a business, but they see an opportunity over here and they'll go into it and it actually kind of jacks the price up a little bit. But the community, as leaders we still have the fiduciary responsibility of our community, we've actually had to say, "˜We can't pay that much for this product.'

Audience member:

"Have there been instances where you had to go off reservation to non-Indian companies?"

Martin Harvier:

"Oh, yeah." 

Audience member:

"I mean even though there is a company on the reservation. How do you get the community member who ventures off just to jack up the price? How do you get the community member to kind of finally realize to stay within the means?"

Martin Harvier:

"It all goes back to certification. When they get their certification that they're on the list of preferred vendors, to get on that list we already kind of know what price structure they're going to use. So if there's a product and they're on that list, I'm not sure, I forget how many we said we have on that list. We know we can go to them and get a good price, but what I'm saying is that there have been individuals that see that opportunity and they'll go out and they'll do that. They'll be the middle man for another individual. There also is a bidding process that goes in. I'm sorry. There is a bidding process that happens. We just don't take the one. If there's others that provide that product, there is a bidding process that goes through to get the best price."

Stephen Cornell:

"Other questions? Yes."

Audience member:

"I just want to applaud the courage that both of you have throughout because I can imagine...[unintelligible]. The question that I have centers around the two-pronged issue around how do you go about [unintelligible] and protecting your traditional knowledge so that competitors don't imitate your product. And then second, how do you go about ascertaining that knowledge within your community in a good way so that you draw the knowledge in your community [because] I can tell the community has grown in pride, in knowing that they know their medicines and herbs...[unintelligible]?"

Monica Simeon:

"That's a great question, thank you, and we've really struggled with that as we've grown. We started doing a lot of research on, if you're a company and you are marketing your product based on heritage, there is a lot you must be mindful of in terms of maintaining that honor and that authenticity but that respect. We took great pains to write missions and values, to always come back to that. If there were any way that we felt we would offend or be too specific with the plant tradition, then we weren't going to do it. That's critical. Now, one other way that we've been able to maintain and validate our authenticity is the Made by American Indians trademark. So it's a great product, it's a great fragrance, but it really is about a bigger social cause. When you buy a Made by American Indian product, you're supporting sustainability, job creation and economic diversification. So those are things that the consumer says, "˜Yeah, I want to be a positive part of that.' Aveda tried to launch a line called 'Indigenous' and this happened back in 2003, I believe. Aveda is a great international company, national company out of Minneapolis, very big, bought out by Estee Lauder but when they launched 'Indigenous,' consumers said, "˜How dare you? You are not Indigenous; you're not from a community. You're a big corporation. Don't do this.' And they had such an outcry that they actually pulled the line. So now I know how much they spent in product development, in marketing and everything else but they were sensitive to the outcry of the consumers. We've been in business since 1999 and we were always very afraid that somebody may say, "˜Uh, how dare you do this?,' but our Native communities really hold us up and say, "˜Good job.' But they say it because we're firmly founded in our values in what we want to do, in what we want to bring to market. Now to kind of piggyback off of what Martin has shared, I've had people come to me and say, "˜Could you sell these? Gosh, you have a great niche market.' Does it go back to promoting positive cultural sharing? "˜No, I'm sorry, I can't sell ash trays, I can't sell whatever it is, I'm not in construction. That's not what I do.' So I've seen that and I've experienced that, but when we build our businesses, our community-based businesses, build it on a solid foundation because you want to build a business that's not just going to be here but for my kids and my grandkids."

Stephen Cornell:

"Charlie, yeah?"

Audience member:

"I had a question and I think it's more for Martin, but I am overwhelmed in a way by the observation and appreciation for what you all are doing. As a non-Native, I think that the narratives that the Native community brings and shares with the non-Native community is really important and you are both creating inspiring and positive narratives, not only for your own communities but for the other, the non-Native communities. That's my observation. And I guess my question to Martin, I first heard about this on a story that ran on NPR nationally last October and I went online and I actually copied the transcripts for that in the link and sent it to non-Native participants in my communities so they would understand the power and the opportunity of working with tribes in area of economic development. I came a little bit late, so I'm not sure if you covered it, but could you talk a little bit more about your community's hosting and working with non-Native enterprises and business and in fact extending your tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction to non-Native businesses, which is kind of flipping the equation around? Can you talk a little bit more about that, unless you covered it before I came in?"

Martin Harvier: 

"I don't think we really kind of touched on that. I think for the longest time, we call them people from the outside -- developers -- had a fear of developing on Indian Country, just the process that it goes through. A lot of them, the developers that come in and develop, if they develop off community the process is a lot quicker. You see an empty lot there, six months later you have a building. There's processes that you go through in Indian Country probably you all know. Our community has not only tribal land, but allotted land. So a lot of the land that we have is individually owned by community members, so there's a process it goes through. The area that I talked about, the corridor in our area where the development takes place, the tribe owns very little of that property. So when somebody comes in and they meet with a landowner or Devco, our development company, and talk about that property, they can talk to them but then they have to go talk to the individual landowners to see if that's something they even want to do on the community. The process is they work with our community staff but also after that's all done the Bureau of Indian Affairs still has to approve it. So there's a process, and a lot of times developers that come from the outside don't want to go through the process. We had a big kind of a fight with developers in our community. As you know, in a lot of Indian Country, infrastructure's not there. When you develop, if the infrastructure's there it has to be there so what we had to do, our infrastructure fees were so low we had to raise them. And it was a time when the economy was bad and the developers were coming and using the landowners against the council saying, "˜Hey, we'll go somewhere else,' threatening to leave in that area. Well, as a council we had to stand strong because that funding will help support that area as far as fire, police and the water. We had to do it to put the infrastructure there for the development to take place. They fought it but after it was all done and council improved the increase of impact fees, the complaining stopped and the development continued to happen. And sometimes tribes just have to stand strong because...they just have to because that stuff's just not there. But I think there's just a fear...example, even back to bank loans. There was a time when banks would not loan to Native Americans, especially like a mobile home. They would not take a mobile home on a trailer because if they didn't pay their bill, they didn't have the process of going out there and picking it up and a lot of that's been changed. The court systems have allowed them to come out and do that, so there's a lot of changes that happened in Indian Country that allow developers to come in and develop, the process. And I believe we have good staff. We have good staff that know the process and they're able to work with the Bureau, they're able to work with the landowners and get things done. And I think we've really enjoyed seeing the development that's happening in our community. It's getting a lot easier."

Stephen Cornell:

"I've got a question for Monica. It's clear that you've got a lot of support from your community and pride in the community and what you've done. Could you say a little bit about the degree of support or encouragement or even practical help that you've had from the tribal government and what role they've played either in your success, or if they've been obstacles you've had to overcome or how has that worked out?"

Monica Simeon:

"I think my tribal council and tribal government have been supportive in terms of bringing us in. And actually we got a $35,000 grant from them through a community economic development program or our tribe. The Spokane Tribe took a series of six entrepreneurs and gave us grant money. We had every aspect of business from start-ups to businesses like ours and I have to tell you, putting everybody in that kind of environment where we learned from one another and mentored one another, that was an incredible opportunity. And in that video you saw, we only had two piston fillers, we actually got another set through the tribe's grant program. So they continue to support us. We still continue to be kind of a rare thing, certainly in our community, and we found a lot of support nationally in Indian Country. So from other Native entrepreneurs to other tribal leaders, we found that support base. That's what I love about owning a company that caters to Indian Country is because we really do have that ability to become unified, to support one another, to share resources, Native business to Native business. So it's been...you have to get out there and you have to network and you have to meet the people, but once you invest in that time in building those relationships you do have a very strong network to pull from."

Stephen Cornell:

"My other question -- unless somebody's got a hand up -- was to Martin and that was financial literacy and whether the...I know some tribes have invested a good deal in financial literacy programs partly just for their own citizens to gain financial literacy but also as a support for entrepreneurs, because many of them have people who want to start a business but have very little experience with financial management, and I was just wondering if that's something that you all have done and what your experience has been with the need for or the delivery of financial literacy."

Martin Harvier:

"We touched on the Salt River Financial Institute, that's one of the enterprises that we turn to as far as educating our community members, our youth, on financing. We also have the Boys and Girls Club, which is good. They also give information to our youth as far as financing. Like I touched on, it's very important we feel as a council, as leadership, and again it goes back to we see it all the time when our children, our youth turn adult and they get their stipend of trust money. A lot of times they get it and it's gone and they're out there in the community, a lot of times they'll buy a car, which is an old car and the next thing you know it's broke down. They don't have a car. They'll loan it to friends. They don't know what to do. They get a bunch of money and they don't know how to use it. With the Institute, with the Boys and Girls Club, I think it's instilling in them, giving them ideas of what they can do. Again, I touched on the corridor, the construction that's going on, the opportunities that they'll have. We need to open up their minds. Even in the schools we've been telling them, we need to get them in the fields that when they get out of school they know where they can go to get an occupation. So we've been trying to educate again through the Institute, through the Boys and Girls Club to the school. Again, it's very important that our youth understand that the money that they get's not going to last forever, they need to invest it in a way that will help not only them but their children and their grandchildren."

 

 

Indian Pride: Episode 108: Economic Development

Producer
Prairie Public
Year

This episode of the "Indian Pride" television series, aired in 2007, explores the economic development efforts of selected Native nations cross Indian Country. It also features an interview with Lance Morgan, CEO of the Winnebago Trib'es Ho-Chunk, Inc., who provides an overview of the evolution of Ho-Chunk, Inc. and how it is working to grow and diversify the Winnebago Tribe's economy in order to make it sustainable.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Prairie Public. "Indian Pride (Episode 108): Economic Development." Indian Pride television series. Prairie Public. Fargo, North Dakota. 2007. Video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFibj75MUi0, accessed July 24, 2023)