Ian Record:

“Well I’m here with John McCoy who is the general manager of Quil Ceda Village, which is an economic development entity of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington, and he also serves as representative for District 38 in the State of Washington legislature. I’d like to thank you for being with us today.”

John McCoy:

“I’m very happy to be here.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to start by asking you a question that I ask of virtually everyone I sit down and chat with and that is, how would you define Native nation building and what does it specifically involve for your nation?”

John McCoy:

“Native nation building is providing whatever particular tribe it is the tools in order for them to govern themselves and provide tools like economic development for self-sufficiency.”

Ian Record:

“How about for Tulalip, what does that involve for you, that process that you just described?”

John McCoy:

“Well, at Tulalip we began a number of years ago. In the ‘80s our chairman at the time, Stan Jones, was very instrumental in getting the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act passed in 1988. And so with that act then, tribes started to move to build these casinos so that they can get resources to do economic development. So at Tulalip, we opened our first casino in ‘92, but we had a bingo operation that opened in ‘82, then a casino that opened in ‘92 and we began the process of diversification. And so consequently, through that diversification, we created Quil Ceda Village, which is a federal city that we created with the help of the federal government. And so that established our economic base and the need to start diversifying, because gaming could go away at the stroke of a pen on any day, any time, so we needed to diversify. So we’ve been on a quest, if you will, of diversifying our economic base. Right now, the base is primarily retail and gaming, but we need to do other things, technical, biomed, biotech, anything along those lines. And so I am working to attract those type businesses to Tulalip. So this is a long-term process, that is our vision and our goal and every now and then we’ll meet to adjust the goal. We don’t change the goal, we adjust it, and then figure out what we need to do for the next five years to get to that goal.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned that Quil Ceda Village, which has become the economic engine along with gaming for the Tulalip Tribes and specifically moved it down this path of economic diversification, which as you mentioned is critical to sustainability because you don’t want to be in the situation where you have that one economy or that one industry that you’re relying solely on. How did Tulalip Tribes come to the point where it said, ‘Federally chartered city, this is the way to go,’ because as far as I know, you’re the only tribe that has a federally chartered city?”

John McCoy:

“Yes, we do. In fact, there are only two federal cities in the United States: Quil Ceda Village and Washington, D.C. We’re the only two. Back in ‘94, summer of ‘94, we had a general council meeting and out of that general council meeting they told the business manager, who was me, that I was not to do any development on the interior of the reservation, I could only do development in the northeast corner of the reservation along I-5. So with that in mind, I started looking around at the properties up there in the northeast corner of the reservation. Well, at the time, a very large chunk of it was taken up by Boeing. Boeing had their test facility out there where they tested engines, where they did the shooting the chicken into the windshield, testing the covers off missile silos; they did all kinds of interesting things out there. Well, that lease was to lapse in 2001, but they had the option, their option, to extend it out to 2011. So looking at everything that had been done, and I talked with the council and they basically told me, ‘Politely ask Boeing to leave, that we need that property for our economic development.’ So I began the discussion with Boeing and they agreed that they would leave in 2001. We actually...they started their cleanup and dismantling their facilities out there and they discovered that they actually could leave by 1999. So they actually left, but they still paid us for the two years left remaining on the lease, which was nice of them. And then we proceeded about the development of Quil Ceda Village. Well, a reservation attorney and I had been having numerous conversations about, ‘How should we structure this? What would be the most advantageous to the tribe?’ And our reservation attorney, a lot of folks know Mike Taylor, he’s quite an innovative guy. And so he came and he said, ‘Well, this has never been done before and I’ve done a lot of these business deals and structures and everything.’ He said, ‘Let’s try a federal city.’ And I had to think about that, right, because no other tribe had done it. The Navajo had done one, but it was purely within their own bounds and for their own reasons; ours was to attract off-reservation businesses on to the reservation. So our structure was totally different than the Navajo model. So we created this federal city. We had to get approval of the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], Department of Justice, and Department of Interior, and that’s a very long story, but anyway, we got it done. And so we created the city and we did that for a couple reasons: to position ourselves to be able to employ our own taxes -- and a lot of folks just don’t understand tribal governments. You say 'tribal government' and their eyes roll back in their heads. They just don’t get it. They don’t...whereas almost every tribal government in the United States is structured like a state government, everybody understands state government, but for some reason when you say tribal government, they just lose it. So we created the Consolidated Borough of Quil Ceda Village and called it a municipality. Then everybody was okay with that, they understood that. And so we created a charter, we created ordinances, and we put them all online. So anybody can go to the Quil Ceda Village website and see all our ordinances and our charter and our leasing procedures. Our leasing procedures were very important because then potential tenants could go online and see what the process was, have their attorneys look at it, and then we could work on a deal. So we had something that they could see and that it was a process and they understood the process. So there was no mystery there. The only hang up that we get is that we have a very aggressive -- progressive, not aggressive -- progressive court system and so any disputes we have in the contracts they’ll be done in tribal court. Well, a lot of them balk at that. We’ve had some tenants that we really wanted, wouldn’t come in just because of that fact, but I also reminded them that their court system was hostile to me. So it’s not a good environment. I said, ‘Our court system is very progressive.’ And in fact, in ‘94 I went to West Law and asked them if they would post tribal ordinances and opinions and court decisions and all that; [they] didn’t want to talk to me. Three years ago, they come to the door, ‘Would you join us?’ And I said, 'Naturally, we’ll join you.’ And so now our opinions, ordinances and decisions are posted on West Law so that everybody can see our track record. And a number of other tribes are doing that also, which is very good for Indian Country because now everyone can see how the courts are functioning and they can have a degree of basically a predictable outcome and that way tribes will then get full faith and credit. So that’s the big deal, full faith and credit.”

Ian Record:

“So you made reference to the charters, the codes, the ordinances, the procedures that you guys had to put in place to make this very innovative approach to economic development work. Can you speak to perhaps some of the other legal infrastructures, the other political infrastructures and perhaps the capacities that you guys had to put in place to really pull this thing off?”

John McCoy:

“It was very deliberative because we had to plan everything and put it in sequence. We had to come up with a ‘governmental structure’ for the Quil Ceda Village. And so what we did is that Quil Ceda Village is a political subdivision of the Tulalip Tribes, but it has three council members. Those three council members govern what goes on in Quil Ceda Village. And so once we established that, then we got our charter done and then we started employing our ordinances. Now we employed ordinances as we need them because me as a state legislator understand that too many ordinances become an encumbrance. And so I’m trying to address some of those issues in the state government. But in Quil Ceda Village, because I have some control over it, we only issue ordinances as we run into problems or if we anticipate a problem, we see something coming down and then we’ll create an ordinance and then we’ll post it. And it’s done...that process is just like any other municipality. They have to have two open meetings and then...before the passage of the ordinance. They are public meetings. All our meetings are posted online. So we put all those in place and we’re functioning like a government. We do everything else that any other municipality does. We take care of roads, traffic lights, street lights, water lines, sewer lines and we also have a state-of-the-art sewer plant.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned your tribal court system and how progressive it is. We’ve had occasion to bring one of your judges, Theresa Pouley, down to some of our seminars with tribal leaders and she takes them through a very powerful overview of the incredible work that they’re doing there in the court system. Can you talk about that court system and specifically what prompted Tulalip to essentially reclaim the function of justice, providing justice to the tribes? Because previous to the establishment of the current court system that was something that the State of Washington largely had control of.”

John McCoy:

“Right. For a tribal government to operate effectively, they need all the tools in the tool bag in order to be effective in the protection of their sovereignty, the treaty protections and those issues. So in ‘94, Mike Taylor again, he said, ‘John, we need to get the state to retrocede.' So I took that up and I went to Olympia and created legislation. It took me a couple years to get it passed, but they finally passed it. I kept reminding them while I was lobbying them saying, ‘There’s seven other tribes that already retroceded so you’re just adding us.’ But there were some tense moments of some very conservative-viewed people that didn’t like that idea that law enforcement, tribal law enforcement could arrest somebody. So that happened on both sides of the aisles, it just wasn’t any one party. So that took a little bit of work on my part, but we got it done. So then that allowed us to open up and create our own law enforcement department. Well, when you’re going to be doing things in law enforcement, you need a court system. So we started building the court system along with the law enforcement. We built them together. And so our court system has gotten quite progressively, like I’ve said. They do the standard court proceedings, but we also do the one step further in bringing in our culture. We have an elders' panel that reviews and works with first time offenders. So these are non-violent crimes; violent crimes have got to do the normal process, but the non-violent crimes, the elder panel will do an intervention and they will work with them and hopefully help them to see the error of their ways and that they start making the appropriate decisions. So that’s actually been quite effective and so we’re quite proud of it. And so because of the notoriety we got from our court system being honored by the Honoring [Nations] Program, we’ve had tribes from around the nation come in to see our courts and we’ve also had Afghan come to our court to view it. And one of their...the professor that...the UW professor that brought them up, through his wife, who is a state legislator, had informed me that after the visit to our court system the Afghan judge said, ‘Well, your western law’s okay, but we like that tribal court better.’ So that was quite a feather in the hat.”

Ian Record:

“And your court system over the past several years has really begun to produce some pretty dramatic results in terms of its ability to combat crime through the alternative methods, through the restorative justice approach than the predecessor did it, and it’s the kind of standard western punitive approach to justice.”

John McCoy:

“Right.”

Ian Record:

“Isn’t that right?”

John McCoy:

“Yes. So that’s why I, down in the state legislature I talk about those things down there. Why, these first-time offenders, why do we got to throw them in jail? Why don’t we have an intervention program? So the state had been doing drug courts, which were good. Unfortunately, this last session there were some budget cuts and a few of the drug courts got cut. But we need to do more of that. Tribes know how to do it. They’ve been doing them for millenniums and that’s how they...that’s what their court system was, intervention and trying to show them the error of their ways and start making more appropriate decisions. So there’s...I say that our non-Indian friends, I tell them, I said, ‘Don’t you get a little envious that you don’t have any culture? You have none. Whereas we have some culture, we have some history that for millennium and we did things like that.’ So to me it’s the right approach. That’s how it should be done. Just take the first-time offender. Most of the time it’s a young person, young people they think they’re indestructible. The world is their playpen and basically they do the right things and then for maybe 30 seconds out of their life they did something wrong. If it’s non-violent, we should intervene and help them work through that, not throw them in jail because if you incarcerate them, where are they going? They’re going in with a bunch of other bad people that really do bad things and they give their stories to this person and they pick up some more bad things to do. So let’s keep them out, let’s intervene first. If it doesn’t work, then you do the other methods.”

Ian Record:

“So just how critical are tribal justice systems overall, which include the court, law enforcement, etc., just how critical a role do they play in rebuilding Native nations?”

John McCoy:

“That is all part of the structure. That is how you...how you use and deploy, implement your sovereignty. Those are tools. This is how it leads to self-sufficiency. You have control of your destiny. You are making tribal governments make the rules. They just need a court system to help them follow the rules that they wrote, which is only appropriate because that’s what everybody else does, so why not us? So law enforcement and court systems, health systems, family services, those are all integral parts of a tribal government in order to be self-sustaining and self-governing.”

Ian Record:

“A follow-up question to that about justice systems: what role do they play in terms of supporting a Native nation’s efforts to create a strong economy, a strong sustainable economy?”

John McCoy:

“Law enforcement gives your customer base a sense of safety, that there’s somebody here to protect me when I’m there. At Quil Ceda Village during the normal week, we get over 30,000 visitors a day. During the weekend, it’s over 50,000 a day. So the mere presence of the law enforcement vehicle cruising the parking lots and the streets and everything gives everybody a sense of safety, that they’re protected and that they can come here and enjoy whatever the amenities are and not have to worry about being harmed.”

Ian Record:

“The research of the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project has found that in fact, justice systems are a critical pivotal factor in whether a Native nation can create a strong economy, one that can stand the test of time and I’m curious to know, the Tulalip Tribes are one of those regarded as having a very strong, a very independent, empowered court system. And so from that experience, I was wondering if you could speak to what you feel are the requirements of a strong, independent court system. What does it look like, what does it require? Granted it may, because of cultural reasons, it may look a little bit different from place to place, it may employ different methods, but in terms of organizationally, functionally, institutionally, what does a strong independent court system require?”

John McCoy:

“Again, you hear me say tools a lot. This is a tool. Naturally you need your judges, experienced trained judges. You need your court clerks and that they know how to run the court so that the judges can do what they do and don’t have to worry about the administration; so you need a good strong administrative section. You also need public defenders because not everybody can afford an attorney; so you need public defenders. And then, we like to think all judges judge and sentence the same way. Well, they’re human beings and on occasion they make a mistake and so consequently you need an appeal system. So you have to have an appeal system in place so that something could be appealed. Now after that appeal, if you still don’t like it, well, then that’s when you move to the federal courts. So there is redress, you have protections of public defenders, you have your prosecutor and then they all are independent. They make their decisions, then you have the judge making their decision or the jury, yes, we have juries and we have an appeal system. So that’s what really makes it strong. You have all the elements, everybody knows what their job is and they just implement.”

Ian Record:

“And doesn’t that then require tribal leadership, particularly legislators who are setting a budget, to treat and fund those justice systems as a full arm of the government and not necessarily as a program? We often hear tribal judges for instance lament the fact that ‘Where I work, they treat us as just another program,’ versus something larger and something more encompassing.”

John McCoy:

“Right. They have to be independent. They have to be independent and not worry about political consequences. So consequently at Tulalip the court system comes in, here’s the budget. So normally, without hesitation they say, ‘Okay, here’s your money.’ They can’t tell them how to spend it, they just give them the money and then they...the court administration then takes care of the budget. So you have to give them that autonomy. Same with law enforcement, you’ve got to do the same with law enforcement. ‘Here’s your money, now you go do your job.’”

Ian Record:

“And I would assume that holds true for not just the justice systems, but the other critical functions of tribal government...”

John McCoy:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“...where leadership has to, at some point, say, ‘I’m going to delegate this authority to you to carry out the long-term goals of the nation.’”

John McCoy:

“Right. So that’s where the leadership, the elected leadership, their role is set policy, their role is not day-to-day administration. They set policy, then let their organizations function. Trust them, they’ll do the right thing.”

Ian Record:

“I want to turn back to economic development for a bit. And the NNI and Harvard Project research over the past few decades has clearly shown that rules are more important than resources when it comes to building strong economies. So for instance, you can be a nation with tremendous resources, perhaps natural resources, human resources, financial resources, but if you have a lousy set of institutions or rules, you’re going to be hampered in your ability to move your nation forward. Whereas, on the flip side, you may be a nation that has limited resources, but if you put in place a really good environment of rules you can really leverage those limited resources and begin to grow your nation and move it forward. Is that something you see and perhaps one of the reasons why Tulalip has paid such great attention to this issue of rules?”

John McCoy:

“That is correct. When I first came home in ‘94, I had gone off in the Air Force for 20 years and then I worked for a large computer firm for another 12 and then I came home. The rules and regulations and policies that were in place at the time were for a government of maybe 75 people or less. But when I came home in ‘94, we were up to just a little over 200 and so...and then policies, procedures and ordinances hadn’t been updated and so they were unwieldy, they were difficult to use for a larger organization. So we set about changing those. The first one we had to do, which was the most glaring, was a new human resources ordinance. That had to be done, it was accomplished, had input from lots of folks, and so it’s a good ordinance. The only issue that I might have with it, its management is guilty until proven innocent. Everything is on the employee. So anyway, it causes the managers to be really on their toes making sure that they’re doing things right. So in that process there’s also an employee grievance system, you need that. So you need some sort of dispute resolution in there so we have a very good dispute resolution process. So the rules are published and they’re out there for everybody to follow. When someone new comes onboard, they’re given a copy. ‘Here’s your copy of the human resources ordinance,’ and we make them sign a receipt for it so they acknowledge that they got it. Now we can’t make them read it, but it’s there for them. So then there was other ordinance, the ordinance of setting up the courts, the ordinance setting up the law enforcement, those had to be accomplished and then those things that they needed to make them function. So setting up strong policies is a necessity because you need predictability. Back running...when tribes were very small, employees of two, three, 10, 20, 30 people, well, you can run it like a mom-and-pop grocery store. Well, now, tribal governments are big business. They can’t be run like a mom-and-pop grocery store. You need processes in place to remove as much of the political atmosphere as possible so that they can function with reliability and respectability.”

Ian Record:

“So from what you’re saying, those are essentially vital to the efforts of the Tulalip Tribes and other Native nations across Indian Country to move from the days when they largely relied on a dependent economy, if you will, where they’re heavily reliant on outsiders for instance for federal appropriations and transfers to get by to essentially a situation where Native nations themselves are in the driver’s seat of economic development. So it’s those codes, it’s those institutions that you talked about. Are there any other vital pieces to that puzzle of moving from that dependent economy to a productive self-sufficient economy that you can share with us?”

John McCoy:

“Sure and it’s quite simple, it’s education. One of the things that I helped Dr. Alan Parker set up, and there are a number of [them] like at the University of Arizona, that you have these classes where you put in tribal government like the Master's of Political or Public Administration. At Evergreen State there’s, I think it’s two weeks of total immersion into tribal government as part of public administration. So that way when a tribal member gets an MPA, not only do they get exposed to the non-Indian type processes, but they get exposed to good practices in Indian Country so that they understand what their role is. So education is extremely important. At Tulalip, any tribal member that wants to go onto continuing education, whether it’s into the trades, community college, four-year university, graduate school, we pay for it.”

Ian Record:

“I want to start off with a general question, which is how does collaboration or building those relationships that I just mentioned empower Native nations to advance their strategic priorities?”

John McCoy:

“Okay, as you remember your history, we’ve been here for millennia. So we’ve always been here and we’re not going anywhere. Well, they’re not going anywhere either. So we have to learn to work and play together and you do that through collaboration, by working with the surrounding communities in solving the common problems. And we do, we have common problems. So for it to be a successful endeavor, then we need these collaborations not, like I said, we’ve got our own law enforcement, we have our own courts, but we still because we interact with non-Indians, we still need their law enforcement and their court system because when we catch a bad guy on the reservation who’s non-Indian, well, we’ve got to turn them over to the state court. So we have an MOU in place between our law enforcement and the Snohomish County Sheriffs that says, if we apprehend a non-Indian, we turn them over and they have the full faith and credit of the law officer that did the apprehension that his testimony in court will be valid. So in that process if we have to put an Indian in jail, well, we don’t have our own jail so we need an agreement with the county to incarcerate our person their jail and pay for it. So court system, same thing, working with cities on water agreements, sewer agreements. So we have a lot of common issues that we need to address and being able to work so that we build a trustful relationship because if everybody around us hates us, then it’s going to be difficult for your economic engine to work. So you have to work hard. It’s okay to say, ‘I’m Indian and this is my land,’ but we need your help and support. So you have to educate them about yourself so they know who they’re working with and then you can build these collaborative relationships.”

Ian Record:

“We see the sentiment out there in Indian Country and I think we’re seeing it less and less, but that tribal sovereignty means you need to insulate yourself and you need to kind of be those islands within surrounding hostility and therefore if you enter into some of these MOUs for instance with the state jurisdiction or local municipality you’re somehow relinquishing your sovereignty by doing that or by compromising your ideal solution if you will. But aren’t in fact those sorts of initiatives that Tulalip Tribes and many other tribes are taking more and more, aren’t those in fact an expression of sovereignty because you as a tribal government, as a nation are making that sovereign choice to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to engage this group. We’re going to engage this group, we’re going to develop this relationship in order to advance our strategic priorities’?”

John McCoy:

“That’s correct. At Tulalip, we view these collaboration efforts as strengthening our sovereignty. We’re not creating... Yes, in essence we’ve created an island, but it’s a seamless border because we’ve cross-deputized our officers; they can go on and off the reservation. In fact, yesterday the Washington State Supreme Court, even without an agreement, a tribal law enforcement [officer] can continue a fresh pursuit off reservation and that was a decision yesterday by the Washington State Supreme Court. So yes, in essence, if you want to look at a political boundaries and things, yes, it’s an island, but it’s how you employ it by collaborations, agreements, then those are just lines that can be crossed easily back and forth. And in Tulalip’s opinion, it strengthens our sovereignty because we’re getting recognition of our borders, of our jurisdiction.”

Ian Record:

“And it’s ultimately about solving problems. And I know from my research on Tulalip that you’re undertaking these sorts of efforts not just with other jurisdictions, but with other parties in order to solve problems, other private interests and a great example of that is the anaerobic digester plant. I hope I pronounced that correctly. This project that you developed working with some traditional adversaries, the local dairy farmers, who you, previous to this project, had battled for years on the issue of water and water quality. Can you talk a little bit about that project and how it came about and how it’s serving the interests of the nation?”

John McCoy:

“Okay, well, the dairymen actually came to us through our Natural Resources Department and they came to us and to me and we began the discussion. And we put it together because it was the right thing to do. We didn’t want any more animal waste going into rivers and streams. Well, how do you do that? Well, your farm’s got to be big enough to where you put it out on the fields and plow it under and enrich the earth, but they had more dairy product than they had land. So what do we do with this? Well, so we decided to work with the dairymen on this project. So as what I had to do, we had to find some land near the dairymen. Well, out there near the dairymen is the Monroe State Penitentiary. Well, they had what they called an honor farm, which was the dairy farm that provided milk for the prison. Well, that turned out to be not as cost effective and so the Monroe honor farm was decommissioned. So what are we going to do with the land? Well, we went to the state and said, ‘The tribe...’ -- now this was before I was elected -- and asked, ‘Can we have the land because you’re getting ready to declare it excess and in the rules, state and federal, tribes are at the top of the list to get excess property and we would like to use it to build an anaerobic digester on it.’ So we take the cow manure out of the system and we create methane gas, which we’ll filter, which will drive a turbine engine to generate electricity.’ So we started that process. Then I got elected and helped pass the bill to make it happen. So as long as that property is used for alternative energy, we can have the land, but if we do something else with it then it reverts back to the state. And it just so happens, I was approached by students from Seattle University that want to go out and do some algae experiments, which is alternative energy. They don’t want to do the traditional turning algae into a bio diesel; they want to look at other processes for algae. That’s a great idea so I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that.’ So we’re setting that process up in place right now. But the anaerobic digester is up and running. I had to change map metering law that allows for a generation facility that’s not on the dairy farm, but the dairy farms still get credit for the electricity that’s generated and so we got that law changed. Naturally, it was for the entire state not just for Tulalip, it’s the entire state. So a number of jurisdictions have enjoyed that map metering process and they’re quite happy with it. So the dairymen reduced their electrical cost because they’re generating electricity, then we’re also creating from the solids that are left, we take out, mix it with a little dirt, bag it up and sell it as fertilizer. So it all gets used.”

Ian Record:

“And the revenue from that is, from my understanding, being plowed back into some of your natural resource restoration programs.”

John McCoy:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“Because the ultimate goal, from what I understand, is that you want to improve the water quality of the local watersheds in order to bring the salmon back or at least have them come back at a much greater rate.”

John McCoy:

“Right. We’re doing a number of infrastructure projects for salmon enhancement like the membrane sewer plant that we installed. We just had a study done that gave us a draft of it from the University of Washington and Western Washington University that the output does remove pharmaceuticals including disruptors, birth control pills. And so with these reports done, now we should be able, be permitted to discharge straight into streams and rivers because the output exceeds federal drinking water standards. It’s actually too warm for salmon and it’s actually too clean for salmon, so we’re going to put it into a wetland to cool down and get a little nutrients and then let it flow into streams and rivers. And because of that plant that we put in, we convinced the city of Seattle to change their Bright Water Project over to a membrane technology. And other jurisdictions around us have come and visited and looked at it and said, ‘This is great, we’re going to go this direction.’”

Ian Record:

“So you’re becoming a model not just for other tribes, but other governments everywhere.”

John McCoy:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“That’s fantastic. I wanted to finish up with a short discussion on your experiences, trials and travails, as a state legislator. Being a Native American and a state legislator you’re in a very small group, but a growing group.”

John McCoy:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“And I was curious to know, get your advice perhaps, on what Native nations and leaders can do to advance their priorities through the state legislative arena. You have experience on both ends of the spectrum, both as a tribal leader and as a state legislator. What advice can you give them in terms of perhaps advancing more effectively their priorities in that arena?”

John McCoy:

“Well, my advice to them all is to create a governmental affairs office to where these folks just work on policy, that they work with legislatures, with county governments, with other city governments because you need to touch them all because they pass laws that infringe on the tribal sovereignty. So you need to be there to educate them so that they modify their law to where it does no harm to the tribal sovereignty. They’re not doing, my personal opinion, 99 percent of them are these laws that infringe on tribal sovereignty is done out of ignorance, not maliciousness. It’s out of ignorance. Once you inform them, educate them on the issue, then they adjust their language to where they do no harm. So they need to be at the city level, the county level, the state level and we’ve always done the federal level. So we need to get down into the state level. This last year, New Mexico passed, codified their agreement between the governor and the tribes on how they’re to interface with one another, they codified it. And I was still in session and I got the email saying they codified it. I said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that because we’ve got the same thing.’ So this year I am going to try to move legislation to codify Washington State’s Centennial Accord, which is our version of the framework on how the governor and the tribes interface with one another. So I want to codify that. The only thing different that I’m going to do in my bill is that I’m going to add a legislative interface. New Mexico didn’t and I’ve talked to their New Mexico legislators and they say, ‘Yeah, on second thought maybe we should have added that,’ so they may add that at a later date. But I’m going to start off with the legislative interface and I want to set up a committee that meets during the interim, not during session, during interim on the tribal issues and what pieces of legislation they may see. Now this committee that I want to set up is only made up of chairs of committees because they control what legislation goes through. So if you get them indoctrinated, educated on what the tribal issues are and what legislation they’re going to move, then they’ll have the background on it, why it’s needed and so it should help move these things through. When I first went to the legislature and I went through freshmen orientation, it was five days long and at the end of it I raised my hand and I said, ‘Where’s your Indian Law 101? You’ve got 29 tribes in the State of Washington and you did not have one word about Indian Law 101.’ So, I convinced the chief clerk, ‘You need Indian Law 101 in your freshman orientation,’ and now it’s part of the freshmen orientation. It’s not on the Senate side. I’m still working on them, but I’ve got to get that one done over there, too.”

Ian Record:

“This sounds really fascinating what you’re talking about with this education of the decision makers, the outside decision-makers that make decisions that influence tribes in a variety of ways. Would you recommend as well though that Native nations begin to think more aggressively when it comes to cultivating members of their own nations to actually pursue the sorts of positions that you currently hold in the state legislature? Isn’t there a direct role that they can play as well?”

John McCoy:

“Oh, yes. Whenever I’m at NCAI [National Congress of American Indians], NIGA [National Indian Gaming Association], NIEA [National Indian Education Association], I’m talking to everybody. ‘You need to run for office. You need to get more people in the state legislature, on county commissions, need them there.’ So in Washington State in Whatcom County, there’s a Native American on that. There’s three of us in the state legislature. There’s one running for city council in Pierce County. So they’re starting to run, it’s coming up. When I got elected in 2002, there were only 23 of us nationwide. Today, there’s almost 80 of us. And I happen to be chair of the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators. So I am proud to see it grow. About 25 to 30 are very active in the caucus. This is a non-partisan caucus, so we have both parties are in there and we just talk about tribal issues and how do we work with our counterparts on getting legislation passed. And I think we’re becoming very effective at doing that. So we continue to grow. The organization also includes Native Hawaiians because they have the same issues that we do, but they don’t have their sovereignty yet. That’s being worked on. But anyway, so we’re interfacing, we’re helping each other with legislation and I personally believe it’s a valuable tool now and we need more.”

Ian Record:

“Well, John, I really appreciate your time. This has been quite an education and thank you for sharing your experience and your wisdom and your perspectives with us.”

John McCoy:

“Yes, thank you. I really enjoyed it and everything connected with your organization, NNI and Honoring [Nations] Program. Great programs, I love them and I can’t speak high enough of them. You guys are doing a great job, too.”

Ian Record:

“Well, thank you.”