Inouye

I was not very familiar with Daniel Inouye until about two years ago, when he spoke at a Japanese heritage function in Portland. Senator Inouye has one of the most recognizable speaking voices you'll ever hear. His face and voice become more familiar to me as I watched Ken Burns' documentary series "The War" on Oregon Public Broadcasting back in late 2007. His stories of World War II left me mesmerized. I knew him more from that moving series than from his long tenure as Hawaii's premier nationally recognized leader. I told him that, too. While my interest in the Tribal Leadership Forum was naturally high anyway, his presence ended up cementing my decision to attend. The Forum administrator's indicated that his speech would be made availabe online in the near future.
As for the fire, the photos don't quite capture how cool looking the fireplace was, with the flames being breathed out of the dark pebbles.

Pechanga

Three years ago I attended the Tribal Leadership Forum in San Diego, at the Sycuan Tribe's resort and casino. Though not the most formal and organized, I found that conference to be enlightening, especially compared to the more general types, like ATNI or as learned last October, NCAI. I learned then that many of the problems we face in Grand Ronde, not just national issues but internally, are not vastly different among Tribes.
To that point, the conference is being hosted by the Pechanga tribe, whose own enrollment issues made news in Los Angeles, to the point that the Tribe bought airtime before a local news story was aired to defend itself against what would be said in the news piece. Anybody interested can watch the video at the following link:

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/Pechanga_Membership_Battle_Los_Angeles.html

The premise might seem familiar to many of us. Anyway, the conference this year is taking a slightly different tack than in 2006. Many of the speakers and panelists are choosing to focus on national issues, especially in light of the brand new Obama administration. At this point I can't tell if the Indian leaders are more excited about the new President or relieved at the exit of the former one. Many remarks have been made on both.
Pechanga's resort, officially called The Journey at Pechanga, is impressive, at least in comparison with other Indian gaming venues I've gotten to see first-hand. Caution though, I haven't seen either Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, or Mystic Lake. But The Journey is pretty cool. There are nearly a dozen restaurants dispersed throughout the property, ranging from Italian, to Asian noodles (a clear marketing focus here), to steakhouse to seafood. There are multiple bars, one called Caberet, and the usual multi-screen sports fans watering holes. They loved stained glass here. The central circular bar sports a massive stained glass pillar that flashes various colors and must be around 70 feet tall.
A guard stands by the elevator to make sure we have room cards. The waitresses wear cleavage-flashing tops, and from what I can tell, are busy shuttling alcohol onto the floor. One of the hotel's channels seems to be nothing but a constant feed of an instructional video of table games where three actors impersonate Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and I'm guessing Frank Sinatra. The dealers appear to be real employees. At any rate they aren't actors.
It brings me back to earth because for as pleased as I've been with Spirit Mountain Casino's expansion, this is a reminder that there are bigger seas out there with bigger, and richer, fish. Oregon tribes scrap to be close to Portland, but in California, Los Angeles is the big market. Temecula is within driving distance of LA and San Diego. No wonder the extravagance.

Ridgefield

Last Saturday I went to the Chinook Winter Gathering. Same as the two years before. While last year I provided photos of the plankhouse in which the annual ceremony is conducted, this year due to the pristine weather it was hard not to walk around the wildlife refuge and admire the fauna and flora. Regrettably, my new camera was lacking a memory card, and the internal memory consisted of only 5 photos. I did my best. At the center of the second photo, for those who would like to zoom in, you can see a beautiful crane.

Biting Flies

Whether he still writes to this day or not as a columnist I don't really know anymore. Suppose I could always Google him and find out. But Leonard Pitt of the Miami Herald used to have his editorials published in Salem's Statesman Journal, and so I would read them. Our political views were pretty similar, although as an older black man they could have diverged more than you'd think. Anyway years ago he wrote a piece that my mom clipped out and to this day still keeps pinned to her fridge. It was his own theory as to why America tends to be disliked throughout the world, and one idea he put forth is that our country is like a semi on the highway. The smaller cars have to be more concerned our movements than we have to with theirs. We dominate the road and are occasionally oblivious to how our actions end up affecting others. I still wonder if we as Council members aren't in similar positions, our decisions affecting others in ways that we can't really comprehend because the affects are different on us.
Last month we moved ahead with disenrolling 34 of our members. Unfortunately I had to vote "yes" on that resolution, since there really wasn't much room to interpret the constitutional requirements differently. It would move forward regardless of if I'd voted differently.
A couple of people stepped up to voice their opinions, one of them the father of one of the kids being disenrolled. He urged us to find a way. We are the leaders, if we want to fix this problem, then between the nine of us there must be a way. I will always believe that he was right, there would have been a way, had most of us trully cared and seen this as a problem needing to be addressed. Sadly, I don't think most of Council saw it that way. In fact I know they didn't.
You see, we had postponed the disenrollments in May because at that time the Enrollment Ordinance was under review, and there were possible amendments that included drafting language for how we would "correct" the Restoration roll. If that language would result in adding some people to the roll, then that would in turn potentially thwart some of the disenrollments. That was the reason we gave anyway for suspending the disenrollments in May anyway.
The problem is the attempts to come up with any language were half-hearted at best, and virtually non-existent during the summer i.e. the election. In late September the decision was made to move forward with the disenrollments during a meeting with one member of our Enrollment committee. If I were to die today I'd take to my grave the belief that the suspension in May was simply a ruse to get through the election without having to make the unpopular decision of kicking nearly three dozen people out of the Tribe.
I am really not sure what will happen with this enrollment thing. One would think that the disenrollments were the nails in the coffin, but I don't think so. This is an issue for which people have passion. Maybe the little cars can get the semi's attention for a change.

Sharing

Okay, so this post doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. I'm sure we'll all get over it. Once in a while you learn a thing or two and feel the need to pass them on. Here goes...
If you, like me, spend more time surfing the net than watching television, or are obsessed with the social side of the world wide web, or have come to realize that the internet is the greatest informational invention since mankind learned to speak, then you might want to check out Flock. To be exact http://www.flock.com. Flock is basically a web browser designed with a number of interests in mind, mainly social networking and media feeds. There are a number of tools that come in handy, specifically one-click email buttons that allow you to go right into your email accounts once synched with Flock. As a matter of fact, it syncs with numerous other tools, like Blogspot. I have written this post through Flock, without even having to go into my blogspot/Google account. If you are one of the growing number of Facebook users, Flock meshes with multiple social networking sites.
I also use Flock for feeds from every major newssource, like US News & World Report, The Economist, CNN, and even FOX News. Having said that, I'd like to recommed two different sites that I've found quite interesting, both through the Falmouth Institute.
http://falmouth-air.blogspot.com/ and http://indianboardmembers.blogspot.com/ both can occasionally come off as somewhat gossipy, but overall they do a good job of covering national issues and the more detailed accounts of what goes on in other Tribes. Similarities galore!

Ringing It In

The very fact with a little more than three hours to go in 2008 and I am sitting here writing up a blog entry probably means that the partying days of my youth are nearly over.  Or not.  It could be that after passing age 30, there is a certain amount of comfort in knowing that I am no longer obligated to go out, drink, be loud and nurse a headache in the morning.  No, it doesn't mean I'm old.  I've just realized that celebrating doesn't always mean a crowd of friends and strangers.  Some of the better new years I've been a part of had no more than a few people around, and as I have gotten older, that kind of setting is sometimes preferable.
ESPN is blaring on the television in front of me, and the sports journalists and commentators of that network are calling 2008 the best year in sports...ever.  At this rate, having developed preferences for different sports than I had at a younger age, I am not really prepared to argue that.  But whether one follows sports, politics, music, or movies, some years tend to be more full of memorable moments than others, so I won't begrudge anybody who might want to say the outgoing year was the best year ever for some reason or other.
I will personally always look at 2008 through the lense of change.  I say that not just because Barack Obama got elected, but because if anything enough happened in 2008 that many of us can sit back and say "Yes, things will never be the same again".  Yes there was an economic recession that trickled down not just to auto-makers and huge corporations, but to our own Tribe, forcing us into the first major year of deficit spending.  We saw absolutely no change whatsoever during the Tribal Council elections, which in itself is change because that hasn't really happened before, at least not while I've followed the Tribe.
We saw a shoe get thrown at our president, a presidential election which revealed our country is incredibly divided, and in the Willamette Valley of Oregon saw a snow storm that happens once every decade, maybe.  We also saw China like we never have before during the summer Olympics.  And in those Olympics Michael Phelps won the most ever gold medals.
I could write this post forever, but have promised others I'd meet them for a drink.  I look forward to 2009.  Not sure why.  I just do.  History awaits.

Snow Days

Today, as Friday, and Monday of last week, the Tribal offices were closed.  In looking out the window, I'd say Grand Ronde has accumulated somewhere between 18 and 20 inches of snow.  I know that in some parts of this country, that might not seem like much.  But in Oregon, more specifically the Willamette Valley, it is a lot, and many residents are unprepared, as evidenced by the number of cars I've seen in ditches or trapped in snow banks.
From a governing standpoint, I realize now that the subject of administrative leave has long been a sore one, especially with casino employees who don't enjoy the multiple holidays, snow days, and other reasons for letting people off work while paying them.  To be honest, I am completely sympathetic to those who might view the administrative leave as excessive, because if we're going to be handing out days off left and right, it might be viewed as unfair.  If the roads were so icy and bad that governance employees, for their safety, didn't have to show up, then why wouldn't the same line of reasoning apply to casino employees?
I already know the answer(s) to that question, having heard them in defense of the differences during an informal Council roundtable discussion last week.  They are, simply:  Spirit Mountain Casino is meant to be a 24/7/365 operation, and the Tribal Governance Center is not.  In other words, employees need to be at the casino, and governance employees do not need to be.  They really can claim to be a 9-5 operation, and with all the other governments and businesses we work with also functioning on the 40-hour work week model, there really is a difference in the time demands.  I don't expect that to satisfy some people.
Two years ago we meant to cut back on administrative leave, but that idea fell victim to organizational forgetfulness.  We had planned on traded Presidents' Day for Martin Luther King Day, and in the end we made no trades and decided to take both days off, calling Presidents' Day "Chiefs' Day".  I guess when you preside over an organization that is used to doing something as popular with employees as taking days off, changing that is never easy.
In 2007 while serving as Tribal Chair, I flew to Washington, D.C. with staff and one other Council members to meet with different bigwigs, from Interior, on off-reservation gaming.  Only hours before our meeting the metro area started snowing, not heavily.  We got the call that our meeting was cancelled, despite there being less than two inches on the ground.  I was informed then that the Federal Government, in D.C. anyway, is known for shutting down like that, without much notice, and depending on who you ask, without good reason.
Maybe it's just a government thing.