Siletz.Net

Tribes look to $3B share of stimulus funds
Tuesday, 5-12-09

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

PINE RIDGE RESERVATION, S.D. — The 30-year-old trailer that Naomi Sitting Bear shares with her two children, her sister-in-law and her nephew has a broken furnace, broken water pipes and holes in the walls and floor that let in daylight and cold air.

Outside, siding is missing, insulation is exposed, boards cover broken windows and the door has no lock, so it is blown open by the Great Plains winds.

Sitting Bear, an emergency dispatcher on the reservation, says she can't afford to repair the dilapidated trailer. She applied to rent or buy a low-cost, low-interest home from tribal housing when she graduated from high school. That was 12 years ago.

"There's just not enough housing here," says Sitting Bear, 29, who bought the trailer from her aunt six years ago for $1,000.

She hopes $3 billion in federal stimulus funding for Indian tribes will help address the chronic housing problem on Pine Ridge and reservations across the USA. More than 200,000 new homes are needed in Indian Country, the National American Indian Housing Council says.

The nation's 562 federally recognized tribes are gearing up to apply for economic stimulus money to build and repair ailing infrastructure on their reservations. The funding will go for houses, schools, jails, roads, water treatment plants and health clinics. Tribes may use grants and loans for job training, improving the energy efficiency of houses and expanding youth and domestic violence programs.

The stimulus funding is "a huge investment, but it does not begin to meet the need," says Jacqueline Johnson Pata of the National Congress of American Indians.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation reported in July that Indians are worse off economically than any other minority. In 2007, American Indians' median household income — the middle figure, with half the amounts above and half below — was $35,000, 31% less than the $50,700 median for all Americans, according to the Census Bureau. One in four Indians, 25%, live below the poverty line, compared with 13% of all Americans.

Indians are more likely than other Americans to live in crowded, substandard homes: 12% are without plumbing, 14% without electricity and 11% without kitchen facilities, Johnson Pata says.

Much of the stimulus funding for Indians hasn't been awarded yet. It will be distributed by various federal departments, some through grants and some on a competitive basis.

Among the tribes' proposals:

• Pine Ridge Reservation plans to apply for $12.7 million to construct 36 homes, renovate 124, repair the roofs of 150 and build a "green" government office building. It also will apply for $2 million to build an alcohol- and drug-treatment center. The tribe expects $40 million to house its courts, police, ambulance services, emergency dispatchers and detention facilities.

• White Earth Reservation in Minnesota plans to request $3.7 million for a study for a new jail, communications equipment and more officers to bolster its 22-member police force. The tribe of 19,000 on a 1,200-square-mile reservation plans to build 30 new homes with $1.3 million in housing money.

• The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians on the Oregon coast plans to build 10 apartments with a $1.4 million grant and construct new sidewalks with a separate $600,000 grant. The group plans to apply for $500,000 to expand a job-training program.

Pine Ridge sits on 2.8 million acres in a desolate stretch of southwestern South Dakota that includes parts of the Badlands, a national park of dry, rugged terrain.

The reservation has a troubled history — in 1890 as the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre that killed an estimated 300 Sioux and 25 cavalrymen, and in 1975 as the place where two FBI agents were killed in a shootout.

It needs 4,000 new homes for its 40,000 residents, says Paul Iron Cloud, director of Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing, the federally funded authority that provides tribal housing.

As part of $255 million in stimulus funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development already has given to U.S. tribes, the Pine Ridge agency has received $4.3 million to renovate another 124 houses and repair roofs on 150 more. Sixty percent of the homes on the reservation are substandard, tribe President Theresa Two Bulls says.

Applying for funds is a challenge for tribes which can't afford to pay grant writers and don't have the money for preliminary work, Johnson Pata says.

For the Siletz Indians, a tribe with 4,600 members, most of them scattered over an 11-county area, tapping into the federal stimulus will be challenging because they don't have the kind of large-scale, "shovel ready" projects the money is intended for, tribal planner Pamela Lind says.

Because rules vary by federal department, she says, "we're still trying to figure out how to access funding."

On January 6th 2008 I asked Tribal Council member Robert Kentta a simple question:

Has the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation ever shown a net profit in any of the years you've served on it's Board of Directors?

Kentta is of course also on the Board of Directors of STBC. I had not heard from him by January 26th, so I asked again.

His response is posted here.

I sent Robert a point-by-point response which I will now post below. Robert Kentta's words are indented.

---

Robert,

You wrote:

Please don't be put out by my late, or lack of, response to you. We've had our communications in the past, and I've pointed out to you that I've grown to distrust your motives, intentions and ways of spinning that which is told to you. You have a generally poor opinion of your tribal government, and are in the process of again seeking office, and I know that which you glean from the individual responses will be pitted against each other, or used to spin a great rant, or both.

I've sworn to protect the interests of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and anything that feeds your hate-mill I consider to be a detriment to the CTSI. You, I consider to be a detriment to your tribe. Not for the questions you ask and results you expect, but the whole sale tearing-down of all for whatever reason, or maybe no reason at all.

Regardless of your suspicion of my motives, I think any tribal member is entitled to have Tribal Council members answer simple questions about our tribal government and businesses.

We have not had a good track record with the investment of tribal resources into businesses. Very few in fact have produced a profit over the years. I think you know that. I think you know that I know that. So what is your point in asking, and then hounding me for an answer - after I've indicated my position on communication with you? If that seems harsh, I will share my philosophy: To be treated with respect, you must treat others with respect. Once you've proven that, we may begin to have open lines of communication.

My question was: Has the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation ever shown a net profit in any of the years you've served on it's Board of Directors? It's a simple question and you still have not answered it.

My point in asking is that the Tribal Council has never told tribal members that STBC has lost large sums of money during every year of it's existence. The reports you publish would lead members to believe that STBC hits a bump in the road now and then but is basically doing all right. Don't you think that the Tribal Council, which is also the Board of Directors of STBC, has a responsibility to tell members plainly and honestly that they have lost considerable sums of money every year in STBC? Don't tribal members have a right to know that your business decisions have consistently lost money?

You may explain these losses any way you like, but don't tribal members have a right to the plain truth?

You and Lisa, always harping about "Transparency" but where is all of that when it comes to you - the finger pointers???

You've gone on and on (in what should have been a "campaigning" - i.e. convincing people of your skills, will and intent to serve their best interests) about how rotten this one, and that one, and all these others are too, because they signed the letter... and this one's related to that one, and they're both related to this one... *You are related* to the entire core group you demean. You're all descendants of Scott and Minnie Lane, and if you extend that to Tina, then again, another generation back, and you're ALL descendants of Joshua Louie. Monte is included in that same scenario. Because you have diminished sense of family ties, does not mean that you are absent from the family tree. You talk about all of those people being related to each other, like it's some sort of crime, but never that you are related to all of them.

I am a second-cousin of Dee Pigsley. We discuss genealogy at Siletz.Net and I've been entirely candid about my ancestry. See http://siletz.net/node/21 for instance.

As I said explicitly at the General Council meeting in November, there is nothing wrong with tribal members supporting their family members in tribal politics. But it was important for tribal members to know who signed the letter in order to understand the profound conflict of interest involved.

You said you do not know what was in the campaign letter Tina Retasket sent out while on the Election Board. I'll take you at your word, even though this directly contradicts Chairman Pigsley's assertion that everyone on the Tribal Council knew exactly what had happened. I certainly don't hold you, or anyone else who signed the letter, responsible for the fact that Tina sent it out if you had no knowledge that she would do so.

But, as a Tribal Council member, you are fully responsible for the fact that you didn't even bother to find out what was in campaign letter sent out by by a member of the Election Board. You are fully responsible for not bothering to find out who else was involved. You are fully responsible for not disclosing to tribal members that the offender was in fact the Assistant General Manager. You are fully responsible for allowing Tina to depart with no paper trail recording her removal. And you are responsible for saying nothing when Tina was put back on the Election Board for the very next election.

It is important for tribal members to know who signed the letter, to demonstrate Chairman Pigsley's conflict of interest when she whitewashed the matter on election day. Tribal voters had a right to know what had happened so that they could judge for themselves. But it was not in Chairman Pigsley's personal political interest to admit that Tina Retasket had been caught campaigning for Dee and Bud, sending out a letter that you had signed.

Can you honestly say you don't see the conflict of interest?

...and continuing along with the transparency theme: Everybody.....EVERYBODY has a past. and Lisa can scream about how nothing is out in the daylight.....but how much of her dirty laundry has she shared? What kinds of of opportunities has she had - and blown - how long has she stayed in various positions, and why not longer? ....and you, what of your past? Is it true that you was a supporter of Clifford Case, Pat Duncan, Lillie, Reggie and that set prior to/around the RECALL of several then Council Members?.... - are you aware of the vast dollar amounts and other ways that cost the Tribe dearly? That brief era was a particularly low point of CTSI history.

Are you are saying that Lillie Butler/Pat Duncan chaired Tribal Council cost the tribe more money than STBC has lost during your tenure on it's Board of Directors? May I see the figures?

You don't seem to understand much about your own tribal community. People can live far-off and criticize, I'm sure it's easy to do. Few who live outside the area probably have any true sense of how small and fragile and essential the group of families who live and *on a daily basis* support, defend and work on behalf of this confederation is. Go back far enough, and most of our present day "families" collapse down into several base families. We've been torn down by warfare, disease, imposed political systems, church rule, and other federal policies including being barred from freedom of spiritual expression, language, thoughts, beliefs.... and those battles are not over, and yet you want to tear down those who are willing to step forward and dedicate so much of their time and energy to the re-building and betterment of our tribe? Count me out on adding to your "campaign".

I hope that you do reach understanding of yourself, your family, your tribe, federal Indian policy, and whatever it takes to reach a place where you can shed the blind-hate that you have now. When you are that reasonable, respectful person, then we can talk for hours, and work together.

R...

Robert, the fact that I criticize your performance doesn't mean I hate you or any other tribal official. I don't. My criticism has been measured and well supported by evidence.

Lynette

A tribal member has written to me regarding the members' desire to see the creation of an elders center, a place where elders can go during the day.

While the tribe offers outings and events for in-area elders, there isn't a place for them on a day to day basis. Elders in the tribe are diverse. Some are barely ambulatory and some are quite vigorous, but they could all benefit from a center or a place they could go on a daily basis where they can network, share thoughts and ideas, assist one another, and enjoy the company of others. Having a place for them to go on a daily basis would be a valuable service for the tribe to provide.

There are a number of ways an elders place could come about. Below are just a few examples of wasteful spending which could be corrected to free up resources for it.

The tribal government has committed over $8 Million dollars for new clinic facilities that we don't need. While some expansion could be merited and some of that funding will be provided by the Federal Government, we are about to go much further into debt to build a Taj Mahal of a health care center which can only benefit a fraction of tribal members. It's far more than is needed to upgrade our health care service.

The Tribal Council voted to take General Welfare casino profits to put in a fiber optics system for local projects, like the new gym and the USDA building, at "costs not to exceed $135,000," according to Resolution No. 2007 - 443 they passed a year ago. That's a huge amount of money to wire a gym and USDA Building for internet and I can't think of why other needs go should unmet when we spend so much for a fiber optics system.

I was present at the June 2007 Tribal Council meeting when General Manager Brenda Bremner got the Tribal Council to approve a $3000 coffee break for a conference in Hawaii. I was stunned that Brenda would ask tribal members to pick up the tab for coffee and croissants for others at a Hawaiian boondoggle. That money could have been better spent or, heaven forbid, saved. $3000 would buy furniture and a nice entertainment system for an elders center. Instead it took about 15 minutes to spend at that conference in Hawaii. Gone in 15 minutes for what? To stroke the vanity of the General Manager.

Our investment entity, STBC (Siletz Tribal Business Corporation) has apparently been hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of investment dollars every year since its inception. If we could stem the flow of those losses, the tribe could use just a modest amount of the savings to benefit our elders and their families.

We have the means to do this now with properties like Salem Flex. We already spent millions for the Flex Building and continue to lose money on it. Why not use some of that vacant space? A small part of the building houses Salem Area Office, but most of it sits there empty, year after year. We might lower the ceiling in a section of it and remodel an area for an elders center. It's right next door to some great facilities at Hee Hee Illahee RV, which has amenities that our elders could share with the customers there.

We could also utilize room in the new buildings which will comprise the $6 million dollar museum and cultural center that is partially built near the Siletz Community Center. There are so many ways we could make an elders place happen.

There was small amount of discussion about an elders center in the minutes some time ago, but nothing lately. The plans for that seem to have drifted along the wayside. I challenge the Tribal Council to seriously reconsider it now. If we throttle back on some of the more extravagant projects and wasteful STBC ventures the tribe could afford to have one or more elders centers.

From our tribe's annual reports it appears that the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation lost over half a million dollars in 2007, and that it lost almost $2 million dollars from 2005 to 2007.

At the November 1st General Council meeting I asked Tribal Council how much money STBC lost in 2007. Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley, who is also Chairman of the Board of STBC, claimed she did not know.

I pointed out that all Tribal Council members were on the Board of STBC and asked if any of them could come up with a ballpark figure for how much STBC lost last year. The entire board of STBC remained stone silent in response to this inquiry.

Lisa Brown supplied Chairman Pigsley with the tribe's Annual Report for 2007, which had recently been sent out to tribal members. Chairman Pigsley and other Tribal Council members claimed to be unable to interpret the financial data presented in there.

It appears that STBC lost $519,311 in 2007. That figure is found on page 25 of the 2007 Annual Report, in the column for Siletz Tribal Business Corporation, on the row for Increase (Decrease) in Net Assets. The $519,311 is shown in parentheses which means it represents a negative value, a decrease of assets in this case. This figure is arrived at by subtracting STBC's operating expenses from it's revenues, both of which appear on that page.

Looking at the same figures in our annual reports for 2006 and 2005, it appears that STBC lost $629,754 and $765,906 respectively in those years. That would mean that STBC lost a grand total of $1,914,971 over those three years. And I would not be surprised to learn that our real losses are even much higher than that.

In the tribe's confidential quarterly Nesika Illahee we are currently getting regular updates on the status of STBC. Sharon Edenfield provided the update in January 2008 and Economic Development Director Dave Tovey has been providing the updates since April. I encourage all tribal members to read these quarterly updates. These reports are overwhelmingly positive and optimistic, there is nothing in them to suggest that STBC is continuing to lose money hand-over-fist.

But that's how all our tribal publications work - much fanfare is given to every optimistic plan and to every positive development, and little or nothing is said about the many failures of our tribal officials.