Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program I am honored to welcome John "Rocky" Barrett, Chairman of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Chairman Barrett has served as an elected official of his nation since 1971, serving first as vice chairman and then becoming chairman in 1985. During Chairman Barrett's tenure, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has experienced tremendous growth. With about 2,000 employees, the Potawatomi Nation is the largest employer in the Shawnee area and is a major contributor to the economic well-being of Potawatomi County. He was instrumental in the creation and adoption of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation's current constitution and statutes, which have provided the foundations for the nation's extended period of stability and progress. Chairman Barrett, thank you for joining us today."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Thank you for having me, Ian."

Ian Record:

"Well, I've introduced you, but if you'd please take a minute or so and just introduce yourself."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Well, as you said, I'm John Barrett, Rocky Barrett. That's a nickname my parents gave me at birth. My Potawatomi name is '[Potawatomi language].' It means ‘he leads them home.' I am a lifelong-almost resident of the area where our tribal headquarters is located, and have been on the Native Nations Institute Board [International Advisory Council] for I guess six years now. But it's an honor to be here. Thank you."

Ian Record:

"Well, thank you. My first question is the same first question that I ask of all of our guests, which is what is Native nation building, what does it entail?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"There was an interesting perspective that we heard on...from a number of tribal leaders today. It appears that the... for Native nations in general, that answer is as broad as the spectrum of individual tribal needs and wants, the way the tribes meet the needs of their people and their cultures. There are some commonalities. The common struggle of how we overcame the internal structural deficits that were imposed on us by the constitutional forms that the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, the Indian Reorganization Act gave all of the tribes around the country and the imposition of this quasi-corporate structure and the creation of these council authorities that didn't give a separation of powers -- how we overcame that, how we overcame the opposition of the states in asserting governmental authority and how we've...really how we've overcome the resistance of the free enterprise system in developing our assets have been...I think those are commonalities. The common attributes I think of successful nation building are stable governments, expanded representation, lawful behavior, and something that lends itself to consistent performance. All of those go back to constitutional forms, but they also...those are really accomplished by diminishing nepotism, which is...since everyone is related in an Indian tribe, that is an issue. Financial accountability is a huge one. Separation of powers seems to be a common attribute, and most importantly to make all that fall within a cultural relevance that means something to the culture of the tribe and the people."

Ian Record:

"A tribal leader...a fellow tribal leader of yours once said that the 'best defense of sovereignty is to exercise it effectively.' Can you comment on that statement based on your own experience?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"I will never forget the night that F. Browning Pipestem, a fairly famous figure from Oklahoma in promulgating the concept of Indian sovereignty and fighting for the sovereignty rights of Indian tribes, and William Rice, who's an attorney, who's a law professor at the University of Tulsa, gave a speech to our tribal government late one night back in 1983, and it was as if a light bulb went off, because [of] the idea that the exercise of sovereignty is what makes one sovereign. Browning ended up explaining it to several people that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck. The business of the exercise of sovereignty...one hears too often this phrase, ‘We don't have to live up to our responsibilities or our contractual responsibilities because we're a sovereign and can't be sued.' Equally balanced with the responsibilities...or the authorities of sovereignty are the responsibilities of sovereignty. Our exercise of sovereignty really was a chain of events, I think, for our tribe and the concept of tribal sovereignty has certainly been interpreted differently in every single tribal environment. Our...the first opposition in my first election as chairman -- because I ran on this concept of tribal sovereignty in 1985 -- my opponent sent a letter to our congressional delegation in Washington saying that we don't want to be sovereign, we're citizens of the United States, which is completely outside of the point and displayed a clear misunderstanding of what sovereignty means or the historical context of pre-constitutional entities that were in place as functional governments before there was the United States and certainly before there was a State of Oklahoma."

Ian Record:

"How can leaders -- you've been through the ringer as a tribal chairman for more than 20 years now -- how can leaders manage the often overwhelming pressures that they face, things like citizen's expectations -- that's kind of the ever-present challenge -- social ills, onrushing events, never enough resources to do everything that you want to do. Then you have the other jurisdictions like the feds, the state, etc., and then you've got this big thing looming ahead of you, which is called the nation's future. How do you...how can leaders manage all those often overwhelming pressures in order to lead effectively?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Of course everyone has a style of leadership and certainly every culture demands a certain pattern of behavior. Our tribe has a very unique history, having been relocated three times and then being subjected to a tremendous number of disincentives to stay on the reservation; the 1950s urban relocation program, the effects of the Dust Bowl days in Oklahoma, the fact that the area in which our reservation is located was...in the 1920s and ‘30s was an oil boom area and when the California oil boom happened a number of our people moved west for that purpose. Quite a number of things that caused our current population distribution to happen and leadership...I think leadership can lead to challenges of office and they're both internal and external. The only real way to meet that is by building a competent and professional management structure and then direct it with a clearly articulated plan of action and goals. And then I think any tribal leader, once you get that done, you should use all of the authorities of your office to protect that organization from...what happens with most tribes is that someone comes in whose objective is personal gain, and I think protecting the organization from people who have that agenda rather than the agenda of the greater good of the tribe. The other is to praise those that have a diligent work ethic and most of all I think to persevere in the face of adversity because it's a fairly...it is a constant that you will hear more from those who either have problems or oppose you for a number of other reasons. What's interesting in Indian tribes, the political oppositions are generational. Some of the folks who don't vote for me or don't care for me were folks who did not vote for or care for my two uncles that were tribal chairmen, my grandfather who was on the business committee, my great-grandfather who was the tribal chairman. I think that, unfortunately, there are some of those generational enmities that are there and there are those that believe that during that period of time when we had a very, very small group of people who exerted an undue amount of influence on the tribe's government because of the form of government when we had to govern by meeting in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and all elections and other decisions were made in that meeting, before we extended the absentee ballot privilege and allowed representation in a national legislative forum, that small group of people who exerted an undue amount of influence on the process of the tribe who were deprived of that undue influence, they are the ones who currently oppose whatever progress is being made. Some of that's human nature, it's understandable. I think our tribe in the...we had to make some extraordinary efforts to bring our people back into involvement in the tribal government because we had some extraordinary historical events that dispersed our people and there was a detachment from the tribal culture. We have 27,000 members. Nine thousand, basically, of them, 9,500 are in Oklahoma. The remaining are in eight sort of enclaves around the United States in California, in Kansas and well, here in Arizona there are about 1,500 in this immediate area, where there are these groups of folks who have been two and three generations removed from Oklahoma, bringing them back into the culture and making the tribal government something of value to those people that would make them or make them want to reassert their culture, become a part of it. The tribe has to make itself of value to its people and to accomplish that you have to reach them first. And so this structure of government that we have now and that we have been evolving into since 1985 is unique in that it was...that was required because of this distribution of people of where our membership is located."

Ian Record:

"One of the things I'm drawing from your answer to the last question is this issue of leaders as educators, that a major part of a leader's job is to educate and engage their people to essentially mobilize them, to get their input, to get them engaged in where the nation is heading as a nation."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Yeah, very much so. I haven't thought of myself as an educator, but as a motivator or of getting someone involved with the tribe. There seem to be two distinct kinds of rewards that our membership seeks: those who don't have physical needs that need health aid or need assistance with housing or education or some other form of assistance. Those are the folks who are most rewarded by the cultural aspect of the tribe, that go to the trouble to learn the language, to learn ceremony, to get their tribal name, to involve themselves in that culture that was a part of their heritage. Our tribe doesn't have a religious elite. Everyone in our tribe is enabled to perform any ceremony that we use because those ceremonies are their individual birthright and so because of that...and we have a long, over 300-year Christian tradition and the tradition of using our traditional ways, particularly a prayer...in our Christian prayers of using [Potawatomi language] and the using of sweet grass and cedar and sage and tobacco in those ceremonies that...those folks that seem to be most rewarded are those that rediscover the culture. The two often go hand in hand, someone who is helped by the tribe financially or physically often at that point is attracted by the culture of the tribe and begins to realize the value of, if nothing else, learning it so they can pass it on to their children. The system of meetings -- that we've been holding now since 1985 -- around the country are half cultural and half the business of the tribe. And watching people's attention in the audience, the cultural things seem to always generate more interest."

Ian Record:

"As I mentioned in the introduction, you first came into elected office in 1971, which is, by coincidence, the year I was born."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Ouch!"

Ian Record:

"Yeah. But I was curious to learn from you what you wish you knew...what you know now that you wish you knew before you took office in the first place?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Well, hindsight's always 20/20. I think from the perspective of the '70s, the early understanding of...I'd like to say that I had these revelations in '71, '72, '73 of what was going to become of Indian...this was prior to the passage of the Indian Self-Determination Act. I was a 26-year-old vice chairman, my uncle was the chairman and he was -- along with my mother -- was an agency kid. My grandfather was the tribal...I mean, was the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] marshal, the BIA police, and they lived at the agency across the street from where the tribal headquarters was and grew up as 'BIA kids' and my uncle believed, God bless him, but he believed that one could not have a formal meeting of the tribal government without the agency superintendent in attendance and that's what formalized the meeting. And I remember not finding the relevance in having the superintendent there because I had seen a number of instances where the superintendent's interests ran counter to those of the tribe and it was a period of time where...my realization that there was a...the Bureau was asking us to give them advice on the agency budget and then when we would, they would ignore us as far as the advice. And there were, almost at every stop, there was some deliberate statement of policy that the United States government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs job was to represent the interests of individual Indians and not tribes or tribal governments. And that had certainly been manifested almost entirely in the 1948 Indian Claims Commission settlements and it had forced us into a situation of closing our rolls in 1962 except for some arbitrary blood degree cut-off. The concept of blood degree was foreign to our culture and we did away with blood-degree determinations in constitutional amendments in the mid-1980s, but that period of time between '62 and '80 disenfranchised an awful lot of people and led to, on the whole, a great deal of the separation that the people felt from the tribe and its culture. It became all about splitting up this 'poof money' that was coming from the government, these little payments, and less about the fact that here we are a people with its own language and art and history and culture and territory and government that had been there for thousands of years, and suddenly we place these arbitrary stops in our system over a $450 check. In retrospect, it seems insane, and it was, just real truthfully it was. And Indian tribes around the country got caught up in this per capita business that is foreign...I know it's foreign to our culture, and I think it's foreign to most Indian tribal cultures. The very basis of tribal culture is uniting with a common purpose for the general good, and that doesn't mean cutting up everything into equally-sized pieces. Our tradition has always been those in need get served first, the mothers, the children, the elders, those people who are most needy are who are served. That has always been our tradition. The concept of...we had a [Potawatomi language], the word means ‘first hunter.' We had a man, who if there was a prolonged winter in the ancient days, who was best hunter who was sent out to kill game to relieve the famine in a village and in adverse circumstances. And when he brought that game back, if there were 150 people in the village, it was not cut into 150 pieces, it was distributed according to those who were most in need. That tradition hasn't changed. Earlier you mentioned a saying that we have adopted in our tribe about ‘don't eat the seed corn' as being our oldest tradition, and in our gaming establishments the cast iron railings around the balcony and in several other forms of symbolism are corn plants to represent that concept, that if you eat the seed corn you'll get one meal, but the village will starve because we won't have the crops in the future. And I think of all the things...of the two things that probably have led to the economic success and the governmental successes of the tribe has been that I have been empowered by the people of the tribe to take, as a first priority, to return our investment and to perform as a profitable business and an efficient governmental entity and take those returns and provide services. If the objective of our business is to employ unemployed Potawatomis or unemployable Potawatomis, without paying attention to whether or not that is a profitable behavior, what we've effectively done -- since 9,000 of us live in Oklahoma where they could get the jobs and two thirds of the population, another 18,000 live outside the state -- we have deprived the two-thirds of our population of the benefits of our revenues. So we can't make it about the one third who lives in Oklahoma. In order to make an equal distribution, you have to make the businesses operate at a profit, then invest those businesses, invest those monies wisely and then make a distribution according to need of the services. Always in every election, someone runs for office saying, ‘Let's take a portion of the money and hand it out as a per cap.' I mean, we have...I have an opponent in this election who's saying, ‘Set aside a third of the money of the earnings of the tribe and put it in some form of investment.' Well, we're already doing that, but the benefits that the individual tribal members are receiving now are in the form of some 2,000 college scholarships a year...a semester, the distribution of free pharmaceuticals for everyone in the tribe over 62, a burial benefit, health aids benefits, mortgage assistance. All of those things more than exceed what would be our total net profit divided by 27,000. Take any number and divide by 27,000 and then make it taxable -- which distributions are taxable on federal income taxes -- it's not a significant number. So much more can be accomplished by reinvestment, of putting that seed corn back in the ground, than can be in this distribution game because...I made, earlier I made a statement that per capita payments from tribal income are like feeding the bears at Yellowstone. When you run out of cookies, then the bears start to eat the people who are handing out the cookies. They're in the car with you. That's the same thing with per capita payments, it's a slippery slope. When 10 percent's not enough, if the revenues go down, then 12, then 15, then 20 then on up to where the consensus becomes, ‘Let's sell it all and send us a check and be done with it.' It has been a curse around Indian Country what's happened with per capita payments because it has not generated prosperity anywhere that I know of. It's been mostly about creating unemployment and destabilizing families and in many cases keeping people with an incentive to stay poor and stay in dire circumstances. We have become what we have become, because we've come a long way -- starting out in 1973 we had $550 in the bank and we had two-and-a-half acres of land held in common. We basically didn't have anything. We didn't even own the building in which the tribe was meeting. It belonged to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was an abandoned structure that had belonged to the [Army] Corp of Engineers as a construction shack. We've come from that to the current economic impact of some close to $400 million in the local community, a couple thousand employees, and we've come to that simply by reinvestment and by leveraging the assets that we have into growth. It's certainly not all me. There has been...there have been a great number of contributors in the tribal government and an incredible cadre of loyal employees who have performed well. But the key to this is the tribe's consent to reinvest and if that consent somehow gets overridden by some folks who can't divide by 27,000, it would be a shame."

Ian Record:

"So that credo of reinvestment, is that something that could have ever taken place, taken root with the Bureau of Indian Affairs still in the driver's seat? You made reference to the early years."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"The Bureau of Indian Affairs, after the trust fund payment was made, the '48 Indian Claims Commission payment was made, they managed our money for about 15 years and had just over a one-and-a-half percent return. I used to be able to pick up the Wall Street Journal and if I read about some financial scandal around the country, I could be absolutely certain that's where the Bureau had invested the Citizen Potawatomi's money. They had a legal obligation to earn at least treasury bill rate and they did not meet that legal obligation. And then Congress passed a law that said we could take those monies away from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, those of us that were part of the Cobell suit, suing the government for mismanaging the money and we did so. Intriguingly, about that piece of federal legislation involved several hundred tribes that are suing the government, only two have taken their money away from these inept investors, which I really don't understand. We put our money into a trust account at the First National Bank and Trust Company, which is the tribe's nationally chartered bank and invested a substantial portion of it in the stock of that bank, which we've had overall more than 20 percent return on that original investment each year for some 20 years or 18 years. Actually it's been more like 15 years because of the period of time that the Bureau had our money. It has been certainly a higher return than the Bureau got. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, as far as the attempts that we've made to get just some very small incremental gains in creating...you always hear the catch phrase, ‘the level playing field,' the criticism that comes from the ultra conservative side of the free enterprise system is that because Indian tribes don't pay taxes, it's not a level playing field. If you were truly going to level the playing field, then Indian tribes should be allowed to leverage their capital expenditures. We are the only corporate entities in the United States who make investments in capital assets: hospitals, office buildings, casinos, grocery stores and those assets can't be used for collateral to borrow money to expand. We're essentially cash operators because the trustees...solely because the trustee, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, will not tell a lender that, ‘We will on your behalf -- in the event of a default -- allow you to operate that business or take control of that piece of property.' And that doesn't require a change in law, it requires a change in policy at the BIA and is not, doesn't seem to be, after some five years of lobbying for it, a policy that is something the Bureau of Indian Affairs intends to change. If the Obama administration did anything else to increase the availability of capital to Indian Country, to increase the availability of collateral to lenders in Indian Country and to help Indian tribes leverage their existing assets, it would be to simply call up the Secretary of the Interior and say, ‘Tell whoever you have this week in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to say to any lender in Indian Country, if the tribe defaults,' and there are appropriate documentation, ‘the tribe defaults, you can come in and run that business until you're paid back.' Simple. You would think it would be easy, but we can't seem to get that done. The other issue is of all the non-profit entities in the United States who...we are a tax-exempt entity. Of all the tax-exempt entities, 501c3 corporations can own Sub S entities [Subchapter S corporations] where the tax liability generated is passed through to the stockholders, except Indian tribes. We need the ability with our tribal corporations to create Sub S entities so that if we do a deal with the city, for instance, in building a sewer line or a water line and we don't want to expose ourselves to the vagaries of the state courts and the state doesn't want to expose themselves to tribal courts -- it's kind of like that Jimmy Buffet song about the ‘down in the Banana Republics,' they know they can't trust us and we know we can't trust them thing. At any rate, if we had this Sub S corporation, then we could consent to state court jurisdiction because we could limit our exposure to that contract with this Sub S entity and you don't have some avaricious lawyer getting through to the tribal treasury because it's...he's a tort claims wizard. The other, the third one is the only government contractors in the United States who do not have the power to use their government contract for collateral for operating funds are Indian tribes. The Assignment of Claims Act is being denied to Indian tribes on the flimsiest of reasons. And those three things would generate more capital than all of this impact money that the administration is putting in Indian Country now, just those three changes and I hope that happens."

Ian Record:

"It essentially sounds to me like it's about taking the shackles off of economic development for tribes."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"A level playing field, to borrow a phrase."

Ian Record:

"You've been quoted as saying in the past that, ‘if you're not talking constitutional reform, you're not in the economic development ballgame.' Can you explain what you mean by that statement and particularly with respect to the path that your nation took?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 gave every tribe in Oklahoma a constitution that described this business committee, which was a governmental entity that was supposed to be a representative body that had a presiding officer called the chairman, vice chairman, secretary, treasurer and two other members. And then over that, it put this thing called the general council, which I assume someone in Washington dreamed up this ideal picture of all of the Potawatomis gathered around the campfire and we'd democratically go from person to person and everyone voices their opinion and then there is this consensus, which is not how organizations work. Pure democracy hasn't functioned since ancient Greece, and the imposition of this thing called the general council on us caused us to reinvent the wheel every 12 months. The quorum for a general council meeting -- at which everything can be decided virtually, elect all officers, all rules, disposition of property, everything that was basically a tribal decision could be decided at this annual meeting -- and it had a quorum of 50 people. Now there were 11,000 of us on the tribal roll at the time that I took office and a quorum of 50, we had difficulty getting a quorum of 50 because the meeting over the years had become...we didn't have much business, we didn't have any money, we didn't have anything else going, but we did manage because of our unique natures to turn that into a six- or seven-hour adversarial conflict. And over the years, it had become so confrontational that the elders quit coming and there were so few people attending that basically 26 could decide for all 11,000. And to borrow a [H.L.] Mencken phrase, ‘It was the circus being run from inside the monkey cage.' It wasn't about government; it wasn't even like government. We didn't have laws, we didn't have a court, we didn't have anything other than this meeting and it was contrary to our culture. Our tribe had governed itself for thousands of years by having the clan heads elected a village chief, the village chiefs all met to elect an overall leader, who was there circumstantially. If we had a war, then the best tactician or the best leader was chosen. If there was a negotiation with a foreign government, the person who spoke that language obviously was one of the higher choices for that circumstantial leader and then those individual leaders went back to their respective villages or jurisdictions. We've always had a tradition of representative government. The imposition of this general council on all of the 39 tribes in Oklahoma led to a constant turnover of government, a constant system of chaos, it held us back for many, many years, and it was tremendously abused and it gave an undue amount of weight to those folks who lived there locally after the Bureau of Indian Affairs and circumstances had provided all these disincentives to leave. The policy of the government to erode our trust land base, in particular, incredibly erode our trust land base, caused most of our people to leave the area or to not participate. And that form of government stayed with us until 1985, and until we made that change in our constitution, we didn't get much accomplished. It was self-defeating and it gave...it also gave people who had another agenda an undue amount of influence within the council. Also the...not having in our constitution independently elected courts and a set of statutes and the ability to enforce the law on this end, and an independently elected executive where the money of the tribe is concentrated in the legislative appropriations process, but the legislative body can't run the day-to-day affairs of the tribe, they control the budget, and then the executive who has the authority to run the day-to-day affairs of the tribe, but have to do it within the confines of that budget. And then over here, the third party is an independently elected judiciary with a set of statutes and the ability to enforce the law. A government without law and the willingness to enforce that law isn't really a government. That's the ultimate act of sovereignty is not only enforcing the law, but be willing as a people to put themselves under the rule of law is the ultimate act of sovereignty. We didn't have any of that in our prior constitutions and I think any tribe that doesn't do that, even though...and I think if they look hard enough, it is within their traditional forum. There has always been some form of law in Indian tribes, in any social structure, but particularly in Indian tribes. Incorporating that traditional law into your statutory law is important, but the absence of law is not more traditional than a set of written statutes by anyone's interpretation."

Ian Record:

"So for your nation it wasn't just about economic development, constitutional reform was about, 'we need to put in place a process and a structure by which we can make effective, efficient decisions that are binding'?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Absolutely, that we assume the responsibilities of sovereignty, that we have uniform commercial code, that we have a full faith and credit agreement with the states in which we do business, that we acknowledge that contractual obligations are enforceable under our law. That's responsible behavior in the community of governments of all kinds, not just Indian tribes. We didn't have any of that in our prior forms of government and the federal government fought us for three years before our first constitutional reform in 1985, particularly the issue of allowing our tribal membership to vote by absentee ballot, which is the worst kind of self-defeating behavior the Bureau could have imposed. And then when we came along and wanted the separation of powers within the tribal government, we wanted this newly formed legislative body. They resisted at almost every point. What a shame that it didn't happen sooner. Of all the things I regret in being in office for many years, in 1985 when we passed the new constitution, we created a separation of powers and it gave the chairman specific authority to run the day to day affairs of the tribe, it gave the legislature the authority to exclusively manage the money and the budget process and created the courts. At the time, I had been in office for quite some time and used to having this five-member body where if you were any good you governed by consensus, you tried to find something on which everyone in that group of five appointed, which they could agree. And so you became accustomed to rather than asserting executive authority to putting the things that were clearly executive decisions in front of this body and depending on your powers of persuasion. In 1985, I should have made a clear-cut definition of, ‘These are executive authorities and they're not subject to review of the legislative body and these are clear cut legislative authorities and they are not subject to the powers of the chairman.' In 1985, the day that passed, I should have made that absolutely clear, but in the interest of not changing the way we had done things for a very long time, I rocked along and didn't do that. And so when the constitutional revision came for the most recent constitutional revision, we weren't prepared for what was the inevitable constitutional confrontation where the majority of the business committee would usurp authorities that were obviously executive powers or attempt to. In this case, they attempted to simply fire me and say, ‘You're still the chairman, but you can't run the tribe. We're going to run the tribe based on the majority of three of us of the five, our majority decisions, we're going to make all the calls, hire someone to function in your place and pay them a salary.' And that was an obvious...there it was, there's the confrontation. So luckily we did have a court system, we did take it to court and what has become the essential decision on how our tribal government functions, our courts ruled on that issue that there is a division of powers, there is a separation of powers, there are separate constitutional authorities and that was the basis for the 2007 constitution, which memorialized or I guess defined the decisions of the 2001 Supreme Court decision of the tribe. But what a wonderful thing that we did that within the processes of the tribe, within our court system rather than the confrontation or the way we used to, the confrontation on the floor of the general council where after the low blood sugar kicks in about 5:00 it comes to blows and you have ensuing chaos. We did it in a lawful manner and that being accomplished, we did it to the successful outcome of the whole distribution of powers within the government and set the stage for what we have now in the 2007 constitution."

Ian Record:

"The Citizen Potawatomi Nation recently developed what has been termed a virtual legislature. Can you explain what that is, how it works, and why your nation developed it, and I guess, we were talking a little bit earlier this morning and you made allusion to some of the challenges that you're facing with that virtual legislature."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Which are a part of growth. The challenges that you face in anything new, as long as they don't destroy the essential function, are often healthy. They certainly were with the '85 constitution. The 2007 constitution created a legislative body of 16, eight from inside of Oklahoma where we have approximately 9,500 members, a third of our population, but all of the tribe's territory, all of the tribe's assets, all the tribe's revenues and all of the areas of the territory over which it exerts governmental jurisdiction. And then two-thirds of our population are outside of Oklahoma where we have for a 25-year period had a form of tribal consultation that we have promised would eventually be represented in the tribal legislative body and have some input on funding and how the tribe performs its services. The concern on writing the constitution was how do you balance this territory and assets and jurisdiction with this population issue? The compromise was to put eight in the legislature from Oklahoma, eight in the legislature from outside of Oklahoma and force a deadlock if the two can't come to a meeting of the minds, and that's basically what we have. It is a mandatory compromise between the interest of the larger portion of the population and where the larger portion of the assets and revenues [is]. And that has so far for a year has worked quite well. It's a virtual legislature because we built a closed or internal teleconferencing system, a relatively expensive one, between the eight regional or district offices around the United States where these district offices are located; one in Southern California, one in Northern California, one here in Phoenix or close in Phoenix, one in St. Louis, one in Topeka, one in Arlington, Virginia and one in Houston, I'm sorry, I mean Dallas, Texas, Dallas area. Those cover the whole United States. I'm sorry, one in Oregon, Washington and Oregon. Those eight districts cover all of the 50 states of the Union in their representation and we have a nine-segment screen and I'm the presiding officer as the tribal chairman and I have a touch screen in front of me and there are nine segments of the screen, one large one is whoever has been called on by the speaker or the presiding officer that has the floor and that turns on that person's microphone. The cameras stay on all the time so you can see all eight legislators and the room in Oklahoma at the tribal capitol where all of the Oklahoma legislators sit on the bottom. So this let's each member of the district legislators see and be seen, hear and be heard on a real-time basis in the legislative body. And all of that is simulcast or streamed over the Internet so that all of our membership can watch that, potawatomi.org, for the public to watch as well. What we didn't anticipate would happen is that the live broadcast over the internet of those proceedings in a new legislative body that has not adopted a set of rules under which it governs its behavior, that a member of the legislature would take over the campaign management of his brother to run for chairman and use the auspices of his office and that broadcast to promulgate that candidacy. That's an interesting development. It will certainly lead to the legislature adopting some form of ability on how it regulates its own behavior, what is or isn't allowable behavior as a legislator and within that format. It also goes to the heart of the overlap between executive and legislative powers or authorities, whether you can use the resources of your legislative office in a campaign for tribal chairman. Certainly, the Congress is no example to follow here because every congressman involves himself in the election of the president of the United States in some way and the president goes around and poses with, in a partisan manner, with members of Congress. So the United States Congress certainly has worked that out and every state legislature seems to have that same overlap between the legislative body and the executive office of states. Ours will probably reach that same compromise, there just has to be...the decision has to be made within that body as it develops its body of rules, what resources are allowed to be used within that context. It's healthy in some ways. It's not a disruption of the political process. The only problem is with a nationwide simulcast, what's said is said over the air. So one can, is protected by legislative, under tribal statute what's said in the legislative body is protected. Theoretically, it hasn't happened, but theoretically someone could say, ‘This candidate for office is a murderer' and that goes out over the Internet and there's no one to say, ‘King's X, take that back,' but that behavior, which is clearly libelous or slanderous, is protected. So we have some rule making to do, we have some things to take care of there. The internet...as a virtual legislative body, the internet and its impact on tribal government was something I don't think any tribal leader, even the ones of the folks elected of your generation who are certainly tuned into media and most certainly not of mine, of us baby boomers, we weren't prepared to how dominant that the internet and all of its manifestations would be in tribal politics. We earlier heard an explanation by an elected tribal official how a blog of the tribal council meetings has become the dominant tool in manipulating opinion on the reservation. Isn't that an amazing thing to hear? And speaks volumes as to what's happened within the life on reservations as we become all...we're all into that...virtually, I would assume less than probably five percent of the Potawatomi Tribe, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, probably don't have computers or email addresses. Communication in that medium, campaigning in that medium, and it's something we really ought to be embracing for the way we develop our cultural outreach, the way we spread our culture, the way we engage the elders and the way we engage our young people. If we're not fully aware of and in command of this tool, we are remiss as tribal leaders because it's as important as anything we've ever done because it is the dominant media."

Ian Record:

"So just a follow-up question, the move, the constitutional amendment your nation took in creating this virtual legislature was a concerted effort to reintegrate all of Potawatomi citizens as full citizens in the nation, was it not?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"A distribution of power. To my knowledge of any tribal government in the United States that's ever put power back into the hands of the people in a larger way by allowing elected representation for anywhere in the continental United States, it is a passage of distribution of power back to the people in an unprecedented manner. But we'd been 25 years planning it and talking about it. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing and each of those regional council meetings had been going on for 25 years, all had a different nature, they all had a different set of families, they all had a different perspective. South Texas is certainly a lot different than Los Angeles area, different approaches to things, and we knew what we were getting into when we did it and we did it very carefully. It will be interesting to see what it looks like in five years or what it looks like in 10 years. The formal legislative process that we adopted certainly is a big change from what we had under the five member business committee. The whole concept of tribal legislative committees with specialties, the committees meet by Skype and then once a bill has passed out of committee, if it doesn't involve an appropriation, goes straight to the floor of the legislature. If it does involve an appropriation, then it goes to the appropriations subcommittee. Once all that process, formal bill process is really fleshed out, we're like I say one year into it, I think that the legislative process is going to take on a whole new nature. We operated for many, many years, since the '70s, with basically an open agenda that someone was free to introduce a subject from the floor and the chairman could or could not sponsor an ordinance or resolution to that effect and the issue was discussed and then the process of drafting those pieces of legislation that became enactments or pronouncements to the government, pretty informal process. Because we've gotten as large as we have, that has been much more formalized. To see the history of how the State of Arizona from the time of its formation how it got through...how it formed its legislative processes, how a bill goes through the state legislature -- in Oklahoma in particular, because of its unique and often bizarre history of impeaching governors and the legislature meeting outside the state capitol and the governor chasing them around with the state militia, all of those things that are uniquely Oklahoma that formed the legislative processes there, we'd still have that history to go, but I think we're off to a start. We have -- with very few exceptions we have -- the vast majority of the tribal legislative body are educated, they have experience in tribal affairs in business. They are all, with a couple of exceptions, experienced and accomplished business people, all with at least an undergraduate degree. We have one attorney, we have a member of the Oklahoma legislature who also is a member of our legislature, we have government contractors, we have really accomplished people that I'm very proud of this group of folks who are very dedicated to making it work. And the fact that we have this hiccup going on right now is...it's politics."

Ian Record:

"It's a part of growing. We have just a couple minutes left and I have one final question to ask you, which actually picks up on a theme you mentioned in your last question, which is this issue of strategic visioning and planning, essentially that the success your nation is seeing now and has seen over the past several years didn't happen overnight, that it was the result of long-term thinking, a long term focus and planning for that long-term future that the nation as a collective wanted to see for itself. Can you talk about the role that strategic visioning and planning has played, in the couple minutes we have left, in terms of your nation's economic and community development?"

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Well, the model that's imposed on us by the very structure of Indian tribes functioning within not having a full tax authority and not having any jurisdictional authorities where you have to parallel economic business development and government side by side. The long-range vision that -- I'm certain we didn't have a crystal ball, but economic independence has always been philosophically, for our tribe -- and my deep belief -- that you leverage the resources that you have. We...first time we ever made any money, we sold cigarettes across the counter in the tribal museum because that rule came along that we could buy cigarettes without the tax on them and collect the tax. And the only available counter that we owned was in the tribal museum. So we leveraged our counter into cigarettes as well as the part of the tribal museum furniture and once we got...we had enough money from the sale of those cigarettes, we started a little bingo game in the tribal council room because that was the only room we had large enough. We leveraged that asset into enough money to build a bingo hall, a building and once that bingo hall...high-stakes bingo hall happened and we had ensuing court battles to keep, to get control of it from outside influences, but once we were in command of those revenues, then we bought the bank. We bought a failing bank from the FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] at the worst year in the history of American banking to date in 1989, we bought that with bingo proceeds and we had built a convenience store and we went about the business of saving that bank, of rescuing it from failure and getting in the banking business. And all of that has been leverage on existing assets. We had a piece of swamp land that the highest and best use -- we couldn't build on it -- so the highest and best use for this piece of swamp land was to make a golf course with 15 holes, the water in play, and it has become one of the premier public courses in the state. We basically leveraged assets that we had, but with the idea that each leveraged asset would at some point dovetail into a combined asset on which we leverage, and it's leverage on leverage. We did that with the Community Development Corporation and the bank, we did it with...every business we are in has been as a result of markets where we defined the market and we build that market and then we come up with a product or service to meet that market and then once that market's established, we come up with another product or service that meets that market. It's laddering, it's leveraging, it's not a unique business strategy, but it is something that...that and the idea of the service mentality that everyone who is at the Potawatomi Tribe when you are in front of your customer or constituent, you are the tribe and you should be empowered to satisfy that person. That is something that we go through, even I go through it, everyone at the tribe, all 2,000 employees every six months, go through customer service training, where that's something that we do and believe in, that our job is to represent the nation in making our customers or constituents understand that we're there to make them happy as much as we can. The old saying is first come sales, my training in school and most of my professional training and professional experience has been in marketing or sales and any business's success has to be that and on the other side we have been as a government about keeping good books, about accounting for the money, of having externally auditable transparency in financial management and avoiding personal conflict. That's a simplistic answer and it's a difficult thing to come to, but the closer a tribe gets to that, the closer they'll get to success."

Ian Record:

"Well, Rocky, I could ask you questions for days on end. There's so much more I'd like to learn, but we're out of time unfortunately. I'd like to thank you for taking the time to share your nation's story and your personal experiences with us today."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"It's an honor. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the opportunity."

Ian Record:

"That's it for today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute website at www.nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright © 2009. Arizona Board of Regents."