Siletz.Net

On April 5th 2007 a major tribal business startup, the River Reclamation Group, was shut down because it was operating illegally. Over three months later, the tribe has finally volunteered an account of what happened, in the current issue of Nesika Illahee:

The current status of the River Reclamation Group Inc.: The enterprise has been closed by STBC. One of the main reasons for closing the books was its feasibility and assumptions were uncertain. We also ran into some permitting issues with the state of Washington.

RRG was shut down because of it's feasibility and uncertain assumptions? That's a rather astonishing statement. By the time RRG was shut down tribal members were just receiving the April issue of Nesika Illahee. It contained a full page feature by Cynthia Farlow showing how well things were going at RRG. There was a nice photo of tribal member Jared Fawver standing "next to one of the logs brought up from the depths of the Columbia River". (Unfortunately this tribal business had no permits allowing them to bring up logs from the depths of any river.) There's another nice picture of Gregg Gubuan, then interim STBC Executive Director, doing due diligence on behalf of the tribe by measuring some planks produced by RRG. (Apparently he failed to notice the business was operating illegally, though.)

How could such a feature go out to tribal members just as RRG was about to be shut down because of "feasibility and uncertain assumptions"?

That's nonsense. RRG was shut down because it was caught operating illegally. If it hadn't been caught, RRG would still be illegally pulling logs from the depths of the Columbia River. And tribal officials were asleep at the wheel because Lisa Brown had informed them that RRG lacked the proper permits way back in November of 2006 at the General Council meeting. Tribal Council member Frank Simmons, who also sits on the RRG Board of Directors, denied this before the General Council, insisting that Ross Bennett held all the proper permits. Obviously no tribal official bothered to follow up on this, because RRG continued to forge ahead without permits for five more months.

Eight months after Lisa Brown's warning, and three months after RRG had been locked down, the tribe finally admits only that there were "some permitting issues with the state of Washington".

This is typical of the Tribal Council, they love to tell the tribe about all the wonderful benefits their new business ventures will produce for tribal members. But when such a venture fails spectacularly due to gross mismanagement, they have nothing to say.

The tribe has sunk a great deal of money into RRG. The tribal officials responsible for overseeing the business fell down on the job, even as diligent tribal members were warning them of impending disaster. That's not the end of the world, but the responsible parties need to accept responsibility for this fiasco. Saying eight months late that there were "some permitting issues" doesn't begin to cut it.

I hope readers of Siletz.Net are seeing how the Tribal Council manipulates the major channels of communication within the tribe. The only communications likely to reach a large number of tribal members are what gets printed in Siletz News and Nesika Illahee. Those publications are chock full of all the good news that the Tribal Council wants members to hear, but they volunteer next to nothing about their failures. And this is the only information that most tribal members have upon which to evaluate the performance of their elected officials.

What a racket.