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So Is It a Nice Reservation?
by Hildy Gottlieb
Copyright ReSolve, Inc. 2000 ©

Every conversation starts out about the same - folks who've always been curious about Indian Country, but never known anyone who has actually spent time there. They all have questions. They've all heard stories on tv, or rumors, or stereotypes that are so ingrained they don't even realize they are stereotypes - they see them simply as facts.

We love working in Indian Country. We learn something new during every visit, and what better joy can there be than work that expands the way you see the world?

And so the following is a summary of a conversation we've had dozens of times. We hope you will learn something new here, as we do every day in Indian Country.

What exactly do you do in Indian Country?

Answer:

We help tribes build their economies.

Oh, you mean gaming?

Answer:

No, mostly we work with non-gaming tribes. When we do work with gaming tribes, we help with the non-gaming side of their economy - the sustainable side.

Isn't gaming sustainable?

Answer:

Nothing is sustainable if someone can take it away from you. The Feds could decide tomorrow to no longer permit gaming on the reservations. And because compacts are negotiated at the state level, the states decide what's permissible. Slots or cards or gaming tables? Is gaming allowed at all? It's up to the state, and ultimately up to the Feds, not the tribe. Just about everything in a tribe's day-to-day world circles back to the Feds. Until 1975, tribal governments weren't even permitted to run their own tribal programs, leaving them dependent on the Feds for everything from healthcare to education - all the main services assured by their treaty obligations.

Treaty obligations?

Answer:

Yes. When the U.S. makes peace treaties with other countries, generally obligations accompany those treaties. In exchange for the tribes giving up their lands, the Feds vowed to provide healthcare and education and other basic services for those tribes.

But aren't all the tribes rolling in money now? What do they need the Feds for?

Answer:

Tribes aren't rolling in dough. On the contrary, 65% of the tribes in the United States don't even do gaming - not even bingo. And of those tribes that are doing gaming, almost 75% of all the Indian Gaming revenues in the whole country come from only 40 casinos, mostly centered around major metropolitan areas. Some tribes who have tried gaming have actually lost money at it.

How can you possibly lose money on gaming? The house always wins!

ReSolve:

The house may always win, but folks still have to come play. If a tribe is located in a remote rural area, then there isn't a lot of traffic to their casinos. If a tribe is lucky enough to be near a big city, then their casino will be more likely to draw from that population base.

So what do tribes do if they can't do gaming?

Answer:

It depends on what assets the tribe has to work with. The more sustainable the assets, the more likely it is that the economic activity will be sustainable itself.

Here are some examples. A tribe whose reservation is located along the Grand Canyon would probably have great opportunities to build tourism income from that sustainable asset. A tribe whose reservation includes a long stretch of interstate highway with few services in any direction probably has an opportunity to build income from that sustainable asset. And many tribes treat their history and craftwork as sustainable assets, making sure that stories and skills don't die when tribal elders pass on.

It's so frustrating to do business in Indian Country - everything moves so slowly. Most people I know who've tried have just given up. Do you try to convince them to change?

Answer:

There's no reason for them to change. If you were trying to do business in Japan, you wouldn't expect the whole Japanese culture to change just so you could do business with them, would you? Instead you would learn everything you could about the culture before you left the States - maybe before you even made your first contact.

And you probably wouldn't focus on learning about their national dances and songs. You would probably focus instead on learning how they see the world, what they expect, what different things such as a handshake or a nod or a smile mean to them. You would want to know how they treat outsiders, and how you could expect to be treated, and what it all meant to them.

Culture isn't just singing and dancing and art. Culture is the eyes through which we see the world. And two people looking at the the same object may see very different things. No right and no wrong - just different.

The difference between doing business in Japan vs. Indian Country is that an outsider seeking to do business with a Japanese business person would learn what it takes to get along in that culture, to accomplish their goals. Unfortunately, if that same outsider wanted to do business in Indian Country, they would more likely expect their Indian counterparts to have to learn to do business with them! Outsiders generally learn little more of a tribe's culture than the names of some of their heroes, or the names of some of their sacred rituals - certainly not the kind of thing that builds business relationships.

And so yes, things do happen differently in Indian Country. The trick is to listen more than you talk, and to ask more than you answer. The road towards finding common ground may be a slow one, but business requires building relationships of trust, and trust between cultures doesn't happen overnight.

But they change their minds so often. If the Tribal Council decides something one day, they might just change their mind the next day. How can we work with that?

Answer:

It may help to see things through the eyes of the tribes.

The democratic tribal council system isn't something the tribes chose. It was forced upon them by the U.S. government in the early 1900's. From that point on, if they wanted to deal with the U.S., the tribes had to have a government like the U.S.

The U.S. may have imposed democracy on the tribes, but they couldn't change the tribes' culture, their hearts and minds. And that culture is based on consensus. Consensus, by its nature, is a slow process, because with consensus, there are no losers. It could take years for everyone to agree to do something. During that time, factions could form and bands could part ways, as often happened. Or, as happened just as often, no decision could occur at all, even after many years. These are all realities of consensus. It's a slow process, because no one loses.

And so, the tribes are trying to fit their way of seeing the world into a structure they never chose but have learned to live with - democracy. And regardless of that imposed structure, consensus creates decisions in its own timeframe. This way of making decisions may go against most Americans' view of progress, but that's because it's not our culture. And the bottom line is, it's not our government.

So the reservation you're working on now - is it a nice reservation? I mean, I've heard that some of them aren't so nice. Is it a nice one?

Answer:

Nice is certainly in the eye of the beholder. It is their home. If you're asking if there is joy and celebration, the answer is yes. If you are asking if there is beauty and tradition, the answer is yes.

If you're asking if there is poverty, unemployment, lack of jobs, then in most cases, the answer is also yes. If you're asking if there are workforce problems and substance abuse problems, in most cases the answer is yes there, too.

And if you're asking if tribes are still feeling the scars of what has happened to them in just the past 50-75 years, in the lifetimes of their elders, the answer is certainly yes.

50 years? The Indian Wars were over long before that!

Answer:

The Indian Wars, in many ways, still rage. In the lifetimes of many individuals still living on the reservation, children were taken from their parents when they were still small, and sent to boarding schools where they were given Anglo names and beaten if they spoke their native language. Many children got sick, far from their homes where their immunity was stronger. And many of those children died. The elders still remember.

I guess I just never thought about all of it.

Answer:

Most people don't. Most non-Indians never get near a reservation. Of those who do, most cross over on their way to somewhere else, and they apply their own standards of judgement on what they see there. And the news media encourage us all to consider that a story about an individual member of an individual tribe represents an entire people.

Indian Country is an amazing place - somewhere we feel blessed to be able to work. It is a different land, many different lands, tucked inside America, which is itself a land of different lands.

We would like to encourage our fellow travelers that the best way to learn about any new place, whether it is Japan or Germany or here in America - in a different part of town, or in Indian Country, is to slow down and listen without speaking and without judging. You'll be surprised what you see when you try and look through someone else's eyes.

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