Sonny & Cher

A Sense of Humor

As you can see above, Steve Bobb and Val Sheker (Sonny and Cher) were in Halloween mode today, the only Council members to do so. Both have in fact done this multiple times, for which I give them credit. They even wore these costumes during tonight's Council meeting, for which I give them additional credit.
We couldn't help but discuss the last time a member of Tribal Council decided to bring such a sense of levity to a public meeting. I am quite familiar with it because the Council member was me. While Chair I donned an Elvis wig at the November 2006 General Council meeting, and did my best vocal impersonation to kick off the session. People laughed.
At the December 2006 General Council meeting, I was accused of disrespecting the position and not taking it seriously. There was even a picture in the "Smoke Signals", one I have on my wall. It was only one person who raised the issue, but they laid into me, generating applause on other points. In hindsight, it is one of my least favorite memories as a Council member.
Val and I have a bet as to whether somebody will complain. I don't personally see it happening. the political climate has changed since then. It never hurts to have a sense of humor in this job, I might add.

The Gap

Yesterday I drove down to Eugene in order to give a presentation at the Osher Lifelong Learning Center, which appears to be somehow linked to the University of Oregon. This presentation had been a year in the making, as they contacted me last October, but due to some miscommunication and inability to concur on dates, it never materialized until yesterday though even then I was booked months in advance.
Most of those who attended were retirees and, I assume, older alumni. When they contacted me I tried to press them for more specifics as to what sort of topic to lecture on. Gaming? Enrollment? Sovereignty? There weren't any. They just wanted to know about the tribe, period. Evidently one of the center's volunteers had read about me in the UO Alumni magazine and that was good enough.
The lack of specifics meant a certain amount of flexibility in developing a powerpoint, and in the end I just provided a rough guide of...everything. Because we were scheduled to have a Q & A session afterwards my assumption was that something would spur interest and thus spawn questions. There were plenty of questions.
Steve Bobb joined me, which helped. I've gotten used to speaking publicly, just not for an hour. In the end I went past that, even with Steve stepping in to speak about life in Grand Ronde during termination.
We were scheduled for two hours, and after that many of the attendees came up and told me they had learned a lot. I learned quite a bit too, namely that if this crowd, many of them well-read, know so little about Grand Ronde and tribes in general, what must the general public know? I got asked questions like whether our benefits were taxed, or if we were also US citizens as well. What is basic knowledge as a Tribal member is news to many outside. There is a noticeable gap.
To this day I still wonder why many members are so paranoid about letting tribal information slip to the outside. I can think of some worst-case scenarios that justify the thinking. But when people can live for so long in Oregon, especially in our ceded lands, yet know so little about who we are, there has to be some sort of halfway point. It's like not knowing your neighbors' first names.

Tribal McCarthyism

Early in September, we had a meeting to discuss the amount of the 3^rd quarter per capita distribution. Our Finance Officer brought us a preliminary number ($504) that was laughable. So we set about to doing what we could to boost that number. That led of course to a discussion about fears of backlash from the membership if the distribution number was too low. I and another Council member remarked that we thought the membership would understand that in the present economy expectations couldn't be too high.

I didn't think too much of that conversation until several days later when a Tribal member, one with whom I've had a mostly adversarial relationship, decided to distort our talk that day and repeat it during Other Business, in a way not made to make me look good. Last night at our Wednesday night Council meeting another Tribal member raised the same issue, though not mentioning me by name, but still maintaining that there might be Council members who didn't exactly support per capita. A similar letter to the editor appears in this month's "Smoke Signals". All three of these Tribal members are cousins, which I think explains a lot.

During my first year on Council I, along with Angie Blackwell and Buddy West, had to deal a lot with rumor control, specifically that we were part of some conspiracy to lower and/or eliminate per capita. I can remember two Tribal members confronting me at the casino, telling me a former Council member had informed them I supported cutting per capita. One individual went so far as to mail out an anonymous flyer in September 2005 about how the Tribal Council would be "capping" per capita at $4000, in addition to scaling back other benefits. Supposedly we were just mean people.

As a Tribal member I can't deny liking per capita. I don't turn away those checks. But it saddens me that there are a number of Tribal members for whom this issue will decide how they vote. And it frustrates me that spreading rumors about Council members and potential candidates not supporting per capita has become the equivalent of McCarthy-era Communist accusations. It reminds me of those trying to paint Obama as a closet muslim or how mainstream candidates try to paint opponents as anti-American and unpatriotic. Except the per capita rumor theories are solely about money.

Last I checked one in four gaming tribes engages in per capita distributions, a number that I found initially surprising. When you grapple with how to equitably serve your membership, per capita is a no-brainer. But then again I've met leaders who've sworn to never do per capita, and those who said if they could go back in time…Of course, not all per capita plans are the same. At a recent training in Las Vegas an instructor informed how some tribes' distributions aren't equal for all members. Younger members get less. And then again there are those rare tribes where the per capita is so high the members probably don't even need to work, in fact they are millionaires. I have a hard time imagining that.

I can't help but wonder if the "per capita killer" rumors run rampant in their elections.

TME

Wednesday night's Council meeting featured what has become a regular occurrence, Tribal member employees broadcasting their complaints. I think it safe to say that this has always been an issue, but as we've allowed more and more of them to use our public meetings as a forum to talk about their respective problems, appearing before Council, either in private or public, has virtually become a part of the chain of command. That is not a good thing.

I remember in a meeting earlier this year, following a Tribal casino employee griping about something, Toby McClary, pre-Council obviously, stepped up to make the observation that it seems now we are encouraging workers to come to Tribal Council when they don't get what they want. We'll fix whatever problem you got. That mentality reached a new level on September 16, when an employee who has become almost a fixture on Wednesday nights was clearly dissatisfied with how her situation was being dealt with, told us Council didn't "have my back", and could fix her situation with a simple phone call.

Last year we actually allowed employees with beefs to appear before the SMGI board, with staff present. That seemed to make all the difference in the world. When Tribal members corner us with their issues/problems, we are given a compelling case for why we should supposedly interfere. But at this particular SMGI meeting, with the right staff there on hand to shed light on the situation (I'm being polite), it was remarkable how key facts had been omitted from the version we were told. I had to wince.

Which is precisely why I hesitate when a Tribal member brings me their employment concerns. We rarely get the whole story. I don't mean to say some of my fellow members fib when they have their time with us, but to sell us on an incomplete picture is wrong, made worse by the fact that we shouldn't be dealing with personnel matters anyway. But like Toby said, in the mind of many Tribal members we really are another de facto court of appeals, even though we can do little. I do wonder though if in the past, before my own time on Council, coming to us didn't yield some sort of gain. I wonder because this has practically become a part of the organizational culture.

I guess we will be looking at the possibility of creating a Tribal Employment Rights Ordinance and office, the purpose of which would be to deal with and advocate for Tribal member employees who are facing discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, etc. My first guess is this would be another sounding board, which would cut back on using our public meetings as theater. So that would be good. And maybe some of these employees really could get their issues dealt with and not go through us, which is also good because we by the nature of our position can politicize anything. How it might fail, though, is if employees who are being treated fairly but are still not getting what they want will be right back at the podium Wednesday nights, harping on what a failure TERO is, and they've got to bring their problems before us, again.