delegating responsibility

Catalina Alvarez and Robert McGhee: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tribal leaders Catalina Alvarez (Pascua Yaqui Tribe) and Robert McGhee (Poarch Band of Creek Indians) field questions from seminar participants on an array of topics ranging from codes of ethics to creating mechanisms for transparent governance.

Resource Type
Citation

Alvarez, Catalina. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Q&A session.

McGhee, Robert. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Q&A session.

Audience member:

"Robert, coming from a similar small tribe and situations I can relate a lot to what you brought up as far as what you're dealing with. I just had a question as far as the transparency. I agree with that and I know that it's...I'm sure it's a work in progress. What has worked and what hasn't as far as are there limitations as far as how transparent each governmental entity is for tribal members and do you get a lot of backlash when they ask for a document or want to see something that they're just not entitled to?"

Robert McGhee:

"They're entitled to every document that we have, able to see [them] as long as it's not employee related, if it's not involving certain employees or certain individual members themselves. What we do is...and one of the things, we do an annual report. We put money aside every year, we publish a book and the book goes out to every tribal member, it's talking about our current financial status and we put a letter in there asking them to keep it amongst themselves and this is for you and your household. And then two days before it goes out, well, about a week before it goes out we actually have a large community meeting that goes over the annual report and explains it page by page. So we go through all the funding issues, we go through ‘this is where all the money went, this is what's left, this is what we're we agree...' We'll tell them, ‘We wanted to build a capital reserve account to protect future assets and this is how much we're putting in there.' So that's the best way we handle it and if we have any documents that we're concerned, because we do have council members who do like to talk and they're social people. We have one council member, all he does, and this is not to be disrespectful but he's always at the funerals and someone who's going into the hospital, which I respect. But we tell him and it's like, ‘You need to tell them that you're coming on behalf of all of us because we can't all go to...' But he loves to talk and I don't think he means it disrespectfully, I really don't, but he just loves...so now we take any information that is valuable at the council meeting, if we want to have a private discussion, I actually take it back up from all the...they'll agree to me, 'You can have...I don't want mine.' Because if they have it in their hand they're more apt to share it and give it away and we'll be the first ones to say, ‘I don't want mine, you take mine back,' ‘cause then we'll just collect all the information from the tribal council, we'll have it destroyed and it's easier that way on some regards because it can be sensitive topics that they really shouldn't be discussing so we do take up some of those things. But the transparency is, it's difficult but it's a double-edged sword."

Audience member:

"But more positive than negative as far as being open to the community and there's no...because leaving that expectation or leaving people to their own ideas or what's going on behind closed doors. You're kind of alleviating that to an extent?"

Robert McGhee:

"I think so. They have the opportunity...every council member, we have...every council meeting, we have two a month, what we've done now though is our first council meeting is actually business and the second council meeting we have every director rotate in every entity come in and give financial updates and updates of who's been hired, who's been...like how many employees we have and things like that so that helps a little bit. If we can alleviate where they don't have to ask us a question or they don't have to...then we'll try to do it."

Audience member:

"Thank you. And just a final question for the two of you, as far as going forward as far as governance, economic development, sitting, being chairs and different committees, how important is it for leaders to be educated and be able to provide that additional information that if you just...all you know is the rez, all you know is that immediate community, you haven't lived off, you haven't experienced any other let's say tribal entities or network, how important is that to be able to move forward for the futures to come?"

Catalina Alvarez:

"Yeah, I think that's a...you have to be...where nowadays, we're not this small reservation, we're not this small tribe. We're running with a lot of and dealing with a lot of millions of dollars and you need educated people that are going to be making those right decisions for the tribe. A lot of times we would have...you still have those mindsets of the older generation that feel that they don't need those kind of people or sometimes they're like in his case as well -- I'm going to pick on Marcelino [Flores] over there -- we have some people that are very educated and that know a whole lot and we have a tendency not to...I think we have to have a balance of where we get the educated people but also having the previous council, the old founders of the tribe also respect and embrace the knowledge that he does bring because I know that a lot of times like I've talked to Herminia [Frias], at least have the sense that if you don't know where you're at as a council to know and to ask that you need to find the right people for those positions because otherwise, like with us, I know I've told some of the council, we are still in the process of trying to get back the gaming board, because a lot of us feel we are not capable of running a gaming institution by any means and that's where it becomes difficult, that you have a council that still wants to be in charge of everything. And is it beneficial for us? Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. We were burned also with the gaming board and finding the right people because sometimes you get burned by those same individuals on the gaming board. There's a balance that you have to find educated people, also people that are practical in knowing what needs to be done."

Robert McGhee:

"I think the key is if you're not...if they don't have the say...we educate as much as we can across all areas. It doesn't necessarily have to be college educated. It could be business education, tribal law, business literacy. We've actually had people just come in even to the council and teach debits and credits so they can have a better understanding if tribal gaming...because there was a distrust issue too amongst...you have a board over here and we have a top management staff and they're presenting this and it's overwhelming what they're presenting to you. And now though they have to go through it step by step by step and it's an easier process but I encourage if you can put any type of, in place, training and education at your council level, please do, I would recommend that you do it. But also do it for...what we've just started doing for all of our directors and program directors and executive directors is we have sent them through intensive leadership training and they have really...they said that was the best thing that the council has ever done. We felt that they were a part of the organization, that we were listening to them and now they're going to offer it, we're going to offer it to even all the employees because it wasn't fair we felt when I said, ‘we went through this,' and let... It's called 'Lead by Greatness.' We went through this training and it wasn't really fair for us to have the training and not the people who run our programs. And so we've actually...that just started this past year and they're enjoying it and now it's getting down to all the employees. And all the boards and committees like I pointed out before, they're all...all tribal members have the opportunity to serve on those but they have to submit an application and the application actually has to say, ‘Why do you want to serve on this board?' If it's the Cultural Authority, ‘Why do you want to serve here? Is it because you have something to give or do you just want to learn more? Why do you want to serve on PCI Gaming?' Because we realize, like she said, we don't have the expertise to run all of these economic development properties that we have. But you've got to make sure that your job descriptions and you've got to make sure that your...are strong job descriptions and things that get people in the right places to do that for you. We have mentoring programs for our tribal members so they can serve under leadership positions, to learn that way."

Audience member:

"This is in regards to how you deal with or listen to tribal members. There's kind of a two-part question that I heard and I don't know what your responses are, maybe your suggestions on how. The first thing here is congratulations and I think we all know it's a blessing in disguise to be an elected official. So how do you kind of keep a happy about hearing that, ‘Congratulations, you're on council.' And then the second part seems to be, ‘Well, I think you guys should be doing this or you need to do that and I voted you in.' And how do you listen to the community, how do you respond to those questions?"

Catalina Alvarez:

"I'm not sure, like, how do you...the first one that you said, that people just congratulate you and still smile after you know what you got yourself into? Yeah. You have to at least...you're always going to be in that position I think either way, no matter where you're at. We all put up a front even though we're not...maybe we're not happy inside but at least we...we'll just...we portray a different image by saying we're fine and we're good and everything, but I think when tribal members come and expect things of you and are asking you to do things differently, usually when I get asked a lot of things and mostly complaints of things are not doing or I was left out of the process, before I would normally, being a first-year council [member] I would automatically just get it and run with it and not really hear the other side of the story. Now, usually I would ask them, ‘Well, what would you do in these positions? Give me some feedback on what it is that you want accomplished and we'll see what we can do,' but I'm not going to...I always tell them, ‘I'm not going to promise you that it can be done because of course I'm only one voice of other 11.' So it's very important for the community to know that it might not happen and it's okay to tell a community member no. But you've got to watch out that you don't say 'no' too close to elections! [Laughter]"

Robert McGhee:

"One thing she did say was right on that it is okay to tell a community member 'no.' But what happened is that I think the way I handle it is...I wanted to serve. I've wanted to serve as a council member since I was a child. That was...I wanted to come back and do that. I think now though it's when...when someone looks at you, ‘Well, I want this,' I'm like, ‘Well, you tell...why, why do you want that? Does it benefit just you, is it benefiting the family or does it benefit all of us as a whole?' Because I'll let them know in a heartbeat that if that program costs $2 million to fix or a million dollars to fix, you're taking away $2 million or something from another program that we need to look at. So it's almost, you provide me the solution. If that's a problem then, okay, how do we fix it? I think if you throw it back on them that way, because sometimes they have a tendency to put you here and they remind you that, ‘Oh, you think you're up here?' Well, I throw it back down on them and it's like, ‘No, I'm here with you and I do not know how to fix that problem. So how do we fix that problem together? Or why don't you come to a meeting and present solutions.' And they actually...some of them like that because then it gives them...they're involved again and they can make those...be a part of the decision-making process or at least come up with some great ideas that we actually have considered and moved forward with. I'm with nine people but you have 3,000 other people out there, they have some great ideas and I think if you take the opportunity just to challenge them though to say, ‘Well, why do you want that and does it benefit everybody? Because our job as nine is to benefit everyone and it takes a majority first to support it. And have you talked to the other nine? And if the other nine believe in it then that's actually something we could probably do.'"

Audience member:

"My question or thing is when I got in office I ran for chairwoman last term and I didn't make it but I had all these ideas and now that I'm here, how...because a lot of people aren't educated as...when they get on council. They finished high school but they did other things and there was no really like ethical issues that occur, understanding and following policy and procedure within the business frame and then the constitutional issues. How do we follow our constitution yet do our ordinances and all those? But my main thing, my main question is -- and you said you go to, you have training and stuff like that -- is the ethical issue is that when we know there's a relative, a friend, somebody that we have a conflict with we're not really up front to say, ‘I'm not going to be in this discussion, I'm going to step away.' How do you get those values across to your council members so that there is transparency, because the people out there know who's related to who and who's friends with who and all that stuff."

Robert McGhee:

"I know that sometimes what we have to do is you have to remind council members that there is actually a possible conflict and impropriety, there's a...what's the terms that actually gets...an appearance of an impropriety. So as long as we feel that there's an appearance, we will actually let the other council member know. We challenge, it's like, ‘I don't know if you should really be involved in this. You may not know this but this actually impacts so and so,' and we provide them the relation. We tell them the relationship. So maybe some of them do know it but they just needed someone to challenge them to say, ‘I think it's best that you step out, do we all agree that so and so needs to step out,' and they do. What happens is the majority of them will do, once you've just shown where the relationship is and usually you're doing it because of...and don't do it attack-tive. You do it, say, ‘I think...isn't so-and-so in that program or isn't...did so-and-so apply for that job, isn't that your sister-in-law...,' because you are related but there are so many things sometimes you do get confused on even what is a nepotism. Is sister-in-law, is my aunt, is my sister? We know some of them are but then you have, well, your grandparents but they take care of that child. So there could be the possibility of that. So I think if you point it out, we've done that in the past, we just did it or you have your legal department if they're in the room, too. Our legal department's always with us. We'll lean over and say, ‘I think there's a...' and we'll, ‘Hey, that's why that person gets paid the big bucks, you need to go tell that there's an appearance here and maybe it's best to not be...you can be here and maybe just not be a part of the decision.'"

Catalina Alvarez:

"For us, I think the first time that I got into council we actually passed an ethical ordinance and I believe with the new council you're given all the ordinances that have like a fiscal ordinance and the ethical ordinance so you can go back and read them. And it's a way also to challenge, for council to hold each other accountable. That's kind of worked a little bit. I laugh because Herminia used to be our chairwoman the first time that I got into council and of course there was a...it was used against her. She brought the issue into us as ethical ordinance and it's just...the council saw it as a way, ‘Okay, this is how we're going to use it against her now.' But it in essence the...why we decided to do an ethical ordinance was really just to hold each other accountable and making sure that the community knows that we are not going to be in those situations where nepotism does occur and that we're all on the same playing field."

Audience member:

"This question kind of piggy backs off of the last question, but as elected officials and members of council how are you able to effective work against factionalism in council? I think that in a lot of tribal communities relationships ties, family ties run really deep. And so in spite of council and elected officials assuming integrity in their positions, they're always subject to sway. And I think that you see that in a lot of council where many times members will kind of group together on certain decisions and push legislation, ordinance or policy a certain direction when maybe it's kind of not based on the content but more on maybe who they're talking to and who they're being influenced by. As leaders, how are you able to combat that or at least address it within your councils and your communities?"

Robert McGhee:

"I've pictured...I've painted this like perfect council up here and we are not...by no means perfect. We do have our issues but with 3,000 there's definitely a difference between 3,000 members and say a 10,000 member tribe where factions can change elections. There's no doubt. One of the things that we have done is...it's funny, when we know certain people are getting together on a vote, we'll be like, ‘Well, I really don't care.' We won't be a part of it because it depends on what the issue is. If it's something about, oh, we're going to...it's like if we want to spend money here for this program, well, if I don't have a say or a personal attachment to it or something like that, we'll be like...but they've worked up this whole, us five support it or...’Well, have at it and if it works that's great and if it fails, I'll be the first one to let you know that failed,' but I won't be...but we won't do it...we don't air it to the rest of them. I think that if it comes to stuff that is...we have a strong and hopefully a lot of you do have an ethics code and the ethics code was the hardest thing to get passed. That was the hardest. It went to a vote five different times over a year because...and we kept...when we would challenge our tribal council members at the table, ‘Why are you not supporting the ethics code? Are you unethical?' But what happened was even our general council members who are looking, who are at these meetings and seeing so and so quit, he's not or she's not supporting the ethics code, not supporting the ethics code. It all came about though, the reason that individual was not supporting because the appearance of the impropriety. He was so scared of that word because of like you said factions or your council member's brother on another side of the family would be like, ‘Well, hey, he was a part of that decision that...' And so there's an appearance there and he was terrified of that ‘cause he was involved in business himself. And so we were like...so we made it stronger where the appearance, we gave it a little bit more teeth into that document to help him support it. But I think when it just comes to the factions I would...we don't have strong factions, we know that board and committee...it's funny it's only on board and committee appointments because they want Johnny in that position and they'll go meet and we'll say, ‘Well, which ones did you guys...who do you think you're going to choose today.' ‘No, we didn't do that yet.' Call them out on it. We do. But we've got a pretty good close relationship because we've spent so much time together in retreats and workshops and I do not...we do not have a problem calling each other out and one of the things that we had learned from one of these retreats that we went to, they pretty much told us, ‘Call them out. If they are not being the leader that they're supposed to be or if they're not supporting something...say it. Why are you not supporting this initiative? I need an answer.' And we couldn't have them flip-flop anymore either, that was the other thing too. We'd be in a workshop and we'd go around and just do a roll call. It was like, ‘You support it, you support it, you...' and then we'd get to a meeting and, ‘I don't support that.' Made us look like...that only happened a few times. So then we had another leadership, together, Kumbaya saying, ‘I get angry when you do that.' It was almost like a social therapy session. ‘I get angry when you do this. That's not appropriate ‘cause you're giving me your word and all that I feel that you have is your word. That's what makes you a credible person to me is your word and your actions and your actions are going against your words.' So now they actually will tell us, ‘Okay, I'm just going to be honest. I'm not supporting that.' Or if they're about to flip, because they've done it, we'll have another workshop, ‘I want to change my vote.' ‘What? Why?' And then I said, ‘Well, you told us before that from now on you're going to stick to your vote or stick to your decision,' and I called him out. He's like, ‘Yes, but I did tell you that if I changed I would let you know beforehand.' I'm like, ‘You've got me, you're right.' And he changed. He went in that council meeting and his vote changed and I'm like, ‘Well, at least you let me know beforehand.' I was leaning over to another council member, it was like, ‘We lost that one.'"

Catalina Alvarez:

"I think we're still trying to figure that out. You're always going to have I think, at least since I've been in council we have not had like this kind of council that can just sit down and talk, but we always had those kind of factions and we know that they're, sometimes they're influenced. The last...we haven't, this council since it's barely starting, we haven't gotten to that point but the previous council, we knew something was up and the committee knew what was going on and council members would pull in of course all their family so you were kind of pressured to vote in that direction. One of the things that took years and it still has been an issue was like that in the [Adam] Walsh Act, I couldn't believe how difficult it was for council to say that we want to first have the same kind of stuff...that we were going to opt into it and then where we were going to put our note...to notify the community, in which methods. It became so...I'm not even sure, well, I'm assuming that a lot of...in council you would have a sexual pedophile as a family member, that's the only reason why I thought that they could...they thought that I thought that they would be so hesitant in securing our community, but not until we actually had a switch in council that that...we were able to figure out where we were going to post the sexual pedophiles and what kind of notice was going to be given out to the community. But I think a lot of times that [faction], it's always going to exist because we're a tribe of 16,000 or 17,000 and we're always going to have that [faction]. We have council members that are related to each other and you know that they're going to pass ordinances and policies that are going to benefit their families or friends and it's very difficult to find out, at least for us right now. We're still....we're in the stage of trying to figure out how we can...how to resolve that."

Audience member:

"Just a couple of questions here. I'm busy scribbling things down. In today's world of course we live...we all live in two worlds and that is we live in America but at the same time we live within our tribal nations. And quite often, we have a clash in cultures and cultural values and we need somewhat to reconcile some of the things that we do. And was mentioned earlier the idea of nepotism. In the white world of course, that's a no-no. You don't do that, that's unethical behavior. At the same time, as a tribal member, we're taught form a very early age that our responsibility is to our family. Our responsibility is to our relatives, our responsibility is to our community. That's where our citizenship is, that's where our allegiance and where we should be focused. And we also understand that when someone close to you, a relative or whatever, comes for your assistance, you are not supposed to refuse because they're the ones who are going to support you when the chips are down, when you have a tragedy, when you have a sorrow, when you have a great need, you depend upon your family, yet and this job as tribal council is going to be gone in four years, but you still have to face that family member. And that's a difficult thing because you want the betterment of your nation, but at the same time when you're close relatives or clan members, clan fathers, whatever it is comes to you and needs something, how do you reconcile that? I know that's a challenge, ‘cause we have to keep our cultural values alive but we still have to work and thrive in the modern day era. So that's one of the things I think that has to be reconciled.

Another is with our traditional ways as you've mentioned earlier, to call them out. I think from a traditional mindset we're taught not to do that ‘cause we choose avoidance over confrontation whenever we can. And when we have a conflict with somebody, that's when we give direct eye contact, that's when we have that confrontation with them and we go full force. But we don't like to do that but rather we avoid confrontation whenever we can. If that means going on the other side of the street or not returning a phone call or not showing up for a meeting, for many of us, that's the proper thing to do rather than call them out. That's more of a modern day, white man kind of a thinking, at least I think. Utilizing our elders is another traditional way where we as tribal leaders or whatever we are think we're all it and leave out that segment of decision making or reliance upon our tribal elders to utilize them.

And I think what I'm gathering as part of what's happening here is to rebuilding nations is really about going back, going back. It's not building the tribal nation, it's rebuilding and it's remembrance and keeping a lot of our cultural values alive, of the form of governance that was thrust upon us. And if we look at those things, I do have a question specifically for you guys or anyone can answer this and that is, what would happen if salaries were not paid to elected council members and only expenses were paid, what kind of people would we have in there? What would we gain, what would we lose, what would it look like if we went back to that traditional sense of governance where these were not paid positions? Looking forward to your responses."

Robert McGhee:

"Just want to touch on a couple things there that you stated before. Yes, I have an allegiance to my family but I was raised to have, mostly from my mother, my father was a military man and things, but my mom, there was something about honesty, there was something about humility. And what bothers me is say when I have a larger family, not the nucleus but the extended family come up and ask me to do something that is inappropriate. I don't have a problem asking them, ‘Why are you asking me to do this? This is not...' because right now when you sign, when you run for council it's no longer mom, dad and my brother and my nephews and my grandparents, it's my...it's the 3,000 other members. Now every council member in here may have a different idea of that. That's mine. I represent all of them, the ones that you don't want to represent, the ones that still will call you by not your real name, any other name, the ones that still have some varied problems that we need to address. So I always know that I can go back to my family once I'm done serving my terms if I choose not to get elected because my dad doesn't allow us to speak tribal politics in our house either whenever we have an event or anything like that because he used to serve there. So he's like, ‘No one's allowed to come up to each other and talk to me about this or that or why did you do that?' He posted it on...he actually has a sign, he writes and he puts it on the door, ‘No politics are going to be discussed today,' which is helpful because sometimes you do...all of us here, you do get tired of going to certain events because you know someone's going to come up and ask a question or question you about this so at least I know it's...in the house, dad's house, it's off limits even at my brother's house ‘cause he served too. So he's like, ‘We don't talk about that.' To get back to your calling out question, I think I put that, yes, when I said calling out but keep in mind that we do it respectfully. It's one of those things of when I know...I don't necessarily have to call you always out in front. If I know you're upset, what I'm going to do though is have a conversation with you somewhere to ask why because I don't think me personally that we can move forward until I know what your issues are.

The full-time council...I agree with you on the...our part-time members...about four years ago we only got paid a stipend of $50 a meeting, five years ago. However, though, I would say the difference between that was there was also a different leadership at that time, too, so the council wasn't involved...a lot of them were involved but they just didn't feel that they had the time because there were some things going on where, ‘We're going to have a meeting today at 10:00.' ‘Well, I can't make a meeting today at 10:00. I'm working.' And until you got this...until you can change where you know that the leadership or whoever, the chairman, is going to respect if it's either a part-time council or a full-time one to know that we'll work around various schedules. I meant they do it for us now. We ask them, because like I said, two of us are part-time so we only have workshops on one day a month, all day. I actually use vacation time to do that. But the rest, they're welcome to attend their committee meetings. The committee meetings that I serve on, I'm allowed to determine when those meetings are so I think it could work as a part-time, but I don't think you would have the problems that you do. But keep in mind when you're full-time too, I think there are added pressures where a lot of the general council members now are looking at qualifications of putting somebody in office because they're paying them this much money. So that's actually a good, I would say a good side to it. Now, individuals are having to run on their qualifications because they're making salaries that are...that the program director or so and so, I make this and I have to have a master's in this or I make... So what are you bringing to the table as a council member that you're worth that much money? And so I think that's a good thing to it. It's stepping up to get other individuals involved that have qualifications or whatever those qualifications are it just could be not necessarily educational, it just could be serving on various committees or boards or things like that. And we have a cell center, just so you know, and that's where all our seniors hang out, all our elders hang out and I'm there probably...I eat lunch with them once a week to twice...to hear what they have to say. And we play bingo with them in the area and that's the best time to do it is when they're all gathered and just, ‘Well, what do you guys want us to see or where did I screw up today,' and they'll let you know quickly where."

Catalina Alvarez:

"I think as...and you're right, as individuals we're taught from the beginning our roles, our female roles and male roles and where you stand and even how we should address our elders. I think one of the things with the previous councils and when I first came on to council is we have our cultural leave availability for employees to do their cultural participants and participate in their culture activities. And I think as I talk to elders as a council, when we would get into discussions and I had one of the councilmen go, ‘You're supposed to respect your elders all the time.' It's true, but as a council, you guys are all equal, we are all equal at least my response to them because you were all elected by the people and they expect you to have a voice like any other individual on council. That was my response to him. And I think that more and more the council understands that we all should have a voice in how we do things and even elders in our council, they're always constantly...and I point out to Mary Jane [Buenamea], ‘They'll keep us in line as well,' but I think they're open to know that we all can share our own ideas and still try to move forward on some of our activities. I know that the last council since I was the only female, they would not include me in some of the discussions on cultural and even like on stipends that we give for our festivities, which I would get upset because I'm like, ‘as a council, male, female, I'm here as a voice to the people that voted me in. So you can't hold that against me that I can't give my input on what's going on.' But I think as we move into a full-time council I think if they weren't...if we wouldn't receive a stipend, it would be very difficult to move as fast as we have I think. As a council it allowed us to pass a lot of and meet more frequently to get things done within the tribe."

Audience member:

"I had my question for Robert and I wanted to know...you talked about the three sides that have to be heard. Could you just tell us very quickly what those three sides of any issue?"

Robert McGhee:

"Your side, the other side and the opinion. There's always this side, this side, but then there's also just what's the opinion out there of this problem. There's a lot more of those than there are the opinions themselves.

Adam Geisler: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Adam Geisler, Secretary of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, discusses the diverse set of challenges he faces as an elected leader of his nation and discusses some of the innovative ways that he, his leadership colleagues, and his nation have worked to overcome those challenges. He also offers a number of pointers for how to lead effectively based on his own experience.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Geisler, Adam. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 6, 2013. Presentation.

"Thank you, Renee [Goldtooth], for inviting me out here. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have the opportunity to speak to all of you. You're probably looking at me wondering, "˜Who's this kid? What can he say, what can he share, what does he know?' I'm going to hopefully enlighten you a little bit on some of the challenges that I endeavored through. My name is Adam Geisler. I'm the secretary for La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians. I've been in office for five years. I have been working for my tribe since I was 14 years old and I guess I'll just kind of start with, 'Tribal council, are you ready?'...

A little bit about the photo. We have a five-member council. We have roughly 10,000 acres with about 700 enrolled members that live on and off the reservation. We have roughly 189 houses, about 15 miles of roadway, three separate water systems, and the major northern loop of the utility for feeding San Diego running through our reservation. I always like to talk about my council because I think a lot of times in Indian Country we hear about all the politics and everybody fighting and people don't like this or that, somebody didn't get a house because of this or that and the road didn't get taken care of. I'm really blessed to be able to sit with a council that works together, communicates well, and really has been a solid opportunity for me to learn some things. The woman in the middle is actually my mother. Her name is LaVonne Peck. She is the chairwoman for our tribe.

In the first two years that we were in office, we went through a process with UCLA law department to update, revise and bring back our constitution, all of our ordinances and all of our bylaws, because they hadn't been touched in about 30 years. So there was a lot of things that didn't make any sense when you read through them from everything from enrollment to land. The reason why I say that's my mom is because number one, I want to acknowledge the fact that she's my mom, but anytime we're doing business I call her 'LaVonne' or 'Chairwoman.' Nepotism exists in Indian Country. I'm not going to act like it doesn't, but I did run for a separate office. In my second term, I ran unopposed. The same thing goes for her and I just want...I guess I'm coming from a unique perspective because what I didn't realize coming into this was how challenging it would be working with a family member as close as your mother in this process, but it has been very rewarding and I'm very fortunate to be able to have gone through this.

Some other things that I didn't quite understand when I got in...I was always sitting out in the general membership kind of wondering, "˜Hey, why aren't they doing this? Why aren't they dealing with that? How come I didn't get a budget for this?' And I had no idea the type of time obligations that that was going to require and I had no clue when I got into office that this position was going to afford me the opportunity to learn about energy, learn about gaming, learn about finance and I'm going to highlight some of those as we move through this.

So something that I walked into right away that I wasn't prepared for, I got in council when I was 25 years old, I'm now 29, and I had no clue that I was going to have the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] show up one day on my doorstep and say, "˜Hey, the Mexican cartel just grew a field of marijuana on the backside of your mountain.' "˜Okay. Well, how do I deal with this?' "˜Well, why don't we take you up in the helicopter so we can take a look at this and understand how these guys are moving product in and out and how we can work with your law enforcement to make sure that we can monitor this more closely.' That kind of dives into Public Law 280. California is a Public Law 280 state, which means that we have concurrent jurisdiction. Some of you probably come from reservations that are directly funded through the federal government for your police, your prisons or jails. We're not. Although we can establish them if we have the money to do it, we're really relying upon the Sheriff's Department, which doesn't always respond in a timely manner because they're small not necessarily because they don't want to. The days of that are gone. But that's part of the situation that I wasn't aware of.

The other big aspect that I wasn't ready to come into was domestic violence. I have it in the letters on the bottom; we lead statistics in some really sad areas. I didn't know coming into office that a woman will go back to her abuser 11 times before she's either killed or before she finally leaves the guy. In a community as small as mine with 700 members, this was actually something very prevalent that our community was tired of and finally addressed. We wrote some grants, we held the first ever Domestic Violence Walk in the state of California, which is partly why I have that purple ribbon there, and we brought out all kinds of people from both tribal and non-tribal to support the efforts that we're making towards these things.

We sat through a ton of meetings in my first couple years dealing with these issues, where people were coming and talking about the meth head that lives next door or the dealing that might have been going on. And by the way, my community is a beautiful community. I'm just highlighting some of the challenges that are there. Making it sound like La Jolla, you're going to walk in, there's going to be like people high all over the place or something. It's not like that at all, but the reality is that you all have these, Native or not, you're going to have these folks in your family, you know who they are, and the funny part is that the neighbor who might not be in your family is coming to you telling you to deal with it and you're sitting there trying to figure out, "˜Well, man, how do I deal with my cousin? How do I deal with my brother or my uncle?' And those things are very real when you get into this office and there's expectations on both sides. Your families are going to come at you and expect you to protect them, the public is going to come at you and expect you to uphold the ordinances and the laws and enforce the job that you're there to do. And so right off the top, I had to realize that being impartial...I've always been fairly impartial about things, but these types of issues really started to test your ability to do that on a daily basis because these things just happen.

So DV [domestic violence], drugs, alcohol abuse, and then kind of figuring out how we address that; we formed a program called 'AVELICA.' As I mentioned, in our language that means 'butterfly.' Obviously the women coming out of their situation, being more aware on how to address the DV issues. And one thing that we did is we creatively developed the program, we hired and trained advocates from within our own community, we established domestic violence shelters for the women and these were all things that I walked in, I never had a clue about how to address. And I'll go over some training components later, but just realize this, if you're going to be successful when you come into doing this, if you're motivated, you have a heart and you're willing to get up every day and wear some broad shoulders, you'll be able to make through it.

Jobs; we talked about cousins, brothers, uncles, aunts, nieces. Jobs is always an interesting discussion in Indian Country because I appreciate the former, the presentation beforehand about reliance as opposed to... I don't know, I think sometimes our communities get really dependent on these programs that come in. And so... and unfortunately I'm in a community where when I walked in the social norm was seasonal employment. We have a campground. I'm not a gaming tribe, I know a lot of people think, "˜oh, you're a Southern California Indian, you're rich.' Nope, not me. I've got Harrah's Rincon, I've got Pala, I've Pauma, I've got Pechanga, Valley View, but not me. I have a campground that brings in almost 150,000 people a year and supports our tribal economic development and government operations. But back to the idea that people came in wanting to know, "˜Where's my job? I put you in office, I expect you to get me a job.' And I said, "˜When I asked for your vote, I made it really clear to you that I'm not going to promise you anything.' And so my comment about jobs is, when you get into office, don't make promises. The guys that were in there before me, they got in, "˜I'll get you a job. I'll get you on this project. I'll do this, I'll do that.' I have stated...I've stayed where I'm at as long as I'm at because I don't BS my people. Excuse the term. I know we're being recorded. I don't. You have to be up front with your folks. You have to be transparent. You can't be afraid to share with them the truths about the realities that you're in. If there are jobs available, see what you can do to hire your folks. Tribal Force Account is an amazing, amazing, amazing thing that you can utilize. It's a tool that I didn't realize.

Partnerships with, for example...here's a road, this is the picture. I guess talk about the picture for a second. This road is a road that was done by all Tribal Force Accounts, which is really rare in California because we don't really have the dollars coming in federally or always the personnel to be able to staff a full-time roads department or a full-time public health department. And what we were able to do is bring in about 30 tribal members to come in and basically create a road going through the middle of a mountain -- because I'm on the side of a 7,500-foot mountain, which makes development fun -- and we put our guys to work. And what was really amazing about this process was number one, Davis-Bacon [Act] doesn't apply because through our sovereignty, through exercising our sovereignty we created our own Tribal Force Account wages, we set a standard that was proper for what our people were doing and in some cases we are beating Davis-Bacon. By the way, this project, because of tax exempt abilities and delivery onto the reservation, we also built this for one third less than what any other public department could build in the county, in the state or from a federal standpoint. So recognize that.

I'm going to kind of couple this with TERO [Tribal Employment Rights Office]. How many of you guys have a TERO ordinance on your reservation? How many of you guys really use it? When I got into office, no clue about what the heck TERO was, I didn't understand what are these four letters representing, what's the point behind it, why is it here? I learned very quickly that this is another tool that we have in Indian Country that we can utilize, the Tribal Employment Rights, Opportunities and Ordinances that you can establish and then use that in working with the Department of Labor to go after federal contracts and dollars are awesome. That's the part I didn't know about TERO. I didn't realize... I thought TERO was, "˜Oh, you're going to build a project, I'm going to tax it, then I'm going to take it and I'm going to train somebody with that money.' There's a whole other side of TERO that I didn't know about that had to do with federal contracting and compliance.

And one thing that I want to highlight that we were successful in doing in utilizing TERO in San Diego was we actually... we have 18 tribes in San Diego County. How many of you guys have that many tribes in your county? The answer is none because we have the most in the country. Sorry. We have 18 tribes in San Diego County, which means that federal contractors are required to notify all of your tribes about the fact that there's jobs coming online and the reason why that's there... everybody goes, "˜Oh, it's an ethnic thing, it has to do with racism, the Indians.' No, it's a political relationship that the tribes have with the United States government, which is why if you're qualified as an Indian and they're qualified as a non-Indian, you go to the top based upon laws that were passed based upon your political standing. Not because you're Indian, but because of the sovereignty that your tribe exercises and you being a citizen of a nation.

So what we did is we realized that all these federal contractors were coming up and they did not know how to send it out to 18 tribes because some are rich, some are poor, some have fax machines, some have an HR department, some have something in the middle. And so we got everybody together because the federal contractors were tired of getting audited and fined and in all fairness, how do you communicate with 18 different governments that all operate differently? What we came up with was a website called nativehire.org and this... write it down, Google it later. You're going to like what I have to say about this. Nativehire.org was a concept that came out in working with the Department of Labor, in working with the federal contractors in San Diego County and in working with the tribes. What we did is we sat down and discussed how can we get this information out collectively for job availability, for contracts that are out there and then how can we also...our tribes ourselves look for these things. Nobody has ever thought about how to create this. Well, we did. We created nativehire.org. It's basically an Indian version of Craigslist and monsters.com mixed into one. You can be notified via email when jobs are available. You can be searching for jobs and the cool part is it's going to be coming actually out here to Arizona and shortly it's going to be heading nationwide because that's the Craigslist part of it. I want to work in Idaho. You click on Idaho and all of a sudden 15 different jobs come up in Idaho that you can be eligible for and that you can qualify for under TERO because they're trying to meet these guidelines. So TERO was something I didn't know a whole lot about. Since then I've created a website to help implement this utilizing the federal TERO policies to employ people, train people and so on and so forth. And I will say this, the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] -- people beat up on the Bureau a lot and sometimes it's deserving -- the Bureau worked with us actually very hard to make this a success because that was the beauty of what we recognized. It wasn't the tribes pointing the finger, it wasn't the businesses pointing the finger, it was everybody just sitting down at the table recognizing that we had some issues to work out and finding a solution for it and the Bureau actually was able to help us find the dollars to get this thing generated through a 638 contract. I'll go over 638 contracts. I didn't know what the heck those were either when I got into office. So nativehire.org.

Financial awareness. Obviously, financial partnerships are key for your tribes to succeed moving into the future. In California we have tribes that, yeah, they went out and they made their money in gaming, but the neat thing that we're starting to see is they're getting into banking. There are tribes that own banks. They're getting into real estate, they're getting into, I guess hotels are real estate. They're getting into tourism components. And all these things are capable because, yes, they cut their teeth on the casino development but they realized that through these financial partnerships in leveraging with different industries they were going to be able to grow and maintain the self-resiliency of their tribe. Let's get off the federal dole. I might bother some of you by saying that, but to be real honest with you, my goal by the time I'm out of office is to make sure that I don't need those federal programs. That's what it's about. If we're going to claim sovereignty, if we're going to claim the ability to exercise our own rights and take ownership of our own nations, then we need to understand that there's a financial component with that.

So some terms I wrote over here on the side: profit and loss. Man, my first council meeting where I got a financial statement was a trip. I sat there for probably three hours trying to digest what my CPA [certified public accountant] was feeding to me because he was talking about debits and credits and encumbrances and half the terms that I see over here on the side that I had no clue. Audits: I didn't realize the shape that my tribe was in quite honestly when I got into office. You always hear about, "˜Oh, that guy stole, that guy did this, that guy did that.' Well, when I got in I didn't find anybody that was stealing, but what I did find was that my tribe was on high risk because we had not done the SF425s, the IRA reporting documents, or federal documents. We had not done our reporting to the federal agencies so we went on high risk. And had our administration not come into office at the time when we did, the Bureau was actually ready to yank all of our funding and we were going to be operated and functioning out of the BIA office out of Riverside, our local area office. Luckily, we were able to get all the documents together, complete all the reporting and unfortunately I had to go back two years. So my first two-and-a-half months in office were really, really...they were really boring to be honest with you. There was a lot of stressing out and a lot of numbers, but I got to learn a whole lot.

GAAP, GASPI, the difference between government accounting and standard general accounting practices in the way that tribal governments are unique, and this is a thing I think that states really have a hard time digesting. They don't realize that we have the opportunity to operate both businesses and government, and unfortunately they don't do it very well when they try it. I think tribes are an awesome model of how you can exercise these things and they could really learn a lot from us. I will say this -- in San Diego I think that they are, they're realizing opportunities that are there. Leverage ratios. I never thought I'd be negotiating a multi-hundred million dollar casino deal and I have...this picture is actually with us signing our letter of engagement with Key Bank. I don't know if you guys know Key Bank. Some of you may, some of you may not. They came on to be our financial advisor for our tribe and the gentleman in the middle, his name is Jay Maswagger, and he used to tease us because he said, "˜By the time we're done going through this process you're going to have an MBA, a Maswagger MBA.' The gentleman is Indian from the Middle East, from the East Indian. And he started to give me this huge education on things that I never knew about; waterfall agreements, how to structure debt appropriately, leverage ratios. These guys use these big fancy terms and it basically boils down to, "˜Look, in order for me to give you $10 I need to see that you're going to give me $2 first.' So I learned about things like that.

Natural disasters: for whatever reason the other two photos didn't show up on here. I've been through two natural disasters, federally declared. My grandma's house burnt down, my mom's house burnt down, my businesses were devastated by flooding, and I had to learn the entire process about how to recover both immediately, so address and respond, but then go into long term and then find the money on how to do that. By the way, something that has changed in the last five years is that you as tribes can now declare your own federal disasters. You don't need to wait for the state to do that, which is huge, that you couldn't do in the past. You might not think it's ever going to happen and then one day it's going to hit you and you'll realize, "˜Man, I wish I would have gone to do some training.' You're actually required by law to get out there and become NIMS compliant, National Incident Management System compliant. So if at all today when you guys go back to your tribes or if you're in leadership positions, go back and ask...oh, there it is. There's grandma's house. If you can, go back and start asking questions. Emergency management is not just about fire chiefs and cops. It really boils down to your community members because they're going to be responding to the incidents first. That's who's there, it's your family, it's your friends.

Energy. That's Secretary Chu before he headed out. I was a year-and-a-half into my term and energy conference in D.C. and lo and behold here comes Secretary Chu and I made sure I sat right behind that guy because I wanted to talk to him about what kind of dollars were going to be available in Indian Country. And he and I had about 15-, 20-minute conversation. Have you guys ever sat down with a secretary of the President's cabinet? It's near impossible if you can ever get there and to get 15 or 20 minutes is almost unheard of. Snuck in there. So again, be motivated, get up every day and do your best to get where you can around these folks. We got to talk about some of the needs and the roll out that was going on under the stimulus program and this conversation really changed my opinion about how I thought about energy in general. I didn't realize how inefficient the homes are on our reservation. I didn't realize the need for R38 insulation. I didn't realize the need for LEED which is like a fancy term for building green. I thought green was like a roof with grass on it or going back to the old days for us with like mud lodges and things like that, although those are actually very energy efficient. But also looking about how can you control your own energy future. We're going to come back to the sovereignty thing. Another part besides being financially astute, aware and responsible is also controlling the energy itself. In the northern loop of San Diego County runs the main distribution line that feeds North County San Diego. Well, guess what, their easement's up in 2021. So in 2021, that means that I can either condemn their lines and they're going to have to go around my reservation, which is all federal land, impossible environmentally, or they can work with me and they can work with me to generate an energy production on my reservation. We're actually starting a 10 megawatt energy production facility of PV on our reservation right now; photovoltaic (PV), photovoltaic panels. So again, another thing that I really wasn't aware of.

Partnership. I'll just go point at these really quick. The main reason I wanted to put this up there is because partner with everybody. Try partnering with people that you think will never partner with you. Have those conversations. Have the uncomfortable conversations because those are the ones that are actually going to bear fruit I think in the end when you really need to talk with those folks. You guys ever heard of Bob Filner. He was our mayor that got booted out of San Diego. I just put this up here because he showed up at Native Hire, when we launched nativehire.org. These are all chairmen and there in the middle is Mr. Filner and I thought it was interesting because again, you never know where politics are going to lead you. You never know who you're going to meet. But partnerships wherever you can make it happen.

Training. You guys are here. Obviously you're proactive in trying to find training opportunities so just get out there. I was able to take financial training courses; I was able to take energy courses. They have these conferences. If you're elected into office, ATTG, Aid to Tribal Government dollars are a way that we have been able to afford to go out to these things. A lot of times there's scholarships available. I put this photo up here. That's not me speaking at NCAI. It's actually a gentleman from Pala and I put this up here because we're here talking about leadership. He's a former council member, he's actually a hard core conservative and he gave Romney's speech -- I don't know if you guys were there -- at NCAI in front of the whole delegation. And I don't put this up here to be political but my point is this: that's a heavy room to walk into and knowing what you're up against and knowing what people think and just generally how Indian Country operates and to have a man walk up there and speak his mind, speak his voice and exercise the way he thinks was just something that I thought was worth highlighting because he's educated, he's smart, Harvard background, pilot, but he didn't get there by just being lazy, not showing up to things. He got there because he was motivated and he wanted to train himself and it put him in front of a very large audience at a very heavy hitting conference.

Pass the knowledge. You're not going to be there forever. How many tribal councils out there actually picked out people out of their membership to go up and be trained so that they could be replaced into the future? We did. I'm 29. I don't want to be doing this forever, and the reality is that if you're going to do this job effectively on a day-to-day basis, you're going to get a little bit tired. It's not going to be something that you're going to be able to do, in my opinion, I know some guys can do it for 20 or 30 years, but a lot has changed in 20 or 30 years. And when you don't have the dollars like us that means that I'm doing it. I don't have staff, like I said, I don't have an HR department, I don't have an energy department; it's me and it's my council. We have two people that work with us intimately on these projects. So pass the knowledge both here and both with the youth. I should have put a slide up here on education. Maybe you can hit on the educational component a little bit.

Lastly, recognize your successes and your strengths. You wake up every day and you fight for something; water rights, energy, housing dollars, just motivating your people sometimes, but recognize that you do do that work. It's okay to recognize that you do work hard, in a humble way. But then also don't be afraid to share it. I'm happy to be here today to kind of talk about a whirlwind of things that I've been able to be a part of, but La Jolla's actually set the model in a lot of ways and I'll be happy to say it. We are the fastest recovery in Indian Country after our wildfires in 2007. No offense, but nobody's ever beat us in our recovery time; everybody back in their houses in nine months. We were the first tribe in a long time for the Bureau to actually hand us over $2 million and say, "˜Go build the road,' because everybody was scared, the old days of the Bureau. "˜We're not going to give you the cash. You Indians don't know how to spend it. You don't know how to operate your government.' I said, "˜Really? Watch this. Just give me the cash.' Government-to-government contract, here we go and we got the thing done. So don't be afraid to share those successes and if you guys have questions, I'll be happy to answer them later.

Tough stuff. Five things. Most challenging thing about this job: ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act]. I struggle so hard with ICWA because these are the kids, these are the future, these are people that don't have voices necessarily for themselves, and this is the hardest part. Our council meets quarterly with our ICWA representative, the county case workers, our clinic case workers, and these things just rip your heart out. If you have a heart while you're on council and you go to your first ICWA meeting, you'll understand what I mean because you're hearing horrible stories about these kids and their living situations and the way they were treated and the saddest part is it all boils back down to families that you know. That's the hard part and sometimes you can't do anything about it. Sometimes the mom that is using drugs that is smart enough to take the kid over to her other mom's house so that she can leave for the weekend to go do drugs is not being a neglectful parent because she was of right mind at least to take the kid out of the situation. Now to me I'm going, "˜Mom's using drugs, mom's not really being mom, mom maybe shouldn't have the kid.' Those are the types of decisions that you're going to run into that I was never expecting. And then, when you make the decision for placement, when the county comes to you asking for the recommendation or your tribal court or however your ICWA is set up and you make a recommendation based on the best interests of the kid's health...we had this. I'll be real honest. Our council agreed to take a child from a home and put them into a non-Indian home, which I understand that this is the point of ICWA, but the reality was that to find Indian homes in our area that were going to be healthy for the kid, didn't make sense at the time to transition them out because the home that they were in, the kid's not...how's it going with the kid in this home? 'They're not cutting themselves anymore, they're not drinking, they're not sleeping around,' and I'm going to take a kid out of that situation? ICWA is the hardest thing you're ever going to have to deal with when you're on council.

Last four things, most surprising thing, you guys just heard the whirlwind. If you've got a small council, you're going to deal with everything. You never know what's going to happen in a day. You're going to wake up one day and you'll be talking to Secretary Chu or you'll be talking to the governor and then you're going to get a phone call about the dogs chasing your kids home from the bus. That's just your day when you're on council, it's just how it is. I had to quickly learn about a variety of different laws. One thing I could change that I do a lot better now with is I don't sweat the small stuff. You can't do it all and I'm not saying that you give up by any means, but the sooner you recognize that there are just going to be things that happen that are out of your control, the easier it's going to be to lead more effectively when you're up there. And part of what's helped me do that really comes down to the last thing.

Effective leaders. Yeah, you listen. You guys are all here, you probably understand this. You all listen. You have to be patient. You have to be fair. But for me, the biggest way that I...the main core reason why I'm able to get through this on a daily basis is because I have a connection and a relationship with who created me. I have a religious understanding of how I work with god and how god works in everybody else's life and in mine. You need to stay centered when you're doing this because everybody is fighting with you. Well, a lot of people are fighting with you. There's a lot of great people encouraging you. There's going to be people pulling you this way, people pulling you that way and at the end of the day if you can't stay centered in what you believe, how you were raised and what you think, you're not going to be successful. You're not. You're going to get overwhelmed. So I would just end with sharing that. Wake up every day, reflect on who you are, reflect on what you know, and start there if you're going to get into office because it just gets crazy sometimes. Thank you very much for your time."

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

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

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

People
Resource Type
Citation

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

Ian Record:

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

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

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

Ian Record:

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

Karen Diver:

“Thank you, my pleasure.”

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Jamie Fullmer (Part 2)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

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

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

"I believe so, yes."

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

"Yeah, that's correct."

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

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

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

Jamie Fullmer:

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

Ian Record:

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

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Clarifying Roles and Delegating Responsibility"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders discuss the need for Native nations to define the distinct roles of elected leaders and administrators, and the importance of leaders delegating responsibilities to those appropriately charged with day-to-day administraion. 

Native Nations
Citation

Diver, Karen. "Sovereignty Today." Honoring Nations seminar. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

Ducheneaux, Wayne. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Spearfish, South Dakota. April 11, 2012. Interview.

LaPlante, Jr., Leroy. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. August 12, 2010. Interview.

Marquez, Deron. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Interview.

McCoy, John. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 18, 2009. Interview.

Minthorn, Antone. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Interview.

Mitchell, Michael K. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2008. Interview.

Michael Mitchell:

"And I had one policy. I didn't think we had any business running the administration side. We're politicians. So I had discussion with council, saying, 'Let's do our politics, and we hired these people -- let them do their administration.' So separating administration and politics was one of the first objectives, and it worked."

Urban Giff:

"...Have a better understanding among all the players, all the decision-makers as to who has the resources to do what, and that's where the bureaucracy comes in. The bureaucracy [is] there, the bureaucrats are there because they have qualifications in their respective areas. The politicians are there because they have rapport with the voters and they have the vision for the tribe. And if you put those two together, the politicians with their vision of what is to be done, what they're striving to get done, and the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats of how it's to be done, that can't help but win for the tribe. So no one segment can do it alone. They have to work together as best as they can."

Leroy LaPlante, Jr.:

"I think there's a short-term effect and that the interference, it prevents those programs from functioning the way they're supposed to, it prevents them from hiring the way they're supposed to, making personnel decisions the way they're supposed to, making fiscal decisions the way they're supposed to. But I think the long-term is it detracts from what their job really is, and that is to plan long-term for the tribe. To think where, you know, the bigger decisions. So you kind of have this hierarchy of needs in a tribal government; you have these everyday daily operations. And, you know, who decides, you know, what to purchase with a particular program budget is a very small matter. But when you have legislators and tribal council members making those kinds of decisions, obviously, that's gonna take away from the bigger things they should be doing, which is planning for the tribe's future, creating laws that are going to be implemented for the improvement of the tribe. And so it does detract from those bigger things, and those are the things that they're elected to do. And so that's what I meant by a short-term effect and a long-term effect."

Wayne Ducheneaux:

"I think that's most everybody's approach is to bail in and get busy and get helping. It's a very hard thing to do to step back, especially when you're an elected official. You only have 'X' amount of years to get what you want accomplished so of course you're going to want to bail in and make that quick change. It is hard to plan out for the future but that's what we have to do is when you become an elected official is you have to think about the bigger picture."

John McCoy:

"That's where the leadership, the elected leadership – their role is to 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."

Deron Marquez:

"Having the right people in place from legal to the chief financial officer to the operations of our various businesses is critical when you're out there trying to address and deal with state issues, county issues, federal issues. To rely upon those individuals makes my job a lot easier. Yesterday we talked a lot about micromanagement. If you want to have a big headache and you don't want to sleep at night, micromanage. There's a quicker, easier way to get this done and that's not it. Hire talented people. Put them in the position, give them the authority to make decisions, support their decisions and you will have an easier life as a chair."

Antone Minthorn:

"Let managers manage. Don't micromanage, and hire the people that are smarter than you, meaning that that's their job. I can't go in and be a real estate agent, 'cause I'd have to do a lot of study for a long time to make that happen. So we have to bring in the right people."

Karen Diver:

"I have 28 different divisions. I'm not an educator. I am not a healthcare administrator. I certainly am not an environmentalist. Why on earth wouldn't I use the expectations and the skills of my staff to inform my decision making? The accountability comes is if they get it wrong. 'Okay, you mucked that one up. Now what you going to do to fix it?' That's their role. We set policy and vision. They know what the vision is. They have to come prepared to us to own it. I am not going to take responsibility for every single bit of work that comes out of my reservation. We have 2,000 employees. How could I even think I could do that? But they did. Then they wondered why they had eight-hour meetings and never had time for people and never were able to set the vision. It's a vicious little cycle. We use our own power to keep us out of touch with our own people. And we don't hold our staff accountable because of it. Basic management principles: distinguish between decision making and what is planning; use your tribal council to plan; use what you have to under your own rules for decision making; and then let your staff do their work." 

Catalina Alvarez: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Vice Chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Catalina Alvarez shares what she wishes that she knew before she first took office, and focuses on the importance of elected leaders understanding -- and confining themselves to performing -- their appropriate roles and responsibilities.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Alvarez, Catalina. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Presentation.

Catalina Alvarez:

"Thank you again for inviting me to speak on ‘what I would have known.' I think a lot of us as tribal leaders, especially for myself, we don't get into politics unless we know that either we wanted to see change...or we wanted to get revenge on someone, the director, or we really wanted to just for the prestige of being on council. My reason at the time was probably all three. And as a past employee of the tribe I think that one of our health directors, our council at that time never visited Guadalupe -- I live in Tempe area -- and never visited the community, we never saw a councilman really. I didn't even know who was actually on council at that time, so our grant was going to come to an end so when I asked them, ‘Why aren't these services being provided off the reservation? Why aren't we getting the same benefits?' and one thing they had told me was, ‘Well, if you want to see change, well, get on council.' So I'm like, ‘Okay, so I'll go to get on council.' But if I would have known the responsibility it is and the time consuming...I think I would have thought differently.

But it has been...I think the most difficult thing as a council is the time away from home and your families, the time that you spend at work is just tremendous, because as you come in...the council that I came into, we were fortunate I guess and unfortunate at the same time that we had the council that actually were there trying, at the time that the incorporation started and were still working. And I say it's fortunate because at least we got their experience as the tribal leaders that actually got us incorporated as a tribe, but also their mindset sometimes is set in the old ways. And when you have new faces, new council, younger council, we want to do things differently, we see others like the government as well and they don't, we tend to, I think the old council has the old mind frame that things should be done differently or they should stay the same. And so that's why I say that it was a good and bad.

But I think the difficult part of it was also to be able to get the council to agree on a vision for the tribe because you had so many different personalities, many different reasons and why they were on council. And it was, like I said for myself, when you get into council you don't realize the work behind the scene. And just like I said, as a council member, you'll be blamed either way if you do things right or wrong because sometimes it's even difficult to understand for our constituents and our employees that things have to be kept confidential. And what should and not -- that's always a fine line like our community expects to know certain things and should you give that information up or not. So that was one of the aspects of that.

Also to me, what overwhelmed me was -- going back to the previous presentation -- is that as a council you are the one that actually makes the laws, the ordinances but also set the foundation for the future. And that's a big responsibility, especially if you don't know what laws already exist. So you spend a lot of time as a new council being overwhelmed and trying to catch up. And like this council, with the new council members, I know that there's 11 council members in the tribe. We really didn't wait for them, we just kept on going, which I think we realize now...because I remember Rosita [Alvarez] was asking me, ‘So what are we supposed to do with these packets?' I mean simple as a study session, the day-to-day things that go on in the tribe, the previous council that was re-elected, I think we just kept on going, we didn't even both asking them how to get you up to speed on what was going on. I think as you're getting up to speed also having them understand where we were left off on some of the ordinances, the laws and also the foundation that you not only do for the government but for your enterprises and what best fits for those enterprises. Currently our tribe is also responsible like, we had a gaming board a couple years ago but the council at that time dissolved the gaming board. So council is not only the government part of it but it's also over the enterprises, the Chevron, and the gaming.

So we still have that discussion, ‘What is more beneficial as a council person?' I mean, of course I think the big, the one thing that I think as a council person that you should have in the back of your mind is that to acknowledge at least that you need help in finding the best quality person that you can for those positions. And I think that's one of the most surprising thing to me was that we have...or at least I say it that...it made me more cynical on things I think being on council because you have people that come in and still think that the council is like a social service, social service workers, and you've got to kind of separate yourself from that aspect and also just be...I think we, as a council you are more cynical because you're on the other side now. And is it really a need when everything else is going on?

The other thing is also...I lost my train of thought. But just on those aspects and just knowing that as the directors that you have, I think the council that we sit on, it's all 11, we all are re-elected, we don't have staggered terms. So it's very difficult sometimes to get started again I think even if it's half of the council that comes in as new. A lot of times as council you tend to forget that, at least in, this is my third term in council, is knowing if your finance director or your gaming person, your directors are actually telling you the truth on the numbers and that has been the biggest challenge for me as on council because we have. Since the council is over the gaming, I think they're too comfortable with the council, our gaming executives. So I think that's very, that's one of the things that I think that should, if I would have came back and done things differently is I would have made myself more aware of all the laws and things that were going on with the tribal council and the government at that time, even on the enterprise part of it.

But I think as a tribal leader, you don't think about, I mean as a newly elected [leader] you don't think about those things, you just think about what you will want to do as a council member, how you will want to improve things and how things should be done. But a lot of times we don't even think that those things as a council, the way you're going to get things done is by doing ordinances and strengthening your policies and not necessarily going and micromanaging the departments, which is a fine line because it's very difficult, especially if you have a council that is working and is there every day. And so I think it warps kind of the...your responsibilities. Because we still, like I said, have council that have that mind frame that when something happens, the community will run to that council or if they expect you to be at all the events or for you to solve all their problems and it's not, that's not what as a legislator you're there for. And I think that's one of the key qualities is that you need to know how to [not] micromanage, you need to have good leadership and especially know how to delegate and also to be able to speak out as an individual because of your integrity. Like, how strong are you on your commitments? How strong are you willing to go against the whole council if you feel the decision is not right? The previous council that I was with, I was the only female at that time, so it was very difficult for me because they had this ‘good ‘ole boys' network going on for years. You have to be strong enough to be assertive, to be able to get your point across and to get the things that need to be done the way you feel like, the way you think that you would be...the way the community would think.

And I know that as...when I came into council, I said, ‘Well, I'm not a politician, I'm not a politician.' But you've got to act like a politician if you...you've got to start lobbying your council to be able to move things because otherwise you cannot move on anything as a solo person. So that's one of the...I think one of the key elements that I've learned throughout the years is that if you don't know how to lobby, if you don't know how to be assertive and actually not get involved with the community aspect like keeping your distance from being biased. Because of course in our tribe everybody seems to be related. No matter what decision you make, it'll impact the family that you...or the families or the community that you live in.

And having strength even though that your constituents are telling you to vote a way that they would want to see; I think the biggest challenge is...because they don't see, and as a council I think that you have to do your own research and get the most information you can to make the best decision for the tribe and not just for that one individual. And not to make laws or pass ordinance for just one individual and not...because we have a tendency to work as a tribe or as a council at one time just to put out fires; that's all we did. This situation comes up, we're all over there and we'll try to fix this and we don't see overall.

And I think as a council, as a newly elected [leader], not only do you have to deal with your own constituents but how you relate to the state and how you lobby the state on some of the monies that you receive and even the laws that are being proposed even in the federal government and knowing how to actually go and lobby and meet with your representatives. And I think that was the biggest awakening for myself because I didn't realize how much of a detail and how much of a responsibility it is as being a councilperson.

If I would have done things differently, I don't think I would have ran for council, at least not until I knew a little bit more on what the responsibilities are. I think everybody that runs for council eventually runs because they genuinely want to see the community change or want to better the future of the tribe. Thank you."

Robert McGhee: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Treasurer of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Robert McGhee shares some of the things that he wished he knew before he first took office. He also discusses how he and his elected leader colleagues have built a team approach to making informed decisions on behalf of their constituents.

People
Resource Type
Citation

McGhee, Robert. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Presentation.

Robert McGhee:

"Once again, thank you to the Native Nations Institute and to the tribe allowing us to be here this afternoon and to go through this, I think a very interesting subject. As she was speaking, I can hit on a lot of those and say, ‘Okay, I had that written down. I had that written down,' so at least to show we're somehow consistent from tribe to tribe. We are located in a small town. We're the only tribe in the state of...federally recognized tribe in the State of Alabama. We have several other state-recognized tribes in the state that we have a pretty good working relationship with. However, we are a council of nine. Just some background; we are [on] staggered terms. So the good thing and one of the best things I can say about our tribe is that we're staggered and we have the continuity instead of being all elected at once, ours is three people every year come up. So at least we're only, if we're replacing somebody, we're replacing one to three people. We have never once actually even replaced entirely three people during the time that I've been on. I'm on my second term...third term and will be up next June for my [fourth] term.

We're structured as we have a separate economic development authority who, we have Creek Indian Enterprises that takes care of all of our economic development authorities, all of our businesses. And then we have a PCI Gaming authority, which takes care of all of our gaming ventures, and we have them throughout the state and in Florida and working in California and some other places too. We do have one council member who serves on each of those, which it helps so we can know that...you were coming to that trust issue and just saying what is being done at those board levels. Each council member actually serves on one of those entities and we rotate every year. So what it is, is we want to learn about...we don't want to give somebody too much autonomous and too much power where I'm serving on PCI gaming for three years, I'm the only one that really knows what's going on. We ask that everybody rotate a year. So this year I get to be involved in those decisions. Next year it's going to be Catalina [Alvarez] that gets to be involved in those decisions. So it helps us to get a better understanding of what is out there because we did not have that.

So to get back to the things that...when I first got started on council, it was...I worked for the tribe a number of years ago as a social worker out of undergrad. My father served on council, my brother served on council, my great-grandfather was the chief and so I always had an identity that one day I would come back home and serve on the council. However, I went off to graduate school and went and worked in Washington, D.C. and worked for the United States Senate Committee [on Indian Affairs] and worked for the federal government. So I had an understanding of the way D.C. government impacted the tribal governments, but I really did not have an understanding of how local politics impacted our tribal government. And not even...when I say local politics, county commissions and cities, but also just the tribal members themselves. So the hardest part for me was coming back. And I got elected. I worked for a year and I got elected. And we have, we are part-time council members and full-time council members. What I mean is, you have the opportunity to choose if you will be a full-time council member or a part-time council member. There's two of us that are part-time council members. That's me along with actually our general manager of our casino is also a council member and then the other seven are full-time council members. I also handle the government relations part of the tribe.

But the hardest thing was when I came back home and you got elected was the fact that it's really difficult working for your family. You are working...we have 3,000 members and the amount of...you go into these meetings and you're sitting there and you're thinking you're making the best decisions for the tribe and then you have your own cousins and things like say, ‘Well, why did he make...Robbie just stood up and made that decision and he...' without them knowing the facts that were presented. As a social worker, and I got my degree as a master's in social worker, and it was like I always know to look at there's three sides to every story. And the sad part is the general council, and that's to our own fault, sometimes they're not aware of all the sides to the decision that's being made. They only see the one side that's being presented, they don't take the opportunity or we're not providing them the opportunity to learn all of the different discussions that took place.

When we first moved back, we were, I would say probably 10 years ago, 'Type A' development that was up there. We were, I wouldn't call us -- you may know some of our past tribal leaders so I'm not going to -- we were just in a different direction. We had strong leadership; the other council members at that time necessarily did not have a voice. What happened was, when I came back on after working in D.C. and then we encouraged a couple other younger individuals to run for council, that we started not necessarily challenging but we started just saying, ‘Why was that decision made or why are we going this route?' That's not necessarily the way I perceive the law. Because we had...our general council, we set up education funds and we educated our youth and we educate. So they went off and got the education, now they want to come back and serve and there was a gap there. It was a gap between the elders who served on the council and then you had these young bucks and the McGhee boys who were coming back and they were trying to run the tribe and that wasn't true. It was just one of those things of -- as I said before -- you do not know the history that has taken place under your tribal leadership for hundreds of years. You'll never know. The sad part is you will never know. You can sit there and study, you can sit there and look and you can sit there and research. I do not know why that decision was made 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but that was the hardest part. Why did you make that decision 15 years ago? Why did you make that decision 20 years ago? And to get them to answer those when you're coming into new directions. Sometimes those questions are hard to get answered because it's maybe it's one of those things that it was pride, it was we had...you had to get reelected, you had to...to get progress done you had to make certain sacrifices.

But I think as we've gotten, as we've moved forward, I would say that the hardest thing that, I would say a key attribute that I think every council member should have is just humility. I think they should have humility, I think they should have generosity and I think they should have authenticity. I think it's one of...because as you're moving forward to make a decision you have to be authentic, but I think if you can recognize...if you're authentic, then you can recognize someone else's generosity. You can sit around a table now of our nine, and we have leaders who have been on council now for 25 years, there's two of those. The rest of us have been on, I'm the next at nine years and then after that it's six and three. And I think it's taken...what we had to do was come together as a group. We weren't as a group when I first got elected. You still had this...our elders who are on the council who are very strong and very opinionated and they had the right to be. They have already lived this and we were coming in and challenging their decisions, which was not very respectful at that time when I look back. But we were coming in and challenging them and saying, ‘Well, that's not necessarily true,' or ‘I've worked here and I see a different approach,' and that really did separate us a lot when you had these newer people coming onboard against the elders.

But it was one of those things of, ‘Well, how can we work together?' So what we did, after the second year of my serving on council, I asked that, ‘How about we just take a retreat? How about all of us go somewhere? Not at the local, at the casino hotel because that's not getting away. Let's go somewhere else.' And so we went to...the good thing is where we live, we live on the coast so between two beaches an hour away. So we took the council away to the beach for the weekend and we asked...and I asked another thing. I said...because I'm a very, at that time, I was a very challenging individual; passionate is what my tribal leaders called me. So that was the term that was labeled actually at the retreat about Robbie, ‘He is passionate.' So I asked then, I said, ‘Well, for all of us to have a voice at this retreat, we need to bring in somebody from the outside who does not know anything about us. Can we bring in a moderator?' So it's not Robbie taking over a conversation, it's not our elder, the past chairman for 25 years taking over the conversation, who at this time is no longer the chairman but he still had a strong voice or others. And so that was where we started shifting in the right, not in the right direction, but in a new direction.

We sat there, we went through that weekend, we challenged each other, we were able to speak freely to each other about how I feel threatened by you or how you feel threatened by me and we also talked about the micromanaging and how things needed to change. Because at that time we were...the council not...in the past was going in and pretty much just telling directors what to do and that is not the way this government was set up. This government was set up of, ‘We have hired competent people in place as our program directors and we need them to do their jobs.' So we figured, ‘Well, how can we get the full-time council more, not work, but where they feel more involved in the process but yet not going in and micromanaging every department?' So we set up legislative committees. So every council member now, by law, had to, we passed an ordinance that you had, to be a full-time council member, we created several legislative committees and you had to serve on two or more. And then those legislative committees were the ones who actually would work with the administrator or if there were laws that had to be changed or any policies that had to be changed or resolutions that had to be amended, they would go and meet with the directors and of course not just directly to the director.

We made it...we had a plan that you had to go through the administrator or even the chairman's office out of respect to arrange these meetings and that actually was a great move for the tribal council because it...no longer did they feel the need to call up so-and-so in social services, ‘why didn't...why did you turn down the...application?' Because like I said before, there's always two to three sides to every story and when you have a general council member going to a council member, you're only getting one side. And that's the hardest thing for the council member themselves to realize. When a general council member comes to you, you are only hearing one side and the sad part is sometimes you're hearing a truth that may be sometimes flawed. And so what we had to encourage the tribal council members to do was we need to meet with every, get all the parties in a room or ‘Hey, call this...you got this side of the story, now call the director and get their side of the story and let's move forward from there.' I think that as we've done this it's been one of those growing challenges because you still will have individuals who talk in the community. I always think that's amazing but now we've empowered each of our council members through these leadership retreats and through events such as this to also challenge each other but also to challenge a general council member. Meaning if so-and-so is saying so-and-so about another council member, now we stand up for each other. Now we say, ‘Well, why do you think so-and-so made that decision? Well, I know why he's made that decision or why she's made that decision but you're more than welcome to call them to address it.'

We have a lot of open...in the past we didn't have transparency of government. What we did was we decided that from now on everything would be open. You can come in and you can look at financials, you can come in and you can look at every document that you need to look in. However, you can't leave with the documents but you can come in. That's still not perfect. They still want to take the documents but we say, ‘No, you can come in and look at everything.' We have community meetings. We don't have...in our community meetings, if there are any topics that are bothering the tribe, we open it up. We have to sit up there, all nine of us and we have to take hit after hit after hit. We only have one speaker. We don't ask everybody to speak, only if there's a question that's directed to them. I usually draw the short end of the stick because I'm the government relations person so I'm the one that takes a lot of the hits. But it's...you stand up there and you give every council member the voice because that's all they want. Our general council just wants a voice and they want to be heard and that's one of the hardest things was trying to get evolved to the rest of the council, is just taking the opportunity to listen to the general council and be honest with them.

I think the other key is just you tell them, ‘No, we cannot do that. I cannot do that for this family over here because...and this family actually does not represent the 3,000 other members that are here.' Even in a community meeting when I have 10 people speaking to an issue or the council has 10 people speaking to an issue, we let them know at that community meeting that, ‘Okay, there's only 300 people here. There's 3,000 members. So please know that we cannot leave this meeting making a change or an ordinance based upon the 100 that spoke out of the 300 that do not represent the 3,000.' But we will let them know in the newsletter that, ‘Hey, these 100 spoke to this and if you have a different agenda, then you need to contact us. You need to let...because if not, we will be going in this direction.' And that's when you get everybody then speaking. It's like, ‘Well, I wasn't at the meeting.' ‘Well, that's not our fault.' We make sure that we give a pretty amount...a lot of time and effort to go there.

Another thing that the...when you come into it with just the challenge of recognizing political agendas of each one. They have them. We did have several members that used to be employees who were upset. So they ran for council and they got elected. And they did make some changes, which was quite fun. But after you started working with each other and you understand just the political agendas of each one of them, you ask and it's like, ‘Well, that's actually not a bad political agenda. How can we do that together but I need you to support mine.' I didn't know the difficulty would be...it's like I was a politician per se, I was a lobbyist in D.C. also, too, and worked in government there but then moving back, that was a harder political game to play at the local level amongst tribal council members. But one of the things that we started to do was actually ask them at our meetings, private meetings, ‘What are your top 10? What are your top five?' or ‘What did you want to see done in your term?' And if they're not completely truthful, you can look at the newsletter when they wrote their platform for being elected, they're right there. So we can say, ‘Well, you said this, you're going to build an education institution and you do know an education institution costs $2 million. So how do we get that done?' I go, ‘I want to build a new health care facility, that's going to cost $10 million. So how do I get that done?' And it takes the time that we had to prioritize and to go through and say because...and we published these things and the good thing about it is it publishes all of the political agendas. But if they're little things, I encourage you to call. I encourage you to talk to your other council members prior to council meetings. Explain to them what's going on. We don't like anything presented without being discussed. We get very upset if you just throw something on the table. We will not support it. We've been very good about standing strong as a majority to say, ‘We can't support that. This is the first time you've ever talked to us about that and that's not necessarily something that's good for everybody.'

The last thing that we had done that I thought was...and it took...we went on a leadership retreat actually here in Tucson at Miraval. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. And we went away and we did all these team-building exercises. And we developed a goal and a purpose and we set a value statement. And we got to understand how each person on the council was. When we went to the core, we had emotional environments and we went to the core to each of us as individuals. And we realized that you make all the...so-and-so makes all his decisions based upon family, that was the core. So we knew if he made a decision, we're like, ‘Why did he make that decision?' and if we could relate it to his family, we knew why he related it. And he was honest about it and that was the best thing. At least I knew where you stood, you were always about, ‘I'm focused on my nuclear family, then my larger family,' which is the tribe. But at least we knew where so-and-so was coming from every time he made a decision and that's what helped us. And after that we developed a value statement for the council. And we actually wanted it to be a part of our constitution so we put it on the public. We put it on as a constitutional amendment; it was voted on. And we let the people know that every council member who runs in the future must support this purpose and this value statement for our tribe. And the people supported it; it passed overwhelmingly. And so now, over the last two years, when you have people running for council, we challenge them to say, ‘tell us how you support the purpose of this tribe and do you have the same value statements that we said we would all support?'

It's been an interesting road. I'm up next year. So far no one's come out against me. The sad...I would say one thing that I think every council member needs to be aware of is the role now that social media is though is playing in our lives and how it's becoming very difficult to get a message across that is accurate when you have social media taking over. If you can have one tribal council member who's not happy, you've provided now that individual a voice and you will spend a lot of your time engaging. And it's been a difficult thing to figure out how we can go around this with social media and the Facebook. That's been the difficult task because they're not...they're not getting the whole story. They're airing business that should not be aired and we try to...this is not...the nation sees that now. Not the tribal nation, the nation. And you can never take it back. So now we're trying to have community meetings on explaining the impact of social media. So if you're just now getting elected or anything like that, I would try to start addressing that very quickly because it can be a dangerous avenue. We're in a fight with the county and the county knows more stuff about us because they can...friends of friends and friends of friends and they see the arguments that are taking place and it's very difficult. So I would encourage all of you, if you can figure the best way, if anybody can come up with a model on how to put that genie back in the bottle or to at least use it as a more social activism for the tribe and not against the tribe. Thank you."

Ron His Horse Is Thunder: The Keys to Effective Governance and Economic Development: Predictability and Sustainability

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Ron His Horse Is Thunder discusses why predictability and sustainability are so critical to effective Native nation governance and economic development.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

His Horse Is Thunder, Ron. "The Keys to Effective Governance and Economic Development: Predictability and Sustainability." Emerging Leaders seminar, Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 11, 2007. Presentation.

"Now we are here learning about nation building and what really is nation building. You know as I sat down...I did not plan on actually taking part in listening to the sessions, but I'm glad I did. Because as I'm listening to and sometimes engaging in the sessions, I had for you, I had a prepared speech. And as I'm listening, I go, ‘That's something I can't tell them anymore. They already told them that. Okay, they told them that.' So I'm glad I listened. I hate being rhetorical. Sometimes it's good to hear things over and over again. It kind of embeds it in your mind. And so I'm going to do this off the cuff.

Now we're engaged in the idea, what does it truly mean, in terms of engaging in nation building? And I want to leave you with just two words -- if you leave here with anything -- and that's predictability and sustainability. Those two words. That's truly what we're about. As tribal nations, we were once just that. And they put on these reservations, they changed our form of government, and they created these tribal councils. And the tribal council powers were very limited in the beginning when they re-created us, if you will. And so tribal councils could do everything because they didn't have much to do. Now that's changed. As our nations have grown and we have exercised more sovereignty, what we do as tribal council members, as tribal leaders, becomes overwhelming at times, especially if we're going to stay in those traditional roles -- the traditional role being what the government gave us -- if we're going to stay in that role, the things that we do on a day-to-day basis are just going to overwhelm us. Because one of the things someone said, came to me -- and I read it in the book because I actually read that book. It says, ‘My constituents think I'm an ATM machine!' Well, that's because the traditional role, again for, as federal government has reshaped us. And I keep going back to that -- it's not tradition, it's a reformed government by the federal government. What tribal councils have been able to do again is very limited and they do everything in that limited context. And so our constituents have come to us consistently as tribal leaders, consistently saying, ‘You have the answers. You have all the power. You have control of the money.' And yes, tribal councils did, again to a limited basis. Bureau of Indian Affairs still handled many of those things; they handled all the leases. There were no corporate charters; they just brought somebody else from the outside. As we start to take over those responsibilities as tribal governments, we cannot allow ourselves to operate the old way.

And so part of these sessions is how do we then, with these new powers, if you will -- always were ours -- how do we in exercising these powers of tribal governments, how in exercising our sovereignty do we get away from the day to day, ‘I need, I need, I need, I need,' from our constituents? Well, we need to put in those places -- some of the things they talked about yesterday is constitutional development, the separation of powers; and that is the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and the executive branch. I think that was a fourth concept thrown in there -- some tribes use it -- and that is an elder's council. Something I learned; I might take that home with me. My tribe hasn't gotten to that point yet. My tribe did a separation of powers about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that, and they separated out the judicial side of it. But the tribal council still held the hold of the legislative and the executive authorities, which really is a pain in my butt because they want to micromanage everything. And so we're here about learning to separate those out so that our nations become predictable. Because truly, if we're going to have sustainability, we can't depend on outside resources to continually take care of all of our needs, that is money. We all need money. And so in order to have sustainability on our reservations, we need economic development as we talked about this morning.

Economic development, in order for it to grow on our reservations, in order for it to be fostered by tribal governments, we need to put in place good laws. Part of those good laws is a separation of power. And so that legislative portion just writes the laws, the judicial portion just... and I shouldn't go into this. Now I'm becoming redundant in terms of what I already told you. But in order for us to be predictable, that's truly what businesses need, that's truly what an investor needs to bring money on to your reservation, bring employment, jobs, manufacturing -- whatever -- on to your reservation. Even your entrepreneurs, your tribal entrepreneurs need that stability. We talked about a lease in our last half hour and the idea of tribal government at a whim wanted to take away a lease. In order for anybody, whether it's an outsider or tribal member wanting to do economic development on your reservation, you need predictability. That's what laws are about, all laws are about predictability, whether it's creating safety -- criminal laws -- or whether it's civil regulation, it is about predictability and sustainability, protection of rights and delivery of services to our tribal members. So we -- if you leave here with anything, that what you're doing is creating a sustainable government that is very predictable. You need to absolutely be predictable, if anything else.

Now in terms of economic development, if you do your business code, your commercial code -- your uniform commercial code is what they'll say in law school more often than not -- you absolutely need to do that. If you haven't done that, I would advise you that's one of the things you need to take home with you is creating a business code, uniform commercial code, absolutely for predictability. Somebody invests their money, they're going to want to know how they're going to get their money back should everything go belly-up. And the tribe cannot -- here's one of the things my tribe has faced for the last 15 years that I've watched them as the tribal college president, is our tribe is so worried about sovereign immunity. They're so worried about controlling every aspect of business development on our reservation. They don't want any business to locate on our reservation unless they're willing to give up 51 percent ownership so the tribe can own it. They want to own everything. And I guess that's an okay thing if that's what your tribe wants to do. But most businesses don't want to locate from the outside in and have to give up 51 percent of their operation. And so you need to ask yourself, they said there were two forms of business development. One is large business development -- tribally owned businesses -- and entrepreneurs. Well, there's really another, third category I want to pose to you and that is large businesses locating in from the outside.

When we talk about entrepreneurs, we talk about small business and we really want to talk about people already on the reservation taking care of those C-stores, etcetera, etcetera. Questions tribal councils need to ask themselves is do they want to foster business development from large corporations outside? There's always a fear of that. There's a fear because of control. A real interesting concept that we have taken on and that is, for tribal, as tribal nations, as tribal governments, we have had so little control for so long of our lives, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs have controlled almost every aspect of who we are, that as we get control, as we start to exercise that sovereignty, we jealously guard it. We absolutely do. It's an okay thing. But sometimes it gets in the way of development; it gets in the way of sustainability. Yesterday, we talked about the idea of the Nez Perce. When the Nez Perce were fighting with their county commissioners; each of them vying for sovereignty, if you will, over this piece of land. And they worked it out and said, 'You know what, we understand that we're both sovereigns, but we need to work together.' And truly, when you start taking a look at attracting businesses – if that's what you're going to do – from the outside, large businesses from the outside, you have to be willing to say, ‘Okay, I'm a sovereign, but do I need to control 51 percent ownership of this business?' That's a decision your tribal council's going to have to make. I can tell you this: most businesses are not going to want to come, they're not going to. And so if that's the mode that your tribe's in, then you truly have to take a look at, okay, just tribal businesses, large tribal businesses, and you've talked about that this morning in terms of Lance Morgan and the Ho-Chunk, how they did that.

I want to talk to you then, a little bit about entrepreneurs on your reservation. And I know that some tribes, culturally speaking, frown upon it in terms of individual businesses. But I want you to think about this. That -- and Joan said it this morning or a roundabout way of saying it -- that is we were always business people, we just didn't call ourselves 'business people.' It's a foreign word to us. It's an English word. Truly there were people who possessed all kinds of skills. And not everybody was a good bow maker. Not everybody was a good, made good pottery. Not everybody knew how to train horses. Not everybody knew how to do everything. There were skilled craftsmen amongst our people who had a gift, if you will, and they would make beautiful pottery, but that's all they could do. So they would trade with somebody else and that person would trade with somebody else. Well, that's business. That is business. The only difference is you have a currency between today. That's the only difference. So we were always business people, always. And that's something we need to teach our young people, teach them in K-12 schools, that it's okay to be in business because we always were.

Now, we have to grapple with this concept of capitalism because businesses are associated with the word 'capitalism,' making profit, making huge profits, if you can. And I'm going to dive, I do this all the time, I go off into a tangent. We as Indian people don't grow up thinking, ‘I want to be a millionaire.' Rarely, rarely, rarely do you find an Indian who says that, ‘I want to be a millionaire.' And in high school says, ‘I want to be a millionaire.' In college says, ‘I want to be a millionaire.' And they go out and they start businesses to make lots of money. Most Indian business people don't have that mindset. Non-Indians, on the other hand, they have that mindset. That's the difference between us. But capitalism truly is the trades of goods and services for money and accumulation of wealth. So capitalism amongst Indians has a negative connotation to it. And therefore, businesses have a negative connotation to it. See, for so long, we have been shut out of business as Indian people. The only people that own businesses were non-Indians. And so when we look at business owners, ‘Oh, that's what white people do,' because we forgot that we were business people. Again, the only thing we need to grapple with is this idea of capitalism, that word, and that is the accumulation of wealth.

Well, I can almost guarantee you that in almost every Indian society, every Native culture, there were wealthy people and there were poor people. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm wrong. But we had a way, we had a mechanism of dealing with it, and that is if you wanted to be tribal chairman or you wanted to be a politician, councilperson, you had to share your wealth; you had to share it. Taxation is a foreign concept to us. Why? Because our leaders provided for those people who didn't have, and there were always people who didn't have. So that's the only thing that we need to grapple with as entrepreneurs, is how do we become successful business people without having people label us as being greedy. That's something that you have to deal with as an entrepreneur. But understand truly, we were business people. There were rich people. There were poor people. One of the differences, and an old concept of doing things, again, the business people who were rich would have given out of their own pocket.

There is one...times change. Where we live changes, what's around us changes. One of the things that has changed, and we need to come to grips with this when we talk about business and capitalism, is that we, at one point in time, had unlimited resources. That as tribes, we defined our boundaries as being very expansive. Our boundaries [were] as far as we protect them. And every resource in it, in our territory, was ours. And so we, in essence, had unlimited resources and people could then acquire goods, lots of horses, have plenty of places to hunt and fish. And so our resources were unlimited. Having unlimited resources gave us unlimited wealth, only according to a person's ability was what limited our wealth, your abilities. Not resources, because they were all there. And that was how a businessperson was able to give it away because there was always more resources. Today they've confined us in a limited box called reservations and our sources  therefore ar, limited. And for a businessperson, to demand that a businessperson give all their wealth away is unrealistic, given limited resources.

And so we don't elect our officials to government anymore based on the amount they give away. We elect our leaders slightly differently now. Can they operate in this world around us? Can they deal with the state government? Can they deal with the federal government? Not can they accumulate wealth to give away to people, but can they effectively deal with county, state, federal governments? Can they do that? I spent all my life now going to school and learning how to deal with governments, etcetera, and have not ever gone into business. I don't have the resources now to give to all my tribal members. And so the tribe has to develop those resources to take the place of business people in the past who gave away their wealth. That truly needs to be the new model. And you need to teach that to your people. It's not the business people who must give away. Not to the point where they're broke or give everything else [away]. I would suggest that you, as you talk to people, talk to your entrepreneurs, tell them that they should give some of it away, because that's who we are. But we expect them to give everything away and they can't. They can't.

So we need to teach our people one, that we were always business people, we need to teach our people that entrepreneurs can't give everything away. As tribal governments, we need to develop laws and regulations that sustain, encourage, foster economic development for our people, and encourage businesses to come in from the outside as well, too, if that's what you want. You can tell them stay away and let the tribal government do all of that for you, that is the large businesses. But in terms of entrepreneurs, we need to foster that. The tribal government, as you've talked about this morning, really should...any small businesses they get into is going to compete against another tribal member or they're going to fail because they're too small of a business. You cannot run a country store 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a tribal government because you're going to have to pay someone overtime, comp time. An entrepreneur works 20 hours a day in order to make it succeed, and they don't get comp time, they don't get overtime, they don't get holiday pay. And so if you expect for small businesses to work, the only people you can really depend on is entrepreneurs. You can't depend on small business to be run by tribal government. It just won't work. And you've seen it fail many times on your own reservations. So you must encourage --if you're going to have this revolving money within your community and that's what you need to be sustainable. It's not just big businesses locating -- whether individual or privately owned or tribally owned -- not just big businesses but you need the entrepreneurs to make that money revolve. Because what will happen if you don't have the small entrepreneurs, what you're going to have is big businesses where everyone gets a paycheck and still runs off the reservation to spend all their money. That's what you're going to have. And as soon as the big business downsizes, you're going to lose all those jobs, you're going to have huge unemployment again, and you're not going to have any way of capturing the dollars that are already there.

One of the things I like to tell tribal governments is this: is you have millions of dollars on your reservation right now without doing any major industrial development, period. You do. Our problem is that we don't capture the dollars that are there. You don't necessarily have to bring a huge industry to have sustainable economies. You just have to capture the dollars that are there is what you need to do. BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], Indian Health Service, tribal government, public schools, all have capital coming in and dumping it on the table and employing people, and we don't capture it. And until you do that, you'll never have a sustainable economy. Never. You can bring in all the big business you want.

One of the cautions I have to you about bringing in businesses from the outside is, do not sell cheap labor and do not sell natural resources with the ideal that it's going to sustain your economy forever. It won't. Look at Kentucky who had lots of natural coal. That was a huge industry. They have massive unemployment in Kentucky. In Mississippi, they had huge labor pools. All those businesses are located offshore now because they can get their labor cheaper some place else. And so do not try to attract big business with the idea of cheap labor. They can find cheap labor someplace else, or natural resources. Again, sustainable economies on natural resources. Yes, you can use your natural resource. Yes, you can. But the ideal of sustainable economies for generations to come, sooner or later those resources run out and the jobs are gone and you have no sustainability. So that's what you're looking at from large industry, don't bank on it for generations. Back to the entrepreneur.

One of the examples I liked that Joan used was this. And that was, the lease that takes twelve months to get and then the tribal chairman has to sign it in the end -- I know because I have to sign every one of those darn things. And I keep telling myself, ‘Why am I wasting my time signing this? Hasn't somebody looked over this and looked over this and looked over this? And what am I supposed to do, double-check everything? No. I sign it.' Well that was an extra two days, because it sat in my inbox for two days before I ever got to it. But you should have a department that takes care of that, is what you need instead of the tribal council having to. First it has to go to the Econ Committee, they have to approve it. That took two weeks before it got on their agenda. Then it has to wait for the next month for the tribal council to handle it. 'Well, I don't like that person,' so send it back. Then it comes back to tribal council again, they approve it. Well then it has to be a resolution, recorder has to record it, write up a resolution, takes two weeks, gets on my desk, sits there for another two days, I sign it. Then it has to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. How long does it take them to get anything done?

So when you're talking about sustainability, you have to make it simplistic as well, too. And so we talked yesterday about the idea of the Swinomish, I believe it was, and the county and having to work out the land management plan and having both of those sovereigns have applications. And who do they use? Swinomish, because it was simpler, took less time. So as you take a look at developing laws for business development on your reservation, putting in the predictability portion of that -- that's what your laws are, your laws are the predictability portion of it. When you put in your predictability, make them simple. Otherwise, business will go some place else.

How many of you have TERO [Tribal Employment Rights Office] offices? Almost everybody should have a TERO office. You know, I never knew what the heck the TERO office did before I took tribal office. And then I find out that I'm also the chairman of the TERO commission. And I found out what TERO means. TERO is: To Employ Relatives Only. It's not supposed to mean that. It's not. Truly, it is about enforcement of our rights, hiring our people, and it is about sustainability. That is, you take that tax dollars, that TERO fee, and it shouldn't just sustain the TERO officers themselves, but also provide some training. So that those contractors, when they come in, can hire trained people; is what it's supposed to be about. I found out that we had a million dollars in TERO fees that were sitting there and tribal council members were giving it to Housing Improvement because their aunt had an application there. And that's how they were using the money. They were using it as a slush fund. They would take a little bit of that money and they would give it to a program when one of their friends, relatives, constituents complained about something. They'd say, ‘I just stuck $10,000 in there. Go over there and get some of that money.'

And then I found out that they all got paid stipend, a hundred dollar stipend for every meeting that they had. And I'm the chairman. So first thing I say is this, ‘No more stipends.' I missed the next meeting and I missed the next meeting after that and they paid themselves stipends. ‘Well,' they said, ‘the rules, the regulations say that we get stipends. So even though the chairman said we can't get it, we're going to get it because the rules say we can. By the way, we make the rules.' And I'm the only person on that TERO commission who's never accepted a stipend. I won't, but they all do. And then the other thing they were doing is really interesting. They were calling all kinds of special meetings and I wasn't notified. So finally I called the director and I said, ‘When are we supposed to have meetings?' ‘The first Monday of every month, Mr. Chairman.' I said, ‘okay. Let me know ahead of time. You've told me when it is, write everybody.' I said, ‘Nobody calls a special meeting unless it has my signature on it.' So far that's working. But I understood why they were calling all these special meetings. You get a hundred dollars every meeting and mileage. So they would meet for half an hour, half an hour, one issue. The next week, they'd do it again. And the next week they'd do it again.

So yeah, some of these things that come into play in terms of why do council people like to sit on boards. And so rules like that need to change and you need to put in it some predictability -- that once-a-month thing, only the chairman calls a meeting, etcetera. I want to get the heck off of it, I really do. I've got other things I need to do. But if you leave here with anything, remember that what you're here for and what you really should be trying to do at your home, is to change the laws so that you can have stable economies that are predictable so that you can protect the rights of your people and your nation and better serve your members. Thank you."

Brian Cladoosby: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Chairman Brian Cladoosby provides insight into his 25-plus years of service as an elected leader of his nation, and offers up-and-coming Native leaders important bits of advice for being an effective leader.

Resource Type
Citation

Cladoosby, Brian. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 24, 2010. Presentation.

"I thank God for giving me traveling mercies to come down to this part of the country. It's nice to be in the homeland of the nation that has resided here for time immemorial, and I want to thank Stanley for that beautiful prayer this morning. That was really nice to sit there and hear that song, and just to have my eyes closed, and to pray to the Creator, and thank him for the beautiful day outside.

The first question that they asked us to answer was, why is this meeting important? Why are you here? Why should you be here? It's hard to believe I just finished my 25th year on tribal council -- I've got to pinch myself when I say that -- 25 years on tribal council and just finished my 13th year as the Chairman of my tribe. Thirteen years ago, when I became chair, I seen Steve Cornell and the gang had this session put on down here in the southwest somewhere. So I said, ‘I'm going to go down to that meeting.' That was 13 years ago. And that meeting really set the foundation for the way that I manage the Swinomish Tribe. The first presentation was ‘Why nations fail in business across the United States.' They did this report. And so I'm coming full circle now, being able to come back and present at this conference. And so it's important to hear the stories from across the nation, and as leaders we need to have priorities. We need to have priorities. And mine is god, family, community in that order. I have to put god above everything else in my life. My Creator is why I'm here with you today and I have to give him the credit. And when I try to stick my chest out and get bigheaded and say, ‘I did this, I did that,' that's when I'm going to fall and fail. So I have to acknowledge my Creator. My wife traveled down here with me today; we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary last week, 32 years. And I like to joke around and say I've been married 32 years to the same woman. My brother's been married 38 years to three women. He said, ‘I was married, I've got to count it.'

But just a little bit about Swinomish: we have 11 senators; we serve five-year terms. It's very unusual in Indian Country to hear five-year terms. We have over 150 years of council experience at that table. My elder, World War II veteran, the eldest male member of our tribe is starting his 27th year; I am starting my 26th year on the council. So we have a lot of continuity at Swinomish. We have 900 members. We have 10,000 acres, mostly forestry land. We live on the largest river between the Frasier and the Columbia. It produces all five species of wild salmon. It's the only river in the lower 48 [states] that has all five species of wild salmon still spawning in its tributaries, the only one in the lower 48. We managed our -- in the '60s and '70s when everybody went to hatcheries -- we managed our stocks; we wanted wild forever. It's funny -- Manley [Begay] was talking about the safest place to live. A report just came out here at Skagit Valley Herald, it's our local paper. There's over 100,000 people in Skagit County and the first sentence was, 'The safest place to live in Skagit County is on the Swinomish Indian Reservation.'

One of the questions they asked was, ‘What I wish I knew before I got on the council?' And I have a hard time remembering 25 years ago, what I wish I knew back then. But at Swinomish everybody knows you. And I remember when I got on the council I told my best friend that one day I'm going to be the chairman. And he laughed at me. It was kind of funny -- 12 years later I became chairman and he was right there to congratulate me. We both remembered that day. And so you have to have goals when you get on the council. And you need to realize that changes need to happen. Back in the day at Swinomish, we made some major changes, too. How many of you have absentee voting in your elections? How many do not have absentee voting in your elections? We got rid of it. We just got rid of it. It was one of the big changes that needed to be made. We had the same ones running the elections every year. And we put this gentleman on there and as he sat there and he watched the absentee ballots come in, they put the envelope right here that you sent in. They put the inside envelope right here that your absentee ballot was in. Then they put your absentee ballot right here next to that. And so they seen your name, your secret ballot, and how you voted. Wow! It was like, ‘Well, that's the way we've always done it.' And so we changed that and we tightened that up. And we continued to have absentee balloting, but now we changed the process. But the year we changed it, where you had to come in and request one, a person came in and says, ‘I need ten absentee ballots.' And the council secretary says, ‘Well, I'm sorry, you only get one.' And she says, ‘Well, that's the way we've always done it.' So change, don't be afraid to make change when you're a leader. Change is good. And it's amazing, we did not get any kickbacks from any of the community members when we finally went from there to just getting rid of it. If you want to come home and vote, you come home and vote. And we didn't have any problems. It was just amazing.

One thing I didn't really have a grasp on when I came on the council was how important it was to protect my treaty right. As a 24-25 year old young man, it didn't really sink in yet on how important that treaty right was. My father's still alive; he'll be 77 years old this year. He still cuts four to six cords of wood every year by himself, he goes out on the river and still picks up his gill net by hand on his 18-foot Boston whaler. And he's the great-grandfather of my daughter; I'm a grandfather now finally. And his great-grandfather signed the treaty for our tribe. My dad's great-grandfather -- that wasn't that long ago, my dad's a great-grandfather -- his great-grandfather signed our treaty in 1855, the Point Elliott Treaty. My great-great-grandfather was called Kelkahltsoot; that's the name that my dad carries now. So I didn't really grasp how important it was to protect that treaty right back 25 years ago. Now I just realize how important it is to fight for that water, to fight for that fish, to fight for that air, and it's something that we can never, ever give up on. We're in a big water fight back home and one of our sister tribes up there, one of the leaders says, 'Why should I fight for the water? Why should I fight for the fish? We hardly have any fish anymore. We don't get any price for it.' I was so sad. They were putting economic development ahead of their treaty rights. They were looking to get land into trust so they can develop more businesses around their casino. They were more worried about sucking up to the county commissioners who we're fighting over this huge water right, sucking up to them, than protecting their treaty rights. It really saddened me and my prayer was, ‘Lord, let the elders haunt this person for the statement that they just made,' because we can never put economic development ahead of our treaty rights. We have a Treaty Day Powwow every year and my message to all the visitors that come to Swinomish is, ‘Tell your council members never put economic development in front of your treaty rights.' That is so important.

Another thing that I didn't really have a good understanding of was being an asset manager. Swinomish is a small tribe, small community. They give out more per capita per year than we make in our whole year at our casino, but we're an asset manager. And when I got on the council we were debt managers to the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]. It was funny; he was talking about the BIA back in the '80s. I went to those BIA meetings where they gave us a piece of paper and said, ‘Okay, here's how you're going to spend your money this year,' and that's the way it was. And we were just like, ‘Oh, boy, we're just so happy.' But we went from debt managers to asset managers over that time that I've been on council and it's very important that you have a good understanding of being an asset manager.

Now decisions are going to be a part of your life every day. Every day we make hundreds if not thousands of decisions. From the time we wake up ‘til the time we go to bed we make decisions. And there's only two outcomes that are going to occur when you make a decision. That decision's either going to bring you pain or it's going to bring you pleasure, nothing else; there's no gray area. That decision you make is going to bring you pain or it's going to bring you pleasure. Now when I've got to make a decision and I make many, many decisions in my position, I look back to the hardest decision I had to make as chairman. We're a small community. One of the most well-respected elders in my community worked in our organization and some things happened and we had to fire him. Now the director that he was working under could not do it so he called me up and says, ‘Can you give him the news?' So I had to bring that elder into my office, set him down. Now he's like my role model, like my teacher from the cultural side of our community, and I had to sit this elder right there in front of me and I had to tell him that either he had to resign or I was going to fire him. Now did that bring me pain or did that bring me pleasure? I still hold that against my director that couldn't do that himself. ‘Fire the director,' he said. So when I have to make a decision, I tell myself I will never have to make a more harder decision than that one I made in my office that day. Always look back to the hardest decision you had to make and then the next one you have to make it won't be as hard.

Now the second-hardest decision I had to make when Dad called me up; Dad called me up and says, ‘Brian, your sister's applying for that reception job at housing. Call the housing director and tell him to hire your sister.' I'm like, 'Oh, Mylanta!'  I said, ‘Dad, I can't do that. If I told my director who to hire and who to fire, especially my family, our relationship wouldn't be the same. If I told him, you have to hire my sister, and my sister did a crappy job, he couldn't fire her because he'd be worried about the repercussions.' So when I have to make a decision, I look back at those two decisions, telling an elder he had to resign and telling my Dad 'no.' Those are the two toughest decisions I've ever had to make in the 13 years in my position. And so now when I have to make a decision, it's nothing compared to those. I still have to make tough decisions, but I always look back at those two decisions I had to make and say that I will not have to make a tougher decision than those two right there.

As an effective leader, leaders need to acknowledge god -- acknowledge your Creator -- they need to be a good role model and they need to be humble. I've had the opportunity over 25 years to see the most arrogant leaders and it just turned my stomach to see the way they acted. They were just so, there was no humbleness in them the way that they portrayed themselves. And so an effective leader has to be humble. When I came to this meeting 13 years ago, one of the things that really stuck out in my mind that I use today is don't micromanage. Surround yourself with people smarter than you. You hire these people to do a job -- let them do their job. When your staff does a good job, they make you as the chair look good. And when they screw up, just blame them. But I like to tell people that I've got two PhDs; they both work in my planning department. Surround yourself with people smarter than you, don't be a prima donna, don't think you need to know everything because you can't; it's impossible. Just because you're on council doesn't mean that you're given this responsibility and you have to know everything. Rely on the smart people that you hire and let them do their job. I've got my fisheries manager, 35 years with me; my social services director -- and I can tell you he's the one that couldn't fire that guy -- he's been with me 30 years; my housing director, 30 years; my police chief, 20 years; my planning director right here in front of me, Charlie O'Hara, 10 years; my dentist, 10 years. And I can keep going down the line. I've got about seven employees that have 165 years of Swinomish tribal experience. And we like to get people to come to Swinomish and stay at Swinomish.

It's really tough at general council time because this year one of the candidates says, ‘When I get elected I'm going to get rid of all the farmers in charge. I'm going to get rid of all those white people.' How many of you have heard that in Indian Country, huh? 'I'm going to get rid of those White people.' It's so funny; one of those white people he thought was white, his great-grandmother was full-blooded Squaxin Island Indian. But at Swinomish we like to not have a revolving door. We like to bring them in -- and it's the same scenario I think across Indian Country, where we don't quite yet have the skilled workforce, and it is important that we do not set our tribal members up for failure. Just because they get a bachelor's degree doesn't mean that they can come back and do a job of somebody that's been there 10 or 20 years. Don't set them up for failure. And it's classic in Indian Country. We want our tribal members to work, but we need to put them in the roles where they will succeed and not fail. We need to be consistent in our positions as leaders. I just won my sixth election Sunday. We have 900 members. We had 300 voters show up and I got 200 of those voters. And so when I got up and I thanked god for being re-elected, I told those that were at the meeting that I was going to work hard for those that voted for me and I was going to work harder for those that didn't vote for me and maybe next time you will vote for me. And so it's important, and I tell this to politicians outside at the state and the federal level, ‘Who do you work for or who do you support or who are your constituents? It's not the ones that voted for you, it's your whole community.' And that's the way...

I've got a good story where...I'm a Sabbath keeper. So Saturday is my day of worship. And so we always had our meetings on Saturday. And when I became chairman, it says I've got to give the State of the Rez report every year on Saturday. So my religion and my job were put at a loggerhead. And so that first year, my people knew where I was; I was at church. And so this person got a resolution together to have me impeached because I wasn't going to be at the meeting to give my State of the Rez report like the constitution says I have to. There's no other way about it, the constitution says the chairman must give [it]. It doesn't say 'State of the Rez' in the constitution. I like to call it the 'State of the Rez report.' And so like, oh, man, this is going to be a very short job for me; it's not going to last too long. It was unfortunate that an elder died that week. The family had the funeral on Saturday, the day we're supposed to have our general council, and it was moved to President's Day the next Monday. And that person that was going to do that, the steam was taken out of their sail, and the constitution says that it's going to be the second Saturday of February or when the council determines. And so after that, with no pressure from me -- I didn't put any pressure on anybody -- they moved the meetings to Sunday. So we have our general council meetings on Sunday now.

And so that person that did that, it just so happened not long after that she needed to come into my office and ask for help. Now I had a decision to make. It was fresh in my mind that she wanted me out of office, but I also knew that she was a member of my tribe that needed help. So what did I do? I killed her with kindness. I helped her. And now we're good friends again. So you have to be consistent with all those that you work with. And I'm a firm believer that as a leader, you need to plan, plan, plan. I'm not sure who said it but I use it all the time, ‘Failure to plan is planning for failure.' As a leader you need to always have a plan. You always have a plan. You can't be stumbling forward. And you need to be challenged. You don't, you cannot have a staff who will just suck up to you and say 'okay' if you say something. You need to have people around you that will challenge you, that will say, 'Well, you know, you can't do that or you cannot say that or this isn't going to work.' And so it's important that you have the confidence and your staff has the confidence in you that they can challenge you. And that is very, very important and that's how you build trust within your staff to let them know that they're not there just to say ‘okay, okay, okay' to you, that you have to be challenged. And what is very, very, very important as a leader, very important.

If there's one thing you remember as a leader, remember this. Hear both sides of the story. I had John call me up just complaining about Jim, just ripping him, just saying all kinds of bad things about him. And it got me worked up to where I was so mad at [Jim], I was going to just like go out and just rip him a new one. But I called him up and I heard his side of the story, totally different. It's important, important that you hear two sides of the story. When somebody tells you a rumor about somebody else, confront them and say, ‘Look, somebody said this. I need to know.' You cannot hear one side of the story and go off half-cocked. As a leader, you need to hear both sides of the story. And how many of you as leaders have heard those stories from your tribal members? All the time, every week you hear those stories. I just heard one the other day. My TERO director never gets a job for anybody. My TERO director has never hired anybody on the rez. This was coming out of a person's mouth. And if I was to believe that I would say, ‘Okay, we need to fire the TERO director,' but that's further from the truth. And so as a good, effective leader, it's important that you hear both sides of the story.

And so, I think, in closing, after being on the council 25 years and after being the Chairman for 13 years, the Lord has also allowed me to be the President of the Washington State Tribal Chairs Association for 10 years. This is my second year as the President of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which represents 57 tribes in seven western states and also put on the Executive Committee of the National Congress of American Indians. That's real easy to get bigheaded when you throw out all those kinds of titles, but you have to be humble, man, and say, ‘It wasn't nothing I did, it was everything that god did for me. Nothing I did.' And you know what is really, what can really, really make you bigheaded as a leader, when a number of elders from across the nation sit you down before the NCAI election and say, ‘We've got a steering committee of elders from across the nation who are going to get you elected as NCAI president,' this last year. And I'm like, ‘How...who me? Oh, okay.' I said, 'No. No, no, no, no, no, not ready for that step yet. I just was elected as President of ATNI.' I don't know what the Lord has in store for me in the future, but maybe that'll come, who knows. I just thank god that he's allowed me to do the work that I do for my people. I tell people I have the greatest job in the world. I love going to work. I have 11 council members who are consensus. There's no cliques, there's no groups, there's no divisions; we are all consensus. And if I had more time I would tell the story of how I achieved consensus from 11 council members on my senate, but maybe next time. Thank you, thank you, thank you; I really appreciate it."

 

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

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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