diversified economy

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Kathryn Harrison

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, Kathryn Harrison, former chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, shares her tribe’s struggle to achieve federal recognition, her experiences as the first woman elected to lead her nation, and how she helped secure the tribe’s gaming compact with the State of Oregon. Preservation of her people’s history is her core commitment.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Resource Type
Citation

Harrison, Kathryn. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. 2004. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"No series of Great Tribal Leaders would be complete without Kathryn Harrison herself, the host of this series. Harrison, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde in Oregon, served on her tribal council for 22 years and was the first woman ever elected chair of the tribe. Harrison has been profoundly influenced and inspired by members of her family including her aunt Molalla Kate. Harrison's mother, Ella Fleming Jones, was born in Alaska to an Aleut mother and Russian-Italian father. Her father, Harry Jones, was a full-blooded Molalla Indian who was the valedictorian of Chemawa Indian School's class of 1910. When Harrison's parents died in the flu epidemic of the 1930s, she was 10 years old. She and her siblings were separated and she was sent to foster homes. She then attended Chemawa Indian School where she excelled, made new friends and especially loved writing book reports. But she was always lonely for her brothers and sisters. Harrison then married and had 10 children. In the middle of raising this large family she felt she needed skills and went to school. She was the first Indian to graduate in nursing from Lane Community College. Always deeply spiritual she attended a gathering of tribes in Oklahoma in the early 1970s that helped invigorate her faith, especially in her own worth and what she might do with her life. At this point Harrison had been separated from her tribe for a long time. Members of the Grand Ronde had been widely dispersed in western Oregon after the tribe was terminated in the 1950s. In the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, the move to assimilate Indians into the dominant White culture eliminating federal trust relationship with tribes gained tremendous momentum. Termination for tribes meant that all treaty-guaranteed rights they had possessed were abolished. Reservations were terminated, health benefits abolished and tribes lost their best lands. Children in terminated tribes of Oregon could not attend Chimawa Indian School in Oregon. Numerous Oregon tribes were terminated but tribes were organizing in the 1970s to get termination reversed to get their tribes restored to federal recognition. Kathryn Harrison decided to return to Grand Ronde to rediscover her people's history and to join the movement to restore her tribe. Beginning as an enrollment clerk for the Grand Ronde she then became a community organizer. She spoke for the tribe before local governments, historical societies and churches. She became skilled in political craft working with members of the Oregon congressional delegation. When she spoke before Congress in 1983 on behalf of the Grand Ronde Restoration Bill, she was so convincing that the tribe asked her to be their chair. Harrison has represented the tribe's interests in numerous state and national organizations such as Oregon's Legislative Commission on Indian Services, Native American Rights Fund and Spirit Mountain Community Fund. She assisted the tribe in obtaining a gaming compact with the State of Oregon. Harrison has represented the tribe at several White House events and has received numerous awards for her work with tribes on women's issues and historic preservation. She received a Distinguished Service Award from the League of Women Voters and was named one of three Women of Achievement in 1995 by the Oregon Commission for Women. She has received the Tom McCall Award for service to the State of Oregon. A mother of 10 children, a grandmother and great grandmother of many more, she considers her greatest achievement to be her family."

Kathryn Harrison's parents and her Aunt Kate were the major inspirations both in her private life and her public work

Kathryn Harrison:

"Far back as I can remember they were always telling me, ‘we don't have to worry about you. You're named after Aunt Kate.' Not really knowing what they meant, I kind of carried that. ‘I can't make a mistake now because I'm going to hurt this Aunt Kate.' And we used to come and visit her too and she was elderly already and had the age spots. But we always brought her Royal Anne Cherries so for many years I thought she got those age spots from eating Royal Anne Cherries. I think maybe they...all the things looking back now it was almost like they were preparing all of us for when they would leave us and that was one of them. I know she had strength and I would always look at her hand because she was the basket maker and a beader."

Before her parent's death, Harrison attended public schools in Corvallis, Oregon, where her parents were active in the school

Kathryn Harrison:

"We were the only Indian family in school and I can remember in first grade my father going down arguing with the teacher that, ‘If I wanted to use my left hand, by gosh let me use it.' So I'm left handed to this day. But the other thing was there was tryouts for a play for Goldilocks and the Three Bears and I tried out because my father and mother were both musical and we had to sing to try out and I got the part as Goldilocks. I said even then, I thought, ‘Well, way back then my only claim to fame was probably the first Indian Goldilocks they had in the United States.'"

Harrison and her brothers and sisters were painfully separated after their parent's death. She lived in foster homes before going to Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon

Kathryn Harrison:

"My two older brother and sister were sent to Chemawa and the four younger were sent into a foster home right there and they were Indian people, an Indian couple that didn't have children. And then my brother and younger sister both got sick and they took them to the hospital there too. So that just left my sister and I. From there we were sent to another foster home and ended up at Chemawa. But when I went to Chemawa I always like to say, ‘I thought I'd died and went to Indian heaven,' because ran into some of the people I had known earlier when my parents were still alive. It was just like a big family reunion and having been deprived of the social part in those foster homes I learned to lose myself in reading. So I read a lot so by the time I got to Chemawa part of the lessons were to make book reports. And so I used to make book reports for my classmates cause I'd already read all the books that they were trying to read and was willing to read more. And I still do that to this day, try to read a book a week. I think one of the things I always thought the last day when I graduated myself, I can remember standing at that window again hearing that train. I think I said a prayer that said, ‘God, I'm so alone, don't let me be alone the rest of my life.' So here I am. I have 10 children and a lot of times people have told me, ‘You're the grandmother of this tribe.' So here's my family and I'm not alone anymore."

In the middle of raising her own large family, Harrison went to Lane Community College and became a nurse. She had been separated from her tribe for a long time

Kathryn Harrison:

"I kept in contact with people here, most of the elders that knew my parents and it wasn't until I got at Coos Bay and was working there but by then I'd worked in Lincoln County, Lane County and Coos County. I was in the Coos County Council on Alcoholism and was down to two children. Even then there were the monthly trips at least up here to Grand Ronde and would send things up here for their raffles and attend the general meetings and knew they were trying to be restored again. So I finally just made the break and came up here, moved up here."

While working in Coos Bay Harrison heard of a spiritual gathering in Oklahoma with tribes from all over the country. Her urge to attend was so strong that she would have been willing to lose her job if she hadn't been granted the time off

Kathryn Harrison:

"There were tribal people from all over that all came there with their own special problems. And so it was during one of the times that it was my turn, they were asking, ‘Well, why are you here?' You know you always say there's people next to you or run into somebody that has worse problems than you and here I was just feeling so bad because by then I just hated the kid's father so much that it was just...I might as well still been with him cause every day and it was eating me up too so that was the reason I knew I had to go. I just had the feeling I needed to go and pray with some other people. So I got a chance to tell other people and here there was a lady that lost her son but couldn't accept that he was gone, a young married couple that begged me to stay to watch, they wanted to have their marriage blessed and be remarried by the spiritual leaders there. And I thought, I thought I was bad off but it seemed like my problems were not near as big as theirs. So by the time I went in, went in to the ceremony in the sweat lodge and asked for the help that I wanted and then came home. But there was something that happened when I came out and they put the water over you and I guess I must have had this certain look because one of the spiritual leaders said, ‘Well, we didn't say it was going to happen right away, but it will happen.'"

From the spiritual gathering Harrison gained a clarity about her life that served her well as she developed into a leader

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, again I thank my parents because they were always there and I think because I lost them so young it's always a continuation of, ‘Are you proud of me now? What you taught me, I remember all you taught me now and I remember it and I carry it with me.' After I did each one of those things I would wonder, ‘Now I wonder what they would want me to do.' And they gave good examples."

Harrison decided to return to Grand Ronde. She began working with the tribe in its campaign to be restored to federal recognition

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, I moved up here without a job and applied for one and was first hired as an enrollment clerk because restoration had started and we didn't know where our people had gone. They left home after termination and so our job was to look for them and we had in mind to start a newsletter. But there were already people here that had started the restoration efforts and so I just joined that team and went door to door actually with some of the people locally here to get them to enroll and help actually enroll for them, just fill out the papers. And then from there I went and got the Administration for Native American Grant even though I didn't come under that but that gave us a full force to go into the restoration effort. I became the community organizer then and they applied for different grants for me to...I think it was three or four grants but I still got basic wage. But it became my job and responsibility to educate other people around the country of what we were trying to do and why they should support us in what we were doing. It became a justice issue. And I was so surprised to find myself out speaking to audience after audience, churches, colleges, high schools, libraries, historical societies."

In the early days of the campaign fundraising was very grassroots

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, there were a lot of different ways. Bake sales, always bake sales, had a pie social one time, had a basket social and turkey shoot, those are some of the things...turkey shoot had before I came. But there was always raffles, we always had a raffle to draw the people in I guess. But here you were like they said with the bake sale they just bought each other's donations but they were willing to do it. I think a couple of times they passed the hat for postage to send out letters and eventually they got around to a newsletter and we just kept applying for grants. I think those things you look back and everybody sat around after we got the newsletter together and mimeographed that, then stapled it together and we hand addressed every one of them. And even during those days, maybe 2:00 in the morning we'd be finishing up and say, ‘One of these days we're going to have all this and have a machine.' We have that, somebody else takes care of our newsletter, it goes out twice a month. We just prepare or make the news."

The challenge was to let people know the story and the history of the tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, we felt the main thing was to let them know we wanted to be who we actually are. You always hear the statements from the tribal leaders in the past that said, ‘In order to go forward we have to reach into the past and take what's the best part of that.' And learning about how our people had lived here and the harmony that was there then that on the most part after we got here that...and have the entitlements. We weren't asking for a handout, we were asking for what we were granted in those treaties that were signed by our people and having made that awful walk from Willamette Valley in a massive military roundup, we had a duty to come through with what their vision was so that walk would not have been made in vain. And I think having our little walks by the cemeteries, by those tombstones, sometimes you felt pretty guilty and wanted to just kind of sneak by them because there they were and had given their all and thinking that here we were still a tribe."

Non-tribal groups and individuals began participating in the campaign. Restoration coordinator Elizabeth Furse encouraged Harrison to make the tribe known to Congress

Kathryn Harrison:

"We had Elizabeth Furse who later became a congresswoman. We had her as our restoration coordinator and she just had such great foresight that she was the one that said, ‘Well, we need to make some of these trips just to let the congressional people know we're coming,' let them know what we're doing cause we knew they had never heard of us. Everybody thought then the Grand Ronde was in eastern Oregon. And so we would make, I think I still have notes that she made of the trips her and I went to and of course those days it was with, stayed in hotels I guess or what you'd say small hotels with people that were Quakers. You had to make your own bed and there was this nice granola for breakfast and all that. We were grateful then too and I think we walked a lot. I remember Elizabeth doing that. One day it was so hot in the summer we got in front of the Capitol and she said, we still had to go see Lester Coin, she said, ‘Would you like to sit here in the grass in the shade and I'll run over to Lester Coin's office?' I said, ‘Oh, yes.' So she took the message and took it over to Lester Coin's. I could see his building across but it was just so hot and we were so tired."

Harrison reflects on her development as a leader with the Grand Ronde. Her work with the Siletz Tribe, which was restored to recognition in 1977, had been useful experience

Kathryn Harrison:

"Even still today I have to stop and think, whoever thought I'd be in this position. I never thought I would. Looking back I can see and I still say today at restoration that working with the Siletz gave me the kind of a tailor made to come and help my own people but I didn't realize it at the time. So helping my own people here was just like the frosting on the cake. Looking back and talking to some of the people that are still around, I don't think we ever thought we wouldn't win and maybe it showed, maybe we had that feeling because when we went back to testify it was three members of my family including myself, my oldest son, my youngest daughter and myself and of course Jackie Whistler and Marvin Kemsey. It was just like, I think with Elizabeth first too, we just all got to encourage each other I guess and I think faith too. It was a justice issue. This was what we were supposed to be, this is where we're supposed to be, this is taking our rightful place among the family of Indian nations and that's what we were going to do. So to have somebody against us and I know there were a few but that just meant extra, an extra meeting, go on out and try to reeducate them because lack of communication and I think the stereotype of where they always put us. I think the Cowboy-Indian movies didn't help either because we always lost. So I don't ever think of us ever thinking that no matter who it was that was against us...and we didn't expect everyone to support us. Well, I guess we did in the beginning but after awhile you figure you can't...there's always one or two. But I think even those have eventually come around when they see that we've kept our word in giving back, help us and we'll help this whole community."

The many meanings of sovereignty, or tribal self-government

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, to me that's what we've been exercising all these years, even through the 29 years of termination there was always the effort here to hold meetings, to keep track of the deaths and births and to keep the language going, that's sovereignty, and knew where the people were. And when we all came back together for the restoration effort the first thing we did was look for our people. And we know who our people are and then after that of course there was new births and people that were not enrolled, teenagers and people up to 29 years old, that's all they knew was termination so we had to find them. And we put together the constitution saying who was going to be our tribal members, that's sovereignty. We knew where our place was, where our reservation, the land that was given to us. We designated where we wanted, that we needed land. The whole effort, we spoke for ourselves and for our people and held up our right to those entitlements that our ancestors had fought so hard for and that was promised to us in the treaties. That's sovereignty. No one else can speak for you, you speak for yourself and for your people."

On dealing with the complexities of tribal leadership and the inevitable conflicts

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, you have to, otherwise you're not you. You have to come forward with how you feel because maybe your idea is better but you have to be open to say, ‘Well, maybe yours is better too and I'm willing to listen,' because you get the respect that you give out, that's the same that you get back. I think that's the best way to deal with conflict and then there's no conflict once you agree. It's got to be teamwork and with nine people, first it's hard to get everybody together at the same time and then how do you expect us to all agree at the same, on the same thing. You're not human beings if you do. But ours, as a council we have to keep in mind our pledge that we're here to bring up a better quality of life for our tribal members so that's your guiding sign I guess cause you took that pledge."

The restoration of the tribe in 1983 had many impacts

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, it is a wonderful change. Look around...when I come to work every day I just have to kind of take a deep breath and think, ‘Wow!' We had that one little office, that was our office and our borrowed coffee pot and our outside water faucet, outside bathrooms and look what we have today. Each program office has their own little depart...well, they do have their own department but not only that the tribal council has their own office. But we've graduated now I think, from that little office to the depot, the train depot, we were all crammed into there but we still...even that one room office where we started. We held USDA food; we gave out the cheese for the county. We always...I don't think we even worried about confidentiality then and our desks were side by side. No compartments or no divisions or anything."

Harrison reflects on the dangers of prosperity for the tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, yes, there's...especially I think for our young people and something that's on our minds a lot as a council is how do we keep our children in school when they have this money coming in that's being set aside for them. Cause even my own grandson says, ‘Well, how much money do I have now grandma?' We have to prepare them for the future when we won't be here so they can take care of themselves and this tribe. It's quite a concern but also I think those of us my age and maybe a little older or younger, we learned how to work in the fields and I think that's the mistake the State of Oregon made was taking the children out of the fields to harvest the crops because not only did you...you got your fill every day and had a healthy life but you learned how long it took to make a dollar so you were able to better manage your money. And to this day I don't gamble. I think I've got $10 in our casino and I think $5 of that was given to me by my daughter. It's too hard to part with that money cause you know how hard earned it is even though we're pretty well paid here now compared to where we started with a little bit of money and the struggle we made with the different grants. We usually had to comply with those grants to have it coming in the next year."

The tribe decides in the late 1980s to start a casino

Kathryn Harrison:

"When the timber prices went down and we went and looked at other tribes to see how they handled, how they diversified their resources we found that they had Bingo and also casinos so we visited the tribe in Minnesota. They're about our same size and all that and they offered to help us. But we knew then we had to put together a corporation, a corporate board and had some good experiences on that. I think it was the third one around we finally kept and that was only because we had a tribal member that was interested by then. During the restoration effort he had come into our little office there one day and said, introduced himself and said, ‘I'm going to law school and I hope someday to come back and help my tribe.' So he showed up and was really interested in what was going on. It was him that we finally said, ‘Well, why don't you be...' He said, ‘If you'll trust me,' he first said, ‘maybe I can do this.' So we said, ‘Okay.' So that's how Bruce Thomas came into our lives and he had gone as a corporate board member to different trips we had made. Of course from then on he went on other trips and educated himself on what was going on but he was already an attorney, practicing attorney and so the different things that he put together then, what he learned he would come back and present to the tribal council and we had different management companies come and present what they had to offer. But they all wanted so much percent of our earnings and here's a tribe that passed the hat for postage. It's too hard to give away any amount of money that you're going to be running yourselves. And so in the end when Bruce felt he could do it himself and put together his own management company that's where we went with. And so we started the building and we ran into a problem right away even though we'd already had groundbreaking that the land we had chosen had not been put into trust. So we had to go back and find...cause according to the National Indian Gaming Association it has to be part of the original reservation and it has to be in trust by 1988. So we had to go and make sure that one part there was in trust where it is now."

The programs of the Grand Ronde Tribe of which Kathryn Harrison is most proud

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, next to elders I'd have to say education because I think that's something that we have found our place. We have to take our place among our community and humanity and that in order to get along nowadays you have to have an education with the technology as it is and then we have people come to us that wanted to be educated, wanted to go to school and they couldn't. And even the Chemawa School to me was a great loss for our youth not to be able to attend, it's changed too. It's not like it was when we were there, going to school half a day and vocational training the other half. But I think education to me if you can educate your people that's certainly a better quality of life and then next to that I would say the elders to be able to like say not today they're trying to decide where they're going to next month. They've had to count their pennies, still support us all these years and to be able to say, ‘Yes, now you can go where you want to go.' We established a burial fund early on too because as any elder anyplace else they never wanted to be a burden to their children or their family. So that was one of the first things we did and now we offer that same burial to bury their spouse too if they're not members. So I think those are the two, of course I could go on. Next would be the housing. We have housing for our elders too and a lot of the ones that wanted to come home and we have to remember those that wanted to come and never made it because we had a water issue and it took us awhile. But once restoration happened we had people calling, ‘We want to come home once...' but there was no houses and there's no jobs. So I think those are the ones that mean a lot to me. And then of course the buildings I think. Having the education building, that's going to be great."

How she balances public and private life

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, nothing hard about it at all, I'm still me and I'm just amazed that they think I've done something cause I think all I've done is live by what my parents taught me to not only...of course the Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as you'd like to have them do unto you.' How can you go wrong and I'm just grateful and I've often said I don't know what people do that don't know how to pray or that don't have faith. And I know there's...I worked in the alcohol program again down in Coos Bay and it wasn't until one of the clients asked me, ‘How come you didn't become an alcoholic?' I just, ‘Why would I?' He said, ‘Well, look at your life, your life's worse than mine was.' So there I could say because of my parents. They already instilled in me that I don't care how far people try to knock you down, I'm still me and I'm a human being and I'm worth something. I think I told him once that somebody didn't want to wait on me in the store. I said, ‘I don't care, I'll stand there until 5:00 for closing time until they wait on me cause that's their job and I deserve that.' I'm amazed at what they think I've done. I think I've just lived my life under my best choices. I've taken my share of punishment because I think in my testimony early on some other places I think with all the teachings and the Christianity and religious, when I lost my parents I hated God but I was only 10 years old. And I can remember like I said how they carried out their faith giving helping hands to whoever came to the door, taking their children to church, that was their doing, it wasn't mine. But they were instilling us then no matter how little you have you share it and look how good you feel. So to me that's all I've been doing. But I've had help along the way with different ones being there to say, ‘Yeah, you can do it.' And I think being knocked down for so many years as a woman, my alcoholic husband, I really didn't think I was much and that's what can happen to women that are in abusive situations. You have to have something to reach back long enough to get the courage to say, ‘Yes, I am worth it and I am somebody and my children deserve better.' I think I said a couple of times to somebody, ‘When I meet my Maker, the first thing I'll say is did I live up to what my parents taught me? Are you proud of me now?' And then it would be maybe by the grace of God they'd say, ‘Okay, yeah, you did okay.'"

Some steps the Grand Ronde have taken to strengthen their tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"I can't speak for other tribes. I just think...with our tribe I think we had foresight I guess or people in place that we could turn a negative into a positive. I wouldn't like to see other tribes terminated but sometimes you have to lose something before you appreciate what you had and I think that's what happened to us. We always said our elders, ‘We'll pay you back whenever we can,' because they was always there for us. They brought the food, they brought their beliefs to us. I don't know, some of the other tribes were terminated the same time. And we were recommended to get to know our state legislative people better. Well, we know them and the second recommendation was to get a lobbyist. Well, we have a lobbyist that's a tribal member and have had one for awhile. And I think that comes from being a terminated tribe to have to go to your community and say, ‘We want your help,' and there again with that statement of, ‘Help us. Help us to help ourselves by helping us and helping this whole community.' We learned how to get along. I think a lot of tribes make the mistake of thinking the Bureau of Indian Affairs owes you or has to provide everything. Ah, they do to a certain extent but you need to stand on your own two feet too and that goes with our casino. We know the casino's not going to be here forever so we try to diversify our resources. Of course we have the timber and with that we made a 20-year agreement to not, we can't ship overseas. And that was 1988 so we're going to be out of that pretty soon but who knows where that's going with the prices like they are."

Harrison's most gratifying achievement

Kathryn Harrison:

"My family. I'm not alone anymore. Yes, my children."

The most important task for the tribe's children and young people

Kathryn Harrison:

"First of all, know your culture, learn your language and who you are and go to school and stay in school and it's a given to go to church. Shouldn't have to tell our people that."

The importance of educating non-Indian American citizens about tribal history

Kathryn Harrison:

"I don't think you should ever stop educating people on your history and the Indian law and all those things because I went through that when I was going to school at Chemawa. We put on dancing, there were seven of us. We went out and sang and each one told our history and then I went to school, got married, stayed in the house for how many years, then when I come out here and get in the politics again it's the same thing. So it's just an ongoing, by the time you get your point across and explain who you are, I know the next generation is going to have to do the same thing. I think until we get the media, it's more being able to include more about our history and who we are and I think until they can be on the same level with us and the movies I think it's going to be an ongoing issue all the time of educating people on tribes."

Wisdom Harrison would impart to other tribes from her tribe's experience

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think good communication. We set up that line of communication telling our story to say why it was a justice issue on the termination and I think the same could be used for any subject. Meet them face to face and be there to answer their questions. But I think along with that you have to say teamwork, you're working together and that's what it is, teamwork whether it's communication or negotiations or grievance, it all has to be teamwork. I think don't be afraid to give and take. I can truly say our council, we've been blessed with what our people have reelected. I know we have a new election year coming. I just hope and pray they put the right people in and when you educate them that's what they'll do."

Her tribe's position on who is an Indian

Kathryn Harrison:

"That's part of the sovereignty is naming your own, who can be a member of your tribe. I know in the beginning and it still is with the Bureau you have to be one quarter but our people voted and they chose one-sixteenth and I think we made a mistake in the beginning that we would take one-sixteenth and then whatever the blood quantum over another recognized tribe. Well, we got...we started having many people coming and wanting to change over to our tribe so now you have to have...we changed that, we have a constitutional amendment and our people voted that you have to have a parent on the roll at termination and you have to be one-sixteenth Grand Ronde blood. So to me that's going to keep our blood line going but even in the long run I hope we don't terminate ourselves again. And to be able to say that, each tribe has to designate their own. We've come under criticism because our blood quantum is so low but look at us, it works for us and they can't speak for us, we can't speak for them because that's sovereignty with the tribal Indian nations."

The legacy Harrison would like to leave

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think for me is if you live your life where any part of it when you're asked about it if you can tell it and tell it truthfully and where your parents and the good Lord, the Creator would be proud of you, how can you go wrong. That's what I'd like to leave. That's what I tried to do. Whether I did it or not that was always my goal and I know early on I learned to speak how you feel. Sometimes people didn't like it but they always know how they stand with you and if you're telling the truth and speaking...after I got into tribal business you're speaking on behalf of your own people to keep in mind that you want them to have a better quality of life than you had. No matter what the changes are you have to go with changes that's better for your people. You can't go wrong. But I think if you pray on everything, that's what I've done, God will answer your prayers. And if it doesn't come right away just hold on, it'll come."

She speaks about aspects of the tribal vision that would benefit the nation

Kathryn Harrison:

"Balance and harmony. Balance and harmony in everything because that's what we learned from our ancestors that when you take something you've got to still leave enough to carry on the species whatever, the salmon, or elk and we try to tell that story early on. There was something that they used every part of the deer for so how could there be waste to leave, how could...if you used all the salmon and took it in the right way and you knew you were going to drink that water, your children were going to drink that water, how could you pollute it? And the same goes with the air. If you're living everything in the right way. And it's a God given gift that you're supposed to take care of it and that's how tribes look at things. This was given to you, this land, this air, these foul, these animals to take care of, let alone their people. Then take care of it and that means balance and harmony."

How Harrison has persevered and kept up momentum for her work

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think I've just been lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the right people, the right parents who knew how to pray. I think there were times when I wanted to give up. I don't say that ever occurred to me. I know one time I was leaving here early in the morning and I was going to go to Washington D.C. with Elizabeth and I stopped at the tribal office to get something and here I had my little, I called it my termination car, and I was driving down that straight driveway and I was thinking, ‘Ah, I'm going on the most important trip of my life, there's nobody here to tell me goodbye or say good luck or anything.' And then I thought, I could see all the...back in those days there was a lot of wood stoves yet and I thought, ‘Oh, they're up,' cause I could see the smoke coming up and early in the morning the smoke would go straight up, it doesn't curve yet. I thought, ‘What's wrong with you? Gosh, you're not by yourself, you can always pray and I know those elders are up, they know I'm going and I know cause they always say we prayed for you.' And I'd say, ‘Oh, I just came... Oh, yeah, we know. We prayed for you.' So I got looking around and I thought, ‘Gosh, you're not alone.' And I think that's the greatest thing I have to offer and what always pulled me through. But there have been times I've been just...Elizabeth got sick on that trip. We stopped and ate seafood at the airport. I don't know what restaurant it was but she got sick on the plane and she came back and told me, ‘You might have to go to that first meeting by yourself.' And I, "Ah, I can't! You'll have to get well.' So the stewardess kept coming back and telling, ‘Oh, she's feeling better. They made her a bed, she's laying down in the back, open up some of those seats,' because in those days as soon as we got off the plane we went to our first meeting. Now we can go and be rested up one day and then go to a meeting but then we had so little money. But she got well or well enough to go to that meeting with me. There were times when I wanted to go back and shake her and say, ‘You've got to get well.'"

Her work will not rest after her retirement as chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. She is committed to keeping the history alive

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, it's quite a responsibility being a council member and being a chair. I kind of stepped back already on some of the things but I still enjoy traveling and I still don't mind doing the history. I think it's something that...I've been asked sometime in February to come here to some group and tell the history again. She said, ‘Somebody said you had a good story.' I said, ‘No, it's not a story, it's history.'"

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
Kathryn Harrison

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Small Businesses and the Multiplier Effect"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

NNI Executive Director Joan Timeche talks about the positive impact of citizen-owned businesses on reservation economies, not just in terms of economic development but in the overall quality of life for tribal citizens.

People
Native Nations
Citation

Timeche, Joan. "Citizen Entrepreneurship: An Important Economic Development Tool." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2011. Lecture.

"And then it increases what we call reservation multipliers. Economists use the term 'multipliers' to talk about all of the opportunities that are available to keep the one dollar within the community and generating more and more and circulating within the community. We are aware of a number of studies, one of them here in Arizona and, I believe, one of them up in the Plains area that indicated that anywhere, in one case it was 80 cents of one dollar and another study it was 90 cents of every one dollar was going off the reservation within 72 hours of a person earning that dollar. So think about payday on an Indian reservation. On that Friday that they're getting payday people are going to the local store or maybe in the treasurer's office cashing their checks. And then they fill up their vehicles enough that they might be able to get into the next nearest bigger town and they take all of their money to buy their groceries, their goods and services. By keeping the dollar, by having a business on the reservation, one we're hopefully keeping that dollar a little bit longer -- it's turning around in the community perhaps they're not only buying the gasoline but they're buying more essential goods and services within the reservation. There's also the convenience too because then they're not having to then travel perhaps an hour and a half, two hours or more to that nearest town. And you know, time is valuable. You could be using that for other kinds of family time, it could be done, utilized for ceremonies, or whatever the case may be. So you're wanting to just keep everybody on the reservation." 

Jerry Smith: Building and Sustaining Nation-Owned Enterprises (2009)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Laguna Development Corporation President and CEO Jerry Smith shares the lessons he has learned about building and sustaining Native nation-owned enterprises, in particular the critical step of creating a formal separation between tribal politics and the day-to-day management of those enterprises.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Smith, Jerry. "Building and Sustaining Nation-Owned Enterprises." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25-26, 2009. Presentation.

"Good afternoon everyone. Again, thank you for the introduction. Again, I appreciate with all humbleness the introduction, because I definitely have had a lot of good and bad experiences in the arena that I've been in. But I want to say for the nation-building program -- and I'm asked to participate in a lot of activities and I've had to be selective in some of those that I do involve myself in, because there's a lot going on in terms of what's happening out there -- but I choose nation building because I believe in what they're doing. And they're doing, and it's about capacity building. It's about trying to communicate best practices, so that you don't have to go do the things and make the same mistakes I made. And I definitely made a lot of mistakes in my career as it begins to evolve. I wish that I was in a position that you're in to have an institution to go to, to talk about it. Because in the early 80s, when I started doing this, I didn't have any place to go; I had to do a lot of figuring out by myself. And some of you who work in tribal offices know that's a lonely feeling in there sometimes, sitting there and just trying to figure out what the heck are you going to do. I call myself a rez boy. I'm a rez boy raised on the rez, spent a little time away from the rez going to college but, and then came back to the rez. So definitely I'm home grown and I've tried to understand and tried to do what's best for our community.

I want to start off by a couple of sayings just to give you some idea of how we need to think about this or how I'd like to frame my presentation. One saying is, ‘Success is the point that preparation and opportunity meet.' That's been a very important thing for me in my career, because you don't have success without preparation. And whether you're an individual or whether you're in a tribal environment, you have to continue to prepare yourself to be in a position so that when opportunity presents itself you can grab that opportunity. So if you get an opportunity today to do a partnership in a big business deal, if you're not prepared for that, that thing's going to go by you because as we all know, setting up businesses isn't an overnight thing. It takes a lot of evolution. So if you're not in the process of preparing yourself for that opportunity...I've missed many opportunities in my lifetime because I just wasn't ready for them. And some of these opportunities have never presented themselves again. And so we miss a lot of opportunity. The stimulus package coming down -- how many of us are prepared to take advantage of that opportunity? I think we're all trying to figure it out, right? But the reality of it is that those that are prepared are going to benefit from it.

The other saying I like to say -- and this is something that [is] mainly for youth -- that we need to keep in perspective is that, ‘If you're chasing money, you are not necessarily chasing success.' Give yourself success and money will shadow you, wealth will shadow you. So as we try to achieve...and you would think that this came from a Donald Trump or this came from one of the big Wall Street guys. And they're in trouble now, right? But this really came from a basketball coach, Rick Pitino. And I've enjoyed reading about his story and how he's prepared his career, because there's a lot of things that we do in athletics as teams that are very applicable in business. So I recommend his book. His book is called Rebound and it's a story of leadership.

The other book I recommend is a book that was written by a guy by the name of Marshall and I just finished his book and the book is entitled The Power of Four: Leadership Lessons of Crazy Horse -- the great Lakota Sioux warrior -- and is written by Joseph M. Marshall III. And he talks about a lot of the things that are very applicable in tribal cultures that are very important in insuring that you maintain a good business structure.

So in that regard, I just want to share those with you. I have a limited time so I'm going to go through my presentation here. Again, my name is Jerry Smith and I'm president and CEO of Laguna Development Corporation. Laguna Development Corporation has to be...we have to start with the Laguna economic story. In the 1950s, we were an agriculture-based economy. And then we evolved into in the '50s to the 1980s we were very fortunate, it was very fortunate that a resource was found on our reservation called uranium. In its peak production, the Jackpile Mine was the world's largest open-pit uranium mine, and the Pueblo of Laguna benefited significantly in terms of royalty income from that mine. And I was fortunate to have my education paid for as a result of that resource. But one of the things that has been interesting in that evolution is it brought wealth to the Pueblo Laguna and I'll tell you why that's important.

In the early 1980s, late 1970s, the mine shut down and we went into a very serious period of having to refigure our economy. Unemployment rate went up to about 86 percent and the worst thing or the best thing that happened to me is I got hired as the tribal administrator in the early 1980s, just out of business school. [I] walked into my tribal council -- I was working at construction at the time, I was working with James Hamilton Construction out of Silver City -- and I was called home and asked to show up Monday morning at tribal council meeting. I said, ‘Okay, I'll be there.' I walked in with my cleanest pair of blue jeans and a borrowed shirt from my dad, polo shirt. And I didn't realize that I was there as an interview in front of the tribal council for the position of tribal administrator. And so I walked in to the interview and everybody was in suits, everybody was in ties, everybody looked very pretty and I was in my cleanest pair of blue jeans. And I went through the process of the interview and was asked, ‘What are you going to do to get me a job?' by 90 percent of the tribal council members who were unemployed. And I looked at them and said, ‘Well, all I can do is the best I can and I'll figure it out.' I went home and my mom -- who was then, knew what was going on -- asked me, ‘Well, how did it go?' She was all excited about it. I said, ‘I blew it. I didn't have any answers.' I couldn't commit to them. I couldn't lie to them to tell them I had the solution. So I'm headed back to Silver City, start packing my stuff. Twenty minutes later, I get a call from the personnel officer of the Pueblo telling me I was hired. So you talk about someone learning from the grassroots, from ground zero.

So what we began to do -- because of that impact -- we began to take a look at how to develop the economy, how to reinvent the economy of the Pueblo of Laguna. Again, wealth was not the issue. We had wealth as a result of the uranium mine. We had to develop an economy of employment and continued development of wealth. So we began to develop -- and a lot of the theme of this session that you heard is the need to develop businesses to give its best opportunity for success -- so what we did and what we decided to do -- and again this is a young rookie out of business school. I had to go into my tribal council and get them to understand that you're dealing with two different environments.

When you're talking about governance on one side and you're talking about business on the other side of the table, and there's that line -- that's kind of like this black line on this floor -- there's a line between the two. And it's about -- as I tell people -- it's about learning how to play Monopoly© by Monopoly© rules, and then over here learning how to play Chess by Chess rules. You can't play both sides of the thing by the same set of rules. And there's a whole history and sophistication on how business works compared to how governments work. And so each has to have their ability to operate effectively within those two environments. So I went in and said, ‘You're going to have to give me the authority to separate business from government. You're going to have to give me the authority to allow our development, our business, the environment that it needs to give it the best opportunity to succeed.' And it was great because if I was to go into my tribal council today, I don't know if I could get that decision because of the wealth. As a result of what we're doing now, one of the things that always, is the issue of control and tribal government wants to control. What we're trying to do now with our tribal leadership is try to show them how to control without micromanaging. And the techniques that as owners of a business is different than a governance of a community and a people. So we're having to go through processes of educating them. We've used nation building and our tribal council has been through nation-building sessions. The nation-building folks have been out to our tribal community, have taken our tribal council through facilitation sessions on developing that capacity and competency, so that we can from the business side -- when we walk into a tribal council meeting to report as a business entity -- they deal with us as owners of a business should deal with management and the corporate boards.

So what we did is we created three corporations since then. We created Laguna Industries, which is a manufacturing corporation. We developed Laguna Construction Company, who presently is in Baghdad doing a lot of the reclamation [and] revitalization of Baghdad right now. And then the company I manage called Laguna Development Corporation. We do have somewhat of a non-profit corporation called Laguna Rainbow Corporation and that corporation provides elderly service to community members.

The Laguna entity business structure or model, it's the separation: it's the government model versus the business model. Government and its role and its model provides governance for tribal membership. It's not profit motivated. It's the fiduciary custodian of tribal wealth. The business model is a model where we have to work within the governance of the tribe, which means that if you run a private business in the State of New Mexico you can't divorce yourself from government. Government has a role to play in everything you do. But they provide you regulatory oversight, not day-to-day oversight of your business. So the tribe has to get involved in developing all the infrastructure it needs to be able to provide that oversight. We're profit motive and we're a huge investment of capital in risk-based ventures. We're also the revenue and tax base to the tribe. We're the economic engine that pays probably at this point probably 80 percent of tribal governmental operating needs. And in most tribes, especially with casinos, that number ranges from 80 to 95 percent of revenue that goes to the tribe normally comes out of those kind of activities.

We've explored a number of business structures in our evolution. We started out as a tribal enterprise and chartered under the constitution of the Pueblo Laguna. Then we evolved to a state-chartered corporation. That evolution really was the result of the challenges of the state of New Mexico to tax our income. There were legal opinions coming down that says if you're a tribal enterprise at that time that you would be taxable. So we went to a state-chartered corporation. And then later we got an IRS ruling saying that's not good enough. So then we went to a Section 17 corporation, which then we basically resolved that taxation issue. But as things have evolved, we have also been able to...those other areas have cleaned up in terms of taxation. So I believe today, now you can do any of the three and still be secured in your taxation on income.

But the other thing that, reason that we did that is that...from a tribal environment, not very many people out there -- especially if you're looking for business partners -- understand how you work as a government. And you have 500-some-odd Indian tribes across the country with all unique forms of government. How do you expect a Microsoft or how do you expect a financial institution and investors to try to understand how all 500 of us work? So what we have to do is create an intermediary corporation that they're used to dealing with -- they understand the nature of corporations, they understand the nature of how corporations work. So when we apply and we introduce ourselves to people, they don't need to go back and try to understand how our constitution works and all those things. They understand how corporations work and we can talk at the same level and in the same language. So that was one thing.

But from internally to the tribe, what was important to us was the insurance of protection of tribal wealth. Remember, Laguna had wealth. Laguna had wealth as a result of the uranium mine. And we had to go understand why Donald Trump declares bankruptcy probably every other year but he's still wealthy. And the way he does that, and business is as a foundation a risk-proposition environment. You have to take risk. But you don't want to risk the tribal wealth. In my operations, I could say within the five years of our new property, we've had probably about three people die on our property. And so what you have to be very careful about is the claims that can come at you from people who do things on your property and the liabilities you assume by allowing them to come onto your property. So you're at risk every day. You're at risk for a lot of different things but you don't want to put the tribal wealth at risk as result of that.

So what we were able to do was separate the two through the corporate veil and that's why people set up corporations is they protect their individual wealth from the business wealth and the business risk. So you have this corporate veil that prevents you from doing that, from putting tribal assets at risk. So that was another major reason is that we didn't want to put the tribal treasury at risk. And so if anybody sues Laguna Development Corporation, it's only within the limits of what the corporation owns. They cannot touch tribal assets.

The state of the industry: Las Vegas is down 8.7 percent; Nevada casinos are down 68 percent at the net-income level. Fitch -- who's a rating company that comes in and evaluates your capacity -- tells us that Native American operatives are feeling the same kind of pressures Nevada is feeling and those businesses that operate to a conservative operating file will survive this pressure. You've got numerous retail and F&B closures. Who would imagine that Mervyn's© was going to close? Who was going to imagine that Circuit City© was going to close? You've got a lot of businesses going out of business. And then in New Mexico, we've had a huge expansion in gaming properties with the Ysleta Pueblo property expanding, with Buffalo Thunder and then now the Navajo Nation has gotten into gaming. So there's expansion in the market when 2008 the economy is coming down. So what's ultimately result of that is only the fittest are going to survive. Because you can run an operation and some gaming operations at a 65 percent gross profit level. It's easy to run a business that way. But if things that are happening with your economy are attacking that and now you're having to operate at a 30 percent or a 40 percent gross profit level, it's a whole different ballgame, which means that you have to be a lot more efficient in the way you run your business.

Our success at Laguna Development Corporation -- in a period of time when Las Vegas is dropping 28 percent in '08, we grew our revenue by 15-16 percent. We improved our total company gross revenue. We just don't do casinos. More than 50 percent of our revenue comes from non-gaming activities -- we're in travel centers, we run restaurants, we run...name it, we run those kind of operations. 23.4 percent growth in our EBIDA [earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization] in '08. We had 115 percent growth in our revenue in food and beverage. We had a 33 percent return on an equity. You ask any investor whether that's good or bad and they'll tell you. Our debt service coverage ratio, our leverage ratios are very good. We actually increased payments to the tribe by 47 percent during this period of time. And again, we're rated from Fitch standpoint as being a very stable company. So as you can see, structure and having your proper environment in place is very good.

I cannot recruit executives today. Let me say, it's very difficult to recruit executives today in our industry, especially in the Indian community. The people I want, the first question they ask me is, ‘Is there a separation between tribal government and the business.' And if you say no, they're not coming, because there's been too many experiences...the average tenure of somebody that sits in my position in New Mexico is one year. That's the turnover for someone that sits in my position in New Mexico -- one year. So there's a huge turnover and the number-one reason why that occurs in their opinion is because of tribal politics' intervention into the business and that they have to worry about, on a day-to-day basis, whether a tribal council family member is going to come up and shoot them. Where in our operation, we do have very much respect for our council and our government and our governor, who's the president or chairman of our tribe, but the governor has no authority to hire or fire anybody in the corporation. And so we have control over day-to-day operations through this model.

Keys to success -- tribal council understood the need to release day-to-day management over day-to-day control. We killed a lot of businesses before 1980 because of day-to-day intervention from political people into day-to-day operations. So the second thing we did is we formalized all our relationships between tribal government and the entity. For example, we have the charters, we have the bylaws, all reported transparency is there -- we provide financial statements monthly, quarterly, all those kind of things -- we also have a formula that basically defines how cash gets transferred. A lot of my counterparts in New Mexico at the end of the month, all excess cash gets transferred over to the tribal government. In our environment we go through a very diligent process of closing the year, closing the books, evaluating performance and we've negotiated a cashiering agreement with the tribal council whereby it's all formula-based. So no politics, nothing can enter into the picture and all the needs of the business are there in terms of supporting the business before any money goes over to the tribe. So from that standpoint, we can get the favorable ratings from the rating companies.

We also have had to help tribal government understand and set up their own infrastructure to handle these kind of entities. For example, we have to make sure that administratively they know how to read the reports -- they know what they're getting, they know how to read it, they know what it's telling them. We also have to make sure from a legal standpoint you have all the things like codes in place -- there's things like building codes, there's things like commercial codes. So if there's a dispute between me and one of my suppliers, they don't need to go run to tribal council. They go through the judicial process and they file as any other community, metropolitan does; they go through the court systems to get their problems resolved. So it keeps a lot of calls from going into the chairman's office from people who don't necessarily, when you find yourself in dispute with. And that happens every day folks and we all know that. We also have to look at capitalization needs and all the way down to things like tribal preference. So we've taken the time to insure that we formalized and put everything in rules so that it's not discretionary or arbitrarily determined based on who knows who and who knows what, that it's consistent. Because one of the things that we have to develop is consistency in applications so we get trust.

The last thing is definitely is adherence to the rules through visions and missions and core values of the corporation. Now as a corporation...I listened to the session before lunch and they were talking about, how do you operate in the business world? Like I can put on a suit and do I have to give up my tribal heritage and my tribal ways for that? I can tell you that my father is one of the top religious leaders in my pueblo. And as one person, he was the one that encouraged me to go on to college. And after I came out of college, I tried to figure out why you sent me there. And then when I come home I get a lot of criticisms about losing my ways from community members. 'You're educated, you lost your ways, you joined the other guys' kind of thing. And one of the things that he helped me understand is that in order to survive, we have to understand and have the knowledge to survive. So we have to go out into this other world and do the things necessary to provide for our families and our community. But you should not have to give up your heart in the process and where your heart values are coming from are from your tribal core values. In our language, we have basically four core values that we're told every day from community leaders, religious leaders is -- and I'll use my language -- it's [Laguna Pueblo language]. And those four things are love one another, respect one another, understand what the way is, understand what the truth is, and live your life by them. And when you begin to run business, when you begin to take opportunities of kickbacks, they present themselves to you. I don't think anybody in this room that's run a business hasn't been given the opportunity to take a kickback. But your core values of right and wrong will tell you not to do those things. So it's very important for our young people to understand that they can be successful, they can be successful in athletics, they can be successful in their careers by using their core values that each tribe, everyone of us has as tribal communities, because you can connect the two. You don't have to give up your heart to survive.

So we run our business on those tribal core values. In fact, the core values of our corporation are tribal core values. And everybody who has gone through a strategic planning session know you have vision, mission and then you set core values. So we didn't see the need to create new core values because we've had core values that our ancestors have given us through time. Why do we need anymore and how can I be more creative than those people? They've given us the menu to success if we just follow it in whatever we experience.

Keys to success from a business responsibility standpoint: you have to hire the most competent executive team you can find. These people have to have the knowledge, they have to have the experience and most importantly they have to have the character. And you have to make sure you insist on knowing the character of a person. So what do I do when I hire executives? I just don't take their resume and a one-hour interview. Not only do I use my gaming commission's authority to go check their background, their criminal, their financial, I want to know everything, as much as I can about the person. So I use those mechanisms to find out as much as I can about the person. I've got my internal networks where I do evaluations on every one of these individuals.

Anybody heard about DISC? It's a tool that you can use to determine whether or not you have an individual that's a driver, somebody that's task oriented; or an I, which is somebody that's an intelligent thinker; or an S, who's a supporter; or a C, who's a communicator. So I want to know 'cause I have to have everyone of those characteristics on my leadership team and I use that tool to tell me what kind of people I have. When I first used the tool, I found out that 90 percent of my managers, my executive team, were Ds. They were all direct, they were kind of like me, go get it, get it done. And so, and it's the nature that you kind of lean towards hiring people like you, but it's not always the best thing to do. What I found out was a lot of people didn't understand what we were doing even though we were doing great things [because] we weren't great communicators. We weren't able to go out and tell people what we were doing [because] that wasn't our nature. So now I make sure I have Cs on my leadership team.

So there's tools that you can use to help you understand who these people are and what you're hiring and what you need in your leadership team. The second thing I do is I send all my people up to a place called Professional Decision-Making, Inc. in Denver, PDI, and they do a complete assessment of that individual to tell you whether or not that person is really an executive quality person. Because for many years we as tribal people have been sucked into thinking that because I can put on a suit and tie that's an executive. You've got to know more about that person because you're entrusting that person with a tremendous amount of resources and decision-making. So you've got to know as much as you can about that person and make sure that person fits your organization. My leadership team I've had with me for about seven to eight years now, and there are not very many people that leave me because of these principles. So it helps your retention, it helps you keep people because they definitely understand a lot of these principles in which you're operating by.

The other thing you have to do is make sure you have the business systems in place that operate in financial human resources systems. You have to make sure that you have transparent reporting not only to...I report to a five-member board that's appointed by the tribal council. So I make sure that the reports I give to them are very, can be verified and validated at any time. And the last thing is that we focus on developing and growing the business not on tribal politics. So many tribes and many of my colleagues at the end of the year that are in positions like me worry about who's running for the chairmanship position and what's going to happen to them. And a lot of them are sending out resumes in that process. In our situation we honor the change in administration, the change in leadership but we don't have to worry about our jobs the next day as a result of that.

Lessons learned -- the first lesson I learned is the maintenance of the separation of tribal governance and business is a very delicate balance. For example, tribal membership's demand for per capita could definitely effect you as a business. And given the hands of people in a tribal governance role, they may have an agenda to get more money out of you. And from a business standpoint, we can only give what we can afford to give to the tribe. And so political factors can come in and wipe you out. We don't go promote ourselves and sell ourselves as a service to anybody, because in my opinion we're still learning how to do this. And if anybody tells you they're expert at it, I'd like to meet them. I really would like to meet them.

But what we continue to try to do is help when we're asked to help, and we've had tribes come to us and ask for help to do this. And the biggest challenge that I've run into in trying to help those tribes is the issue of control, and government does not want to give up that control, especially in tribes that already have ongoing gaming operations. And so they'll commit to the idea of doing it, but once they understand that they can't go in and fire the manager tomorrow or go in there and do the things that they're used to doing, they don't like it. So you have to manage that every day. It's something that I have to manage every day. The governor doesn't have any authority to come in and take any actions within the operation on a day-to-day basis. But everybody knows that when the governor shows up on any one of our properties I need to know immediately and we have somebody there to make sure that he's seeing, he's getting what he needs. So you've got to manage that. You have to recognize who the owner is. And so again, that's a delicate balance.

Due diligence -- I went through this. You have to hire the best you can afford and sometimes you have to hire the person you can't afford. That's one of the 201 business lessons when I went to New Mexico State and went to my first business management class, that's the thing that I remember hearing out of that class is that you've got to...in order for you to be successful, you've got to hire successful people. You've got to surround yourself with successful people. And so it's been my agenda to always hire the best. And not only stop at hiring what I can afford, but I've actually had people that I couldn't afford but I made sure that within a year I could afford them because then they grew my revenue. They grew my EBIDA.

Setting up tribal government and business infrastructure is very critical. The government needs to understand how to interact with this new animal that you created. And that's kind of been one of the struggles of Section 17 and business entities is government not necessarily having the infrastructure to know how to deal with this new animal. One of the ones that kills you a lot is personnel issues. I am the final say. My board does not even have a say as to what the final conclusion of a personnel action internally within the corporation is. That's my decision as CEO of the corporation. If a tribal member does not agree with that, they take me to tribal court. And tribal court through a wrongful termination hearing then determines whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing. So that's an example of infrastructure. So that the council doesn't have to be tied up with that issue because tribal members are complaining about...

And it always happens that they only hear one side of the story. I have grandmothers calling me, I have mom and dad's calling me and these are for people that are probably 40-50 years old some of them. Grandma's still calling me and saying, ‘How come you fired or how come you took this action on my grandson,' or, ‘How come you took that action on my child?' And I will say, ‘I wish I could talk to you about it, but there's something called the Privacy Act. And you take this form; you take it home to your child or your grandchild and have them sign this document. Then I'll tell you what's really in your grandson and your son's file.' I have not gotten one of those back yet because only one side of the story is told and we love the opportunity to tell the other side of the story.

This is a weakness is that tribes normally set up these operations without adequate capital. Most of the business ventures, you're expected to put at least 30 percent equity into a business start-up and tribes notoriously don't want to do that. So that's always been a weakness in tribal economies. The diversification, the economic base, we learned that through the Jackpile Mine when you have all your eggs in one basket. And there's a risk in a lot of tribes [because] the only economic engine a lot of tribes have right now are your casinos. And you're seeing right now that these casinos are not recession proof. There was a fallacy out there that gaming casinos were recession proof. Just look at what's going on in Nevada with the big ones. And then the other thing is that we also have to make sure that we stay business vision and mission focused. It's important for us to maintain that vision focus because if we don't who else is going to do it?"

Anthony Pico: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians Chairman Anthony Pico reflects on his experiences as leader of his nation, and stresses the importance of Native nations strengthening their systems of governance in order to protect and strengthen their cultures and ways of life. 

People
Resource Type
Citation

Pico, Anthony. "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, 2008. Presentation.

"First of all, good morning to all of you here! It's an honor and a privilege to be here before you, because I know that there literally has been 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 leaders that have come before you -- if you think about the history of your people and your Aboriginal histories. I'd also like to thank the Tohono O'odham Nation for allowing me to be here on their land. And I'm very grateful to Native Nations Institute, the University of Arizona and Ian Record for inviting me here today. And I'd also like to thank my people -- the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay -- and our tribal council and the honorable Bobby Barrett -- our chairman -- for making it possible for me to be with all of you. I'd like to introduce to you the Vice Chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay, the honorable Raymond {Coy) Hyde. Also, my good friend and childhood friend and one of the ones -- he and his mother approached me many years ago to run for tribal chairman. I remember that. (You're going to get it.) And I wish to express my deepest appreciation to the University of Arizona, the Morris K. Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, Native Nations Institute and its founders and directors and its staff for their continuous and social and economic progress for America's Indigenous peoples. I'd like to particularly extend my gratitude to Manley Begay, Stephen Cornell, Joseph Kalt, Miriam Jorgensen and Joan Timeche and others who have tirelessly advocated for tribal sovereignty and self-governance.

I recently recalled with a friend, the early days in Viejas -- at a time when about 152 impoverished citizens shared the land with an equal number of dogs and cats and frogs and coyotes. There was little economic development then on the res. And for young men and women -- mostly young men I guess at that time -- without a job there wasn't much to do except play baseball and pitch horseshoes. I remember at nighttime, with a star-filled sky, and you could still hear the clanging of horseshoes on iron pegs. I served more than two decades as the elected leader of my people and there were many on the reservation who contend my greatest accomplishments during those days was my ability to pitch horseshoes in total darkness. As in the case with many American Indians, I was raised poor in an abusive and alcoholic family, and were it not for res adoptive parents -- and this was before the Indian Child Welfare Act -- and the support of a nurturing spirit of our community, I'm convinced that today I'd either be dead or I'd be wasting away in some prison, as was the fate of many of my contemporaries. I eventually received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane letters from Long Island University in New York, but I wasn't a good student in my early years. I was continually put in remedial classes, and halfway through high school [I was] still in those remedial classes. And I was really convinced that I was stupid. But there were exceptions, in the fourth grade and the seventh grades, I remember the teachers who expressed an interest in me and my grades soared from Ds and Fs to Cs and Bs. And so I learned then, in retrospect, that such is the power of the caring spirit. I battled alcoholism from when I was a young man, and it's a struggle that continues with me today. It's a struggle that I will continue for the rest of my life, but I am surviving this and I even thrive under those conditions. And why am I so sure? Because I've always been a firm believer of the strength of the human spirit; I've always maintained that the Creator instilled in every man, woman and child the ability to rise above the fray and to succeed where others have failed and to achieve what others may view as unachievable.

Leadership, in my experience, is defined and created by adversity; and I know this to be true. I saw it in Vietnam when I served as a paratrooper in the United States Army infantry, where I witnessed young and normally docile men who in combat reached down deep within, and grasping the courage that they never dreamed that they even had, overcoming fears and leading our comrades to victory or safe haven. And I've seen it here in the United States with American Indians' struggle for social and economic justice and the protection and preservation of sovereignty and self-governance. Our tortured history since European settlement is, of course, a saga of loss and struggle, death, poverty and disease, war and suppression, misguided federal policy, racism and neglect. We've been able to hold onto what little that we have only through the courage of our elders and our ancestors who rose above the turmoil and reached down deep within themselves to surface as warriors and scholars and diplomats and prophets. They were all leaders.

The title of this seminar is 'What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office.' Who thought that up? Huh? Where is Mr. Kalt? I had some difficulty with the topic, largely because I'm not at a place in my life where I harbor any great deal of regrets. I can say, however, that I went through a transformation of sorts. It occurred later in my second decade of my nearly 24 years as tribal chairperson. I was not so much groomed for leadership as I was influenced by the caring spirit of my people at Viejas -- citizens of Viejas who freely gave of their time. And it's the Kumeyaay way to share and to care for other people as it is I know for your people. Even when we were poor in finances, we were and are rich in spirit and our sense of community of family has always been strong. That's why I've always given freely of my time. As I said earlier, were it not for the community of Viejas I would be dead or in jail, I have no doubt about that. When tribal leaders in 1983 asked me to seek public office, my response was of course to say 'yes.' They knew me. They saw me growing up as a boy to manhood. They had confidence in me, and suffice to say their belief in the human spirit was perhaps greater than mine. And the fact is that they really pulled me up out of the gutter and asked me to lead them.

Our tribal government budget deficit at the time was $3,000. My elders wanted me to create an economy there at Viejas and that was my focus for the first 15 years as elected tribal leader of my people. Viejas is recognized today for its success in creating a strong and diversified tribal economy. We have of course a casino, we own our own community bank, a shopping center, two RV parks, an entertainment business, and we created tribal partnerships in the development of the Marriott Residence Inn in Washington, DC -- a block and a half from the capitol, from that museum, and actually on the capitol mall in Sacramento. And one of our partners is Oneida. And we today are planning to build an $800 million casino resort. I can't take the bulk of the credit for my success. The strategies and policies that paved the way to progress on Viejas was largely the achievement of a competent staff under the direction of able leadership from the Viejas tribal council and our general membership.

Viejas also benefited from the leadership of California tribes during the gaming wars of the 1990s that resulted in landmark ballot initiatives in tribal-state compacted gaming. And again, it was adversity that brought out our leadership qualities of Indian tribes. When we were fighting the gaming wars, California tribal leaders walked in lock-step unity. We knew how to manipulate the press and we were savvy in our public relations. We learned the political game and played it like a drum and we were a formidable coalition. When the war was over we became complacent; we forgot what made us so formidable. With the leadership of four tribal governments rose yet again in referendum success earlier this year and that allowed us to expand the casino operations. It was late in the gaming wars of 1990 that I went through a transformation as I mentioned earlier. Danny Tucker, my good friend and mentor and chairman of the Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay hired a brilliant tactician -- former chairman Larry Kinley of the Lummi Nation -- to assist us in developing strategy in our ongoing political confrontation there in California. The Lummi and other tribes of the Pacific Northwest fought the landmark legal battles with Washington State and the federal government over the fishing rights. The battles resulted in the victorious 1974 decision by U.S. District Court Judge George Boldt affirming tribal rights to 50 percent of the salmon and the harvest of Washington State. The landmark Boldt decision was later upheld in the United States Supreme Court. The Lummi later were among several tribes that adopted newly elected federal policies of self-governance, embracing self-determination -- independence from the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Lummi Nation has never accepted money from the federal government paid to them for their land and despite crippling poverty and desperate needs, it sits in a bank untouched. To take the money, the elders taught, would be an erosion of their sovereignty. The Lummi have never signed a treaty and to this day they say would be a violation of that sacred right. I've always embraced a vague notion of sovereignty and its importance to Viejas and other tribal nations.

The Lummi Nation taught me that sovereignty was the journey -- it was a long and never-ending trek. That through a hurricane of rival interests, competing political agendas, and a greed for power, the Lummi ignited a fire in my belly and it still burns to this day. It's not economic progress that will sustain Native America for the next seven generations and beyond; it's sovereignty and the strengthening of our governments that will insure that future generations will continue to live what you consider, a Native way of life. That is in fact, what is put forth by Native Nations Institute -- that only by strengthening our governments and non-economic institutions can we build a foundation for long-term economic and social progress.

As you know, times have changed. Tribes are changing. Our children are changing, subject to the influence of the modern world in which we all live. Our languages are dying and so are those who practice and teach us the old traditions and values. We need to see, feel and imagine and reinvent Indian sovereignty into what it is. And we need to do this within each tribe within all Indian Country, and there are different paths and future emphasis for tribes to take. Some tribes will strengthen heir sovereignty through spiritual and religious beliefs and practices; some will provide new modern and strong 21st-century tribal governments. Others will focus on economic development as they build the infrastructure. I hope the tribes will focus on healing the pain of the past and the psychological damage of poverty and social disintegration that haunts each generation. Each can and will carry us to a new place if we continue to share and learn from each others' experiences and examples. It's critical that we find ways to free ourselves from the patterns of self-destruction, the unrecognized anger we have, the abuse and racism that drives so many to alcohol, to drugs and suicide. We have to learn to live life again not deaden ourselves to it. If not for ourselves, then we must learn to be life-affirming for the sake of our children and those children that aren't born.

It's an incredible challenge to break new ground in Indian Country. It's an ever greater challenge to find and forge a path that preserves our roots while accommodating the demands of today's world. The moment has come to exercise and claim such a place for modern Indians. Can we seize this opportunity and create a renaissance for our tribe and people in the present? What we and our elders and those of us before have struggled so hard to hold onto, our sovereignty and our right to self-governance, we can so easily lose. The greatest and most important legacy that we leave our children, grandchildren, and those generations to come is the opportunity to live a Native way of life. We can only keep that promise if we grasp our sovereignty tightly and not let it gradually slip away as grains of sand through a clenched fist.

Am I worried about the future? No. There will be struggles, there will be adversity, but the struggles will make us strong and diligent. From the seeds of adversity will grow our future leaders. Struggle and adversity can bring the best in the individual. I know this to be true and it can do the same for tribes. I have a concern and it rests with the United States Supreme Court and its ability to strengthen or erode sovereignty and our right to govern our own lands. This is where our focus must be, in my opinion, in protecting our shield of sovereignty from attack by the nation's highest court. I have a wish that tribes embrace transparency in governance, openness with both tribal citizens and non-Indian governments. Truth is our most important and powerful ally and I strongly advocate that tribes look carefully at their image with the non-Indian public. How we are perceived by the public and elected officials and policy makers will define our future. We are increasingly being perceived not as nations and governments, with a stalwart and culturally rich past, but as businesses and corporations, purveyors of gambling and that is a dangerous trend. Openness in public relations is an arrow in our quiver, which we have not successfully used. We must sharpen it and aim it to where it does the most good. Make no mistake, I believe -- and I've been criticized for saying this -- but I firmly believe this: when push comes to shove, it's the voting public of this country that will determine the fate of Native Americans.

I'm in the autumn of my years now; my days in public office are over.* But I look over the audience today -- and speaking to others while I've been here at today's and tomorrow's leaders -- and I take great pride and comfort knowing that the future of Native America is in competent and capable hands. I will not chart your future; that's for you to decide. You must look to yourself, to your tribe, to your Creator and just as important, to your ancestors who have gone before you and communicate with them, through prayer or however ways you can do that. They are there and they're willing and they're able and they will listen to you. And in conclusion, never, never forget the blood of our ancestors have blessed the continents of North and South America. That blood runs in your veins right now as I speak. To not do the best that we can and are capable of would be an insult to the suffering and their pain that they had to endure. Fight as fiercely and as wise as you can and deliver Native America to the next generation. Thank you." 

* Anthony Pico was elected to another term as Chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay in December 2010.

Jerry Smith: Building and Sustaining Nation-Owned Enterprises (2008)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Laguna Development Corporation President and CEO Jerry Smith discusses the evolution and growth of the Pueblo of Laguna's diversified economy, and the importance of building an infrastructure of laws and rules in ensuring the success of Laguna's nation-owned enterprises.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Smith, Jerry. "Building and Sustaining Nation-Owned Enterprises." Executive Education Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Rapid City, South Dakota. September 18, 2008. Presentation.

“Morning everyone. I was afraid that when she was talking about the pig story, she was going to introduce me as the first pig on the panel. I appreciate being here today to speak to you on the experiences of and growth of Laguna Development Corporation, and in general the Pueblo Laguna. As some of you may know, Laguna Pueblo is located in Albuquerque, about forty miles west of Albuquerque on I-40. And what we have done over the years, my career, I’m very impressed with the academic capacities of the folks presenting to you in Native nations. Some of us on the other side are kind of educated in the school of hard knocks, in that we grew up in the tribal end of the entity at first. I worked, probably, about 20 years on the tribal side working as a tribal administrator for the tribe, and more specifically in the areas of trying to develop the economy of the tribe. And then later in the late '90s, I moved over and began to run one of the enterprises of the tribe. So I kind of have the understanding and experience of both sides of the equation.

My first slide basically gives you kind of a view of where our economy has been over the last number of years. Laguna economy pre-'50s is basically an agriculture-based economy, very entrepreneurial, small business (as I like to refer to them) -- individuals who ran farms, cattle, livestock, sheep. So, as we moved into the '50s, fortunately in our situation, uranium was discovered on our tribal lands. And so we went through a period of tremendous economic prosperity in that, we had at its peak production, the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, and it provided substantial resources to the tribe as well as employment. We were able to live in a great environment. Unfortunately, that resource, as a result of the anti-nuclear type programs in the late '70s, mid-late '70s, we entered into the down crash of the uranium market. The mine ended up closing in the early '80s. So, from the '80s, as you can see, the tribe began to look at what to do. We had a situation of close to 80 percent unemployment. When I interviewed for the tribal administrator’s job in 1982, the question I recall, the most pressing question I recall being asked is, 'What are you going to do to find me a job?' Asked by one of the tribal council members. And just out of business school, I didn’t have a whole lot of answers, except, ‘I’ll do my best.’ And quite honestly, I was not really looking forward to being hired, because I really didn’t have the answers that I thought they were looking for. But surprisingly, I was hired by the tribal council as a tribal administrator to come in and begin work on these situations.

It’s key in that, for Laguna, it was very key in that, a lot of things we were able to do in the '80s were structure-related issues. We worked on a lot of infrastructure, and the reason we could work on infrastructure is we had the wealth of the uranium mine, which funded tribal government operations. So we had a period of time where we could focus on infrastructure development, which meant we had to change philosophically the way the tribe thought, the way they approach things, and began to take a look at how we could do things different in a way that we could grow tribal enterprises, which meant that we had to do a lot of education. And it was really strange for me, fresh out of business school, to be educating people that were very experienced in tribal operations. A lot of our leadership -- and it seems to be the same way today -- a lot of leadership comes from the federal sector. You know, leadership and tribes come out of the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], IHS [Indian Health Service], HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development] -- you know, those programs. And so when you begin to take a look at educating tribal leadership in this new mentality, you know, definitely training, educational training had to happen. So we began to develop our tribal enterprises.

Our first project was a project called Laguna Industries, where we stepped in and developed a manufacturing company. And at the time, at this time as you recall, the Defense Department was growing very significantly. So we targeted the Defense Department and developed a company that went after defense work. And the created company that, in its peak, employed close to 350 people and is still today, operating and defense contracting. They have, they’ve done not only manufacturing of electro-assembly products, but they also do a lot of on-site support training for the military. We have teams that go out to Korea, who have been out in Iraq, have been out in Germany, you know, supporting the troops in the systems that are built within the company. After learning this experience, then we were caught with the situation of claiming this open pit uranium mine. So, as we began to work with the company that operated that mine, we began to take a look at, 'How we can build a company, instead of using these dollars to go out and just contract a general contractor to come in and do the mining project?' We began to take a look at how we could do this ourselves.

So we created a second company called Laguna Construction Company. And Laguna Construction Company ultimately came on board, they performed the reclamation of the Jackpile mine and then began to develop the capacity in reclamation remediation and began to get defense contracts to begin to do work, not only within the United States, and did a lot of reclamation. This time as you see military base closures were coming online. So there were needs to go in and reclaim those military bases. So they received initially a lot of work doing that; and then they stepped into, then the Iraq situation came on. Right now they’re one of the subcontractors of Halliburton, doing a lot of the reconstruction of Iraq in terms of rebuilding buildings and doing a lot of the reclamation work over there. So it’s significant in terms of their growth and experience.

The third company we created was Laguna Development Corporation and that’s the company I run. In the creation of the first two companies I stayed on the governmental side, and the companies were set up and we brought in management in those arenas. This third company, I kind of wanted a career change, so I kind of moved to the company and we set up this company called the Laguna Development Corporation. Initially, the mission of Laguna Development Corporation was retail development. We ran retail operations. And if any of you have run C-stores, a grocery store, you know how tough that is because your margins are at the bottom line, hopefully, about 3 percent. So as we began to run those operations, it became very important for us to have the proper infrastructure in place in terms of the business itself. Later on we brought in the gaming operations. So our growth has been substantial. We were created in 1998 and our first year, full year of operation in 1999, we had out $6.5 million in sales. In closure of our books in 2007, we closed our books in excess of $250 million in sales, of which over 50 percent is non-gaming revenue. It’s a substantial effort in terms of trying to diversify our corporate portfolio. And one of the things that we learned coming out of the Jackpile Mine was that, as a tribe, you cannot put all your eggs in one basket. You have to take the opportunity and begin to diversify the economic base because if you lose a Jackpile Mine -- and if any of you and I’m sure a lot of you are experienced or have experienced 80 percent unemployment -- it is not pleasant. It creates a whole lot of social/economic issues for you as a tribe, and it’s very important to keep people productive and keep them working and keep their value system in place.

So as we stand here today, we lost close to about 600 jobs in the closure of the Jackpile Mine. Since then, with the enterprises, we’ve been able to create close to 1,600 jobs within the tribal environment. So as I speak here before you -- and I don’t have any statistics to support this -- but I would say Laguna, as a population base, we’re pretty close to full employment, which is saying that anybody that wants a job can get a job. So that’s been an experience. Now we’re working on the quality of the job. Now we’re working on moving people in their career development towards improving the quality of the job and improving their quality of life, improving their capacities.

Tribal government also benefits because I sat on tribal council in the mid-90s and as a tribal councilman, I began to take a look at where our mix of revenues were coming from. And at that point, 80 percent of our revenues were coming from federal sources, 20 percent of our revenues were coming from investment income off the Jackpile uranium operation. As I stand here before you today, 80 percent of our revenue comes from the enterprises, 20 percent of the revenue [of] the tribe comes from federal sources, federal/state sources. And when you look at that equation, you begin to see why these business development efforts are very important for the survival of the tribe, because I think the only way, one of the ways we can exercise our true sovereignty as tribal people is to be fiscally solvent, so that we don’t have to have our hand out to a governmental entity and take all the flow-down conditions that come with those contracts and grants that say, 'You got to do it this way, you got to do it this way, you got to do it this way.' It’s great for the tribe to have that discretionary money, that money that doesn’t come with any strings, to go out and do the things the tribe wants to do, without having to say, 'Mother, may I?' And if, coming from the tribal side, it’s very frustrating to me to always have to talk to a grant, a contract administrator on the federal side that basically gave me permission to do this or do that or do this other thing. And it really, in my opinion, stymied a lot of economic development in tribes, because federal people are not business people. They are not risk-takers. They are not people that have to go out and lead and be the entrepreneurs to go out and take the risk. They are very low-risk tolerant. So a lot of the projects fell on the wayside because I had to go before an administrator who had no experience telling me what I could and couldn’t do. So in that regard, this money that’s discretionary, this money that comes from enterprises that the tribe has full flexibility to decide what they need to do with -- it gives a tremendous opportunity to begin to take a look at getting outside that box.

One of the things we have to do from a tribal side, is teach our tribal leadership how to get outside that box, because these tribal leaders -- and this is no different than my tribe -- many of them grew up in the federal system. Many of them are contract administrators for the BIA. Many of them ran BIA/IHS programs and have since come back and are working for the tribe. So they’re trained. Their whole career is trained in this federal process and it says nothing’s wrong with them -- I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it -- but on this other side there’s this whole different dynamic that we have to work with and that is risk and learning how to manage risk. And fundamentally, in order for you to be successful in an enterprise, is to be able to understand that and take safe calculated risk; but you’ve got to take risk. So from a Laguna story standpoint, I’m learning as I’m going on, talking to people, a lot of tribes, especially gaming tribes, 90 percent plus of their money now come from their enterprises. So we are no longer federally dependent. We are independent from a fiscal management standpoint, but we’ve got to get out of old habits. We’ve got to get out of habits of letting public policy from somebody in Washington (D.C.) tell us how to run our communities and begin to take responsibility for being creative to develop those communities that fit our situation, which leads me to the next slide, and that is understanding the difference between the governmental model and the business model.

What was very difficult for me, in the early '80s, was to educate my tribal leadership that governments are important. Tribal governments are important. Governments have to exist and have to exist and be effective, but you don’t run a business to a governmental model. Governmental models are there to provide governance to the tribe, to the organization. They are not profit motivated. Ask a tribal budget manager as to what their profitability is for this year and they don’t know. They can’t answer the question. Business models work within the governance of the tribe and that’s a very important point. People think you have to choose one or the other; it’s not that way. The governmental infrastructure has to be in place and the governmental rules have to be in place and stable so that the business can flourish within that environment. So they have to work together. So what you have to do is build the governmental infrastructure in place so that the business can survive because business as a fundamental, any start-up business -- what is the statistic? Sixty-five percent fail in their first year of operation. So you’re already dealing with a very dynamic situation in running a business with a high propensity to fail. So if you move the tribal environment on top of it, you create a higher percentage risk of failure if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to support that.

So in that regard, governance is very important, but it also has to be, it has to provide the energies for businesses to succeed. The other thing is that business model is profit motivated. And that’s one thing our tribal leadership have a hard time with because many of us have to be sometimes in position where we have to say, ‘I am not meeting my EBIDA [earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization] goals.’ And a tribal leader will look at you and say, ‘What? What is that? What is EBIDA?’ You know, that is a measure of business performance. And as you begin to take a look at the language, it’s kind of like, in some cases, speaking French and English because the terminology is not the same. Even the way that you’re audited is different. Governments are audited to what’s called GASB and I think probably a lot of you know what GASB is. Businesses are operated on a FASB process. And so you have to understand that even the formula and even how things work, are different. So when you go to a tribal leader and say I’ve had tremendous EBIDA performance you have to take the time to take them through what EBIDA means, because they do not have the experience and understanding of what EBIDA means.

And so those kind of things are, there are differences in terms of the name of the game and how the game is played. So what we did over our evolution at Laguna was we tried different business models. We tried different business structures. We initially set ourselves up under tribal enterprises. Now one of the benefits, and we talked about lessons learned at Laguna, was prior to trying to put the structures in place, we killed a lot of good businesses. We killed a lot of good businesses because we just could not keep people in their roles. And one of the strongest influences in this environment is political influence. And what you ended up having was you ended up having political leaders making business decisions. And the business decisions normally were not of quality because they were not being made for the necessary reasons, or the proper reasons why that decision should be made. One of the biggest challenges, for example, one of your biggest expenses in the business is labor. And your revenues fluctuate as you operate during the year, and especially if you’re running a seasonal business. So as a business leader, you have to manage labor and you just can’t have people sitting in an office, twiddling their thumbs waiting for the season to pick up. So you have to deal with the issue. You may have to lay people off or you have to lay them off seasonally. So if you don’t make that decision, then you’re going to be impacting your EBIDA line. And EBIDA is Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization, and that is how businesses are measured. They are not measured on net income. They are not measured performance from an operational standpoint on what your profit is. It’s basically what your EBIDA is, because your EBIDA is what really tells you whether or not you’re operating efficiently or effectively. So the two things you watch for in a business is EBIDA and cash flow. And if you are not functioning in those areas then you better do something.

So in that regard, we started in tribal enterprises. Tribal enterprise worked, but unfortunately we got into the mix of IRS. And I give IRS a lot of credit for this because we would not have gone through the evolution we went through without IRS intervention, because IRS intervention or interest was to tax our profits. And at that time they did not recognize tribal enterprises as an acceptable structure for them and they basically determined at that time, and this is again in the '80s, that our income was taxable. So we went then and went to a state chartered corporation. So we chartered one of these entities under the State of New Mexico and we were able to get away with that for a little while until IRS came down again and told us state charter corporations are taxable. And so then we went to the structure we are now and all three of the entities I showed you on the board are structured under this is a Section 17 federal corporation.

Now one of the things that this did (and you can go to the next slide), one of the things that it did is it helped educate the government to the point where they understood why we need to separate business from government and why they had to release day-to-day control of the business. And it has to do with something called liability. Because when you’re running a business, the fundamental nature of the business is risk and you have to take risk. Why do private people with money, with wealth, set up corporations? It’s because they’re protecting their personal assets. So they set up these corporations where if something happens from a risk decision in that corporation, their nest egg is protected. Fortunately, at Laguna, we had a nest egg that came from the uranium mine. We had a substantial nest egg. So we were able to approach the tribal council to say, ‘Before you go out and start taking risk propositions you need to protect your nest egg. And we need to build this wall between government and the enterprises so that if something happens within the enterprise, your assets are protected. They can sue the corporation only to the extent of the assets of the corporation. They cannot touch tribal assets.' So with the protection mechanism in place it was very, it helped us tremendously in selling the concept. Now we were a tribe without assets and it’s the same fundamental thing. How many of us own private corporations because how many of us have something to risk and lose? So we don’t really think that way. But when you’re a person of wealth, you think that way. It’s a difference in thinking. So if we were to try to do that today, with what’s going on today, we would probably have a very difficult time. For the reason that tribal, and it’s still happening in all governments, the tribal political factors want to get into day-to-day operations. They want to get into day-to-day control of the enterprises. So how did we define this so that we can protect the enterprises from that situation, and how can we protect the tribal council from assets being touched? It’s called penetrating the corporate veil.

If a tribal leader comes down into the corporations and starts hiring and firing employees, that tribal leader has penetrated the corporate veil. So what happens is they put a hole in the corporate veil and if they’re sued back, whoever is filing the claim can go right back through that hole and get the tribal assets. So as you can see, there’s a lot of education that needs to go on. And a lot of these principles aren’t necessarily understood at the beginning, but as you keep educating, educating, you begin to finally hit home with some of these things. One thing that was very important to us was to formalize these relationships, not just gentlemen’s agreement, not just from one council to the next, because councils turn over quite a bit. So the institutional knowledge of the government isn’t always there. So when you go back to this say, ‘You remember ten years ago we talked about it?’ And you look at the people in the room and they’re all different. No one remembers what you talked about ten years ago. So it’s very important to formalize anything that you enter into in terms of relationship with the government. And you’ve got to treat it like a state government, like a federal government. Tribal government, even though they’re your owners, you have to also understand that they’re governments. And so nobody has a problem writing a grant proposal and signing a grant agreement with the state government, with the federal government. That’s a formulation of what the conditions are and what are the terms and what happens in this situation. It’s very important that we be at Laguna, that we begin to formalize this relationship so that we can retain the institutional knowledge of what was agreed to. So we have charters. We have corporate charters. You can go online, because we’re a federal corporation, you can go pull up our charter. You can see what our charter looks like. Bylaws of the corporation; bylaws are what the board of directors manages the corporation by. It’s their internal rules of the corporation. We have very sophisticated reporting relationships. We provide financial statements to the tribe on a monthly basis. We provide them quarterly financial statements. We go before the council twice a year in terms, semi-annual shareholder’s meetings.

Our tribal councilmen wear two hats. They are councilmen from the government side, but they are our shareholder’s representatives and they have to learn how to operate in two different environments. As shareholder’s representatives they are not councilmen, they are not governmental representatives, they represent the shareholders. And they fall within corporate law duties of shareholders and they have to fill their duties to shareholders. And what is their primary duty? Their primary duty is the appointment of the board of directors. I report to a five-member board of directors and that board of directors is delegated authority to run the corporation. And so the major power of the tribe is to make sure they have good, competent people on the board of directors, and experienced people on the board of directors.

We also have a very sophisticated agreement with the tribe on how cash moves from the corporation to the tribe. I’ve worked and I’ve consulted to a number of tribes and it amazes me when I go in to sit down with them and I ask, ‘How does cash transfer?’ And they say, ‘Well, the tribe comes in and gets it every month.’ So then I say to them, ‘Well, how do you take care of capital maintenance, capital development reserves?’ And you can begin to see real quickly in the enterprise why they haven’t replaced, in the gaming property, slot machines; why they haven’t replaced carpet; why they haven’t done, you know from a maintenance standpoint; they haven’t developed a new venture. It’s because the tribe comes in and takes it all out. And so the enterprises really don’t retain the cash because it’s sucked out to the government on a monthly basis.

In our situation, we’ve negotiated a relationship with the tribe where money transfers, but it transfers at year-end after all the audits are done. And so we do transfer like pre-payments monthly, but it’s all reconciled at year-end. And it’s based on a formula so that, like anything else, as the audit kicks in and it’s produced then formulas run. So there’s no dispute. And if they want to come in and look at the books and understand why they got this in their check, it’s all auditable, it’s all transparent. So even those relationships are formalized so that we don’t get into disputes. Many times we get accused of holding all the money in the enterprise, but in reality, we can answer that claim any time; just come in and audit us and we’ll show you exactly where things are.

And so, as it relates to that, we probably at this point within our enterprise, the two things that usually are stress points are the financial end of it and human resources end of it. So from the financial end of it, we’ve been able to take 50 percent of the equation in terms of disputes away. We still fight over human resource issues on a day-to-day basis. But at the same time, we set up a system where I’m the final say on human resource issues. Nothing goes to my board of directors, nothing goes to the tribal council. And so as we deal with day-to-day operations, we’re able to handle those things and I’m able to handle issues that some tribes…and I’ve had people tell me how...tribal councils have come in and you’ve disciplined a brother or nephew or niece and they’ve come in and damaged the organization. We’ve had to deal with those kind of things up front and it’s very, it’s worked effectively today.

We also have had to take investment and tried to help the government infrastructure develop. One of the things that happened at Laguna with the quick growth of the enterprises is what we call the brain drain syndrome. The capacity that used to sit on the tribe transferred to the enterprises for a number of reasons. One was pay; we could pay more on the business side than what they were getting as a tribal employee. So what ended up happening is that we ended up wakening capacity of human resources at the tribe. So we’ve been going back in and helping them develop their capacities: how to read a financial statement; how to read a business financial statement versus a GASB financial statement; and what it is you look for in terms of managing the enterprise. Most of us know, especially those of us who run gaming enterprise, your three big numbers are revenue, marketing expenses, and labor. That’s probably 60-70 percent of the equation. So you can make comment about ‘how come so and so’ or ‘how come somebody got a company car?’ But that’s so minute compared to those big numbers.

So as you begin to educate tribal government, then you begin to help in building this bridge between government and enterprises. One of the things we went into was help develop, for a tribe, a budgeting ordinance where we set up the infrastructure where they come and ask us for forecasts, five-year forecasts for revenue. How many tribes have five-year forecasts in terms of their operational standards? Businesses have to do it all the time. So we took that into that environment and said, ‘You guys need to do a five-year forecast. This is how you get the information from us so that you can begin to start planning your growth; because the money’s going to be coming over and the growth and the revenue of the tribe are substantial, are going to be substantial for the next five years.’ Unless they know that, how can they begin to plan? How can they begin to put their governmental infrastructure in place to be able to do the things that they need to do? What normally happens is they do it on a year-by-year basis.

So we’re involved in developing that capacity on the tribal side by teaching them some of these disciplines and hopefully over the years -- we’re not there yet -- we use Joan’s program a lot to come in and do the same kind of training that’s going on here with tribal leadership. But still yet it’s on a hit-and-miss basis. We hope to, and it’s very difficult, we got to do it with a lot of humility, because we don’t want to be; I mean, we’ve been accused of being the Pueblo of LDC and that’s not what we’re about. But we definitely need to do what we can as a child in this household to be better children and help dad and mom develop their infrastructure.

So we work with the administration, you know, a lot of us, you know, depend on tribal water, so we have to help with the water department. We have to help with all those areas where we draw resources out of the tribe so we can deal with them within a business context. We also have to help in the legal arena; because a lot of the areas, for example, in human resources individuals do have a tribal resolution if they do not agree with my decision, and that decision is in the structure is to take me to tribal court not to tribal council. So if they have a problem with wrongful termination and they believed that as the chief executive officer of the tribe, I mean, the enterprise, that I made a wrong decision then, in Laguna, they have the ability to take me to tribal court. So then we go into an environment where we can deal with things on a very consistent basis. In a tribal council environment, for example, there’s this thing called 'freedom of information,' and unless I get release from that individual to release their personnel file, I’m going to walk into that tribal council with my hands behind my back and they’re going to slap me all over the place and I cannot tell them the true story unless I have that sheet of paper that says I can. And employees who take you to that venue, I have not yet found one that’s willing to sign that piece of paper. So you will always lose in that environment because they have the bullets and the gun. You have the bullets, but you don't have the gun. And so we were able to set up legal environments where now it doesn’t go to tribal council -- council has the ability to raise policy issues/policy questions with us -- but in terms of individual cases, the legal infrastructure of the tribe takes care of those issues for us.

Again, emphasize the appointment of board members. It’s very important that you get the best competency on your board of directors if you want them to be managing a $250 million business; and so board development is also very important and the continued development of board of directors, especially for tribal members who want to get active in this area is very important. So we do the same kind of programs in trying to develop our board of directors. The last thing is, one of the other things that government has to do effectively is properly capitalize the business. A lot of tribes, especially in the gaming industry, don’t capitalize their business adequately. At the Pueblo Laguna, from a $250 million business, the initial investment into us was $250,000. That’s all we got from the tribe. So we had to go out and get the capitalization needs from outside sources; where it has an effect on the tribe, is now we have to pay interest, expense, cost of money that could be going to the tribe. So those are the things you have to deal with in this environment and this is kind of the issues we’re working with. Capitalizing the business effectively, especially in your low-margin businesses, it’s very important; because a lot of these businesses can’t afford the cost of money that we sometimes have to pay, especially in today’s market. Now as Laguna Development Corporation, it’s interesting that if you read the paper right now, the down economy and people always thought gaming was recession proof. Across the country, the gaming industry is beginning to experience their first effect of a down economy and its impact on gaming. Gaming is down 10-20 percent across the country. And why is it that I’m here telling you to look at these things? It’s because at Laguna Development Corporation, Albuquerque in New Mexico is tagged as one of the most competitive Indian gaming markets in the country because we have five significant properties around a little over half a million people population base; very competitive. And in a down economy, you definitely have to take that planning into consideration. Our infrastructure has helped us. It’s helped us retain executive competency. In the gaming industry, turnover is almost annual. General managers are released almost annually. In New Mexico, 1.5 years is the average life of a general manager. My executive team has been with me since they came on board because they understand stability. One of their first questions to me, because a lot of these individuals have come out of Indian gaming, have said not, ‘How’s the business running?’ but ‘How does this thing work between the tribe and the business?’ And so I have not had anyone refuse or pull their application as a result of understanding this structure, and it helps me go after better people. It opens the door for me to go recruit better people [because] they know that their head’s not going to be taken off by tribal government. My head may be taken off, but their heads are going to be protected because of the infrastructure, and it’s helped me tremendously.

The last thing is a discipline issue, is, the other thing is you can have all the rules in place, but if you don’t adhere to the rules they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. So discipline, in terms of teaching people their roles, and ensuring from business side that we operate to our boundaries, on the other side, the governmental side they’re operating in their boundaries, has been very successful for us in that arena.

(Next slide.)

What’s the business’s responsibility? The business’s responsibility is to hire the best executive team it can find. I always remember my 201-business course and I was told, ‘Your key to success is to hire the best you can afford.’ And I’ve taken that principle and I’ve applied very consistently within our operation. So I go hire the best I can afford. Some I can’t even, I can’t afford now but I cannot not afford them. So I go after the best. So I have a senior team that is very -- and I guess I would be bold enough to say -- I’ll put them up against any senior team in the country in terms of their depth, their experience, their knowledge and the industries that we run. We provide and evolve our business systems constantly, our operating systems, our financial systems, our human resource systems. We under our, probably our fifth revision of our HR [human resources] manual because the dynamics of what happens within this industry, you can’t just take a book and adopt the rules and just let it sit. You’ve got to evolve them and you got to keep current.

And so we’re constantly looking at those fundamental processes that we have in place and updating them constantly. We provide adequate reporting to the board and to tribal council. That’s one of the big things that has to happen is that the board needs to fully understand full disclosure, what’s going on. The tribal council needs to understand in full disclosure what’s going on. And so in that regard, the board, you know, we have very confident board members so it’s not difficult for them to come back and say, ‘Okay, what happened here? What happened there? How come you…?’ You know, on the tribal council side we’re still evolving there. How do you read a financial statement? You know. How do you read…? How does an income statement differ from a balance sheet? And how does a balance sheet different from a statement of cash flow? You know, most tribes when tribal leaders look at a financial statement, they stop at the income statement, you know. That’s probably the least effective document in the statement. It’s your balance sheet and statement of cash flow that really tells you what’s going on, you know. And so teaching tribal leadership how to evaluate that balance sheet and really see where their net worth is now. You know, we in this down economy, this 20 percent decline in Las Vegas, 18 percent decline in revenue in Las Vegas; in 2008, we grew our revenue by 26 percent. We’re only two companies in the JP Morgan --which just bought out Lehman Brothers -- we’re one of two companies in the JP Morgan portfolio that had a growth in revenue in this down economy in the gaming industry. And a 26 percent growth in revenue while others, the big boys, MGM -- those big boys are losing 18 percent. So to me, it’s fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.

(Inaudible question from the audience).

Indian gaming. You know, this phenomenon is going on in Indian gaming as well, but in the JP Morgan portfolio, JP Morgan is big investor and they’re where we get our money to do our projects. They basically have a portfolio of all the people they loan money to in their portfolio, they just bought Lehman Brothers, that’s this transaction you read about in the papers, so they’re one of the biggest companies in the, finance companies in the United States. We’re one of two of their gaming companies in their portfolio that had growth in their portfolio, in their revenues. So, and again the other company didn’t have the substantial growth we had at 26 percent. Even in this down economy, where everybody else is losing 10-18 percent of their revenue, and we’re doing it in Albuquerque which only has a half-million population base. So, as I can say, it’s focusing on basics.

(Inaudible question from the audience).

They’re the things I’m talking about here: put an infrastructure in place, put in the relationships, tying them together, teaching people their roles, and education is very critical component to this thing. One of the other thing is we focus on growing and developing the business, we don’t focus on politics. We have tribal elections this year. We have no strategic agenda to be involved in tribal elections. They happen on the election side. We’re here to grow the business. And we don’t make decisions on day-to-day objectives, investment objectives as to who’s going to be the governor and what kind of council we’re going to have next year. We focus on the business and we stay focused on the business and run the business, because at the end of the day, you’re not going to be evaluated based on whether or not you did the right political thing, you’re going to get nailed if you don’t get the EBIDA, you don’t get the revenue over to the tribe, because that’s really what they’re all about, what they need.

(Next: Lessons Learned).

This is my, I think, final slide and it’s what have I learned through all this? I’ve got pretty close to 30-some years in doing this. I’m an old man. Maintaining separation of government and business is a very delicate balance. Like I said, if I was to try to do this at Laguna today, I probably would not be able to succeed, because the tribe was not as desperate today as they were twenty years ago.

I’ve been asked to come into some tribes and help move this model into their operation. I had a situation recently where the tribe came and adopted our structure, almost identical. Tribal leadership changed. The tribal leadership came in and had a socialistic agenda and they wanted to build community projects that had no ROI [Return on Investment]. And they said, ‘I don’t care, we want the money.’ 'Well, I have a project over here that’s going to give you 15 percent return on investment.' ‘I don’t care, we want to build this community program.’ And they just said, ‘I’m sorry. What you have to give us is we don’t need it this time. I need this more importantly.’ So we just said, ‘Okay, that’s fine. You don’t need us then. We can do something else. We don’t need to do this.’ One of the criteria my board of directors have on me, before I can do any projects, I have to show my 15% ROI. And that goes all the way down to entertainment. We have an entertainment venue, and if I’m going to bring in Carlos Mencia, I have to show the board that I can get a 15 percent return on that investment. So that’s what I mean in terms of decision-making. It’s not that…there’s some people that say, ‘How come you don’t bring in country [music]?’ It’s because I can’t get an ROI on country. I have lots of people that like country, but I cannot financially make it work; because it’s not about the entertainer, it’s about its impact on the gaming floor and how much more money I can make that night if I do that. So those are the kind of things we have to work on.

But maintain this separation from tribal government. Probably about 80 percent of my job is in two areas: one is human resources dealing with people; the other one is managing tribal government, constantly being available to tribal government, constantly working with tribal government to try to help them understand so that I can protect my management team. My management teams needs to be able to have the flexibility to do their job and they cannot do it with tribal interference. So the buck stops here both ways. And it’s building that trust through example that your management team develops that trust in you, that you’re able to do that. Doing proper due diligence on the management groups that you bring in especially when it’s staff.

One of the things I see in the gaming industry is that industry grew so fast that the development of executive capacity in the industry did not develop as quick as the industry grew. So a lot of Indian gaming facilities were hiring executives that had no experience. They were an assistant table game manager and they gave them the role of GM [general manager]. And you see that a lot. It’s amazing how much you see that. The guy puts on a suit, looks nice, talks well and they’re sold. But they don’t have the experience because nobody did the due diligence on this person to found out whether they really had the capacity. And that’s why you see this turnover in management because after a year, the person shows he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so then the tribe has to fire him because he just lost money for them or did something that he wasn’t supposed to do. So due diligence on the executive team is very critical.

Setting up the infrastructure’s very critical. I can’t stop reinforcing that area. Government has to be there. The business entity has to be there. The infrastructure for the two -- it’s very important to develop those things. Business needs to hire the best capacity that it can afford. I hired, we opened up 150-room hotel just recently. I hired an individual that ran a thousand-room property, because I wanted his experience that was beyond what I was doing because not only did I want to open that facility with zero problems, but I wanted somebody there that could take me to a thousand-room property. So I hired for five years from now, not just for today. My chief of gaming operations; right now we have 2,100 machines; he ran a facility that had over 5000 machines. So again, it’s to take me to where he’s been. I don’t want to go that path for the first time myself. I want people that have been there, that have been down that trail that know what the pitfalls are. And so every position I have, from food and beverage to retail to the gaming operations and all my administrative staff are people that have been there before. And I’ve made sure from a due diligence standpoint, I verify they’ve been there before, because I definitely don’t want to go where no man has gone before. I want to go with someone that’s gone there before.

The next thing is tribes need to adequately capitalize their business and the last thing is tribes need to look at diversification of economy. Even within our business, we’re on diversification strategies. What happens if gaming goes away, heaven forbid? What happens if it goes away? We know that, because we thought uranium was going to last forever. So again, the strategies are: what are we going to do? What are we going to do to diversify? And we’re looking at those strategies now, right now within our portfolio and that’s within our five-year planning cycle. And so these are the things that I can offer you today. I hope that I, I hope I fit the bill in terms of what you wanted me to do today. But again, these are real experiences and things that I experienced at Laguna. And again, ours is just one story and there’s plenty more stories, successes out there that can help you in your decision-making."

Citizen Potawatomi Nation reverses decline through strong leaders, entrepreneurship

Author
Year

The big idea: In recent years, some tribes have reaped huge profits from their gambling operations. Most American Indians, however, are still mired in poverty, unemployment, addictions, ill health and hopelessness. Is there a way to create a better future in Indian Country? The Citizen Potawatomi Nation found the answer in strong leadership, self-rule and entrepreneurship.

The scenario: The Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a tribe of the Potawatomi people, about 10,000 of whom are based in Oklahoma. Like other Native Americans, the Potawatomis have lived with a legacy of broken treaties, land theft, destruction of natural resources, paternalism and federal policies aimed at the eradication of Native language and culture. Four decades ago, the tribe was in disarray. It had 2.5 acres of trust land, $500 in cash and a tribal headquarters in a run-down trailer...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Glinska, Gosia. "Citizen Potawatomi Nation reverses decline through strong leaders, entrepreneurship." Washington Post. July 18, 2014. Article. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/citizen-potawatomi-nation-reverse..., accessed March 23, 2023)

New economic hope on Pine Ridge Reservation

Year

When I read the Lakota Country Times I am heartened by the economic progress that oftentimes is hidden in the more alarming media reports of rampant alcoholism and the resulting horrors that the disease brings to the communities there on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

There is hope to be had in what is happening on the economic scene, and it’s mostly in the districts, in the villages, out of sight of visiting camera crews and reporters...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Trimble, Charles. "New economic hope on Pine Ridge Reservation." Indianz.com. February 18, 2014. Opinion. (http://www.indianz.com/News/2014/012559.asp, accessed February 18, 2014) 

New LdF transit service begins operations both on, off reservation

Year

The Lac du Flambeau Tribe’s newly-created transit service was scheduled to begin operations yesterday, Monday Dec. 2.

The tribe recently contracted with the Menominee Nation to manage the Lac du Flambeau Transit Service — a new service that will provides public transportation that’s reliable, while offering affordable fares to visitors and residents of the area.

The service will provide the community increased access to health care and shopping, while strengthening the infrastructure of the reservation...

Resource Type
Citation

VanDeLaarschot, Joe. "New LdF transit service begins operations both on, off reservation." The Lakeland Times. December 2, 2013. Article. (http://www.lakelandtimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=9&SubSectionID=9&Article..., accessed December 4, 2013)

A Solution: Sowing the future for tribal youth

Author
Year

For aspiring farmer, Vernal Sam, 24, the physical labor came easily. Like many Tohono O'odham, he'd helped out on his uncle's cattle ranch as a kid, bringing in cash when his family needed it, and he'd helped his grandfather bury traditional tepary beans and squash seeds in the brown clay soil. What felt different about his new farm apprentice job was the sense of possibility within the bounds of the reservation...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Bregel,Emily. "A Solution: Sowing the future for tribal youth." Arizona Daily Star. August 08, 2013. Article. (http://tucson.com/news/local/sowing-the-future-for-tribal-youth/article..., accessed February 24, 2023)

Hatching Economic Development: A New Business Incubator for Crow Creek

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

“I want to develop my breakfast-burrito business into a restaurant,” said Lisa Lengkeek, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and 2013 winner of the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance contest for best business plan of the year. “I make the burritos at home and sell them at a stand. I have a big customer base, and I’m sure they’d patronize the restaurant.”

However, to open an eatery on the Crow Creek reservation, Lengkeek would have to start from the ground up, she said. She meant that literally: “There is no commercial space here–not one building I can rent. I would have to scrape the ground, pour cement, buy lumber, start hammering...”

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Woodard, Stephanie. "Hatching Economic Development: A New Business Incubator for Crow Creek." Indian Country Today Media Network. June 27, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/hatching-economic-development-a-new-business-incubator-for-crow-creek, accessed May 31, 2023)