Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program, we are honored to have with us Justin Beaulieu, a citizen of the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Justin currently serves as Coordinator of the Red Lake Constitutional Reform Initiative and earlier this year he was chosen by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development to serve as one of three members of the inaugural Cohort in its Honoring Nations Leadership Program. Justin, welcome and good to have you with us today."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Thank you, Ian. It's a pleasure."

Ian Record:

"So I've shared a little bit about who you are, but why don't you start off and just tell us a little bit more about yourself?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, I'm a father of two beautiful children with my wife Anne and pretty much my job and my kids are my life. I spend a lot of time in the outdoors. I like to hunt, fish, trap, do a lot of the cultural activities, go ricing and maple syruping. It's...just kind of live the old way and I learned from my grandpa and my dad."

Ian Record:

"That's great. The reason I wanted to sit down and have a chat with you today is because of your involvement in Red Lake's constitutional reform effort, which is still very much early in its development and we'll talk about that, but I wanted to start at the beginning. And based upon your knowledge as a citizen of the nation and obviously your involvement as coordinator of the actual reform initiative, what in your view prompted Red Lake to go down the reform road to begin with?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think -- and this conversation's been going on for a long time -- we had a discussion with Chairman [Darrell] Seki, our new elected chairman, the other day and he was talking about how his grandfather and grandma used to talk with other elders in the tribe and this was probably in the late 20s, 30s and they were talking about how our constitution then, the 1918 constitution, it didn't align with our cultural values or who we are or what we're about to what we felt was important as a people. So then as a nation, I think that has been passed along from parents to children to grandchildren to great grandchildren and finally we did a GANN [Governance Analysis for Native Nations session] in 2010 with Native Nations Institute and I think that was one of the catalysts that kind of drove that conversation into the forefront that said, ‘Okay, we can do this now. We've been talking about it for a long time, let's go ahead and do it.'"

Ian Record:

"So I should mention a GANN is a Governance Analysis for Native Nations session. It's a tool that nations use to assess their current governance systems and constitutions being part of that. When I first met you, you were a member of Cohort 2 of the Bush Native Nation Rebuilders Program and at that time you were working for Mille Lacs Band."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes."

Ian Record:

"And you've since returned to your own nation, Red Lake, and I'm curious, how did you become...how did you come to serve as coordinator of this constitutional reform initiative, and maybe shed a little bit of light on what your role is within this effort?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. Okay, we'll start at the beginning. Sam Strong, he went to Cohort 1 and he was part of the participation that did the GANN analysis and he was part of the team that brought me back to Red Lake. He had made a phone call, we had met through the Rebuilders. I didn't know Sam from anybody. He grew up in North Carolina and he went to school out east so we didn't have any previous history. So we met through the program and he called me and he said, ‘Would you mind coming home to work?' And I said, ‘Yeah, I'd love to. I've been planning on trying to find something.' I'd actually applied for three other jobs and the way it worked out I didn't get those...I didn't even get interviews for most of them because they would just fill them with whoever they wanted to at the time. So when he said, ‘Do you want to come back home,' I said, ‘Yes, I would love to.' And then he told me what it was for and I was really excited because with the conversations with my dad, with my relatives and with other people, we identified that the constitution is the first step in reassessing our governance and restructuring it to what we need as a nation to move us into the next generations. So that was kind of how I got involved in the process.

And my job as the coordinator is, we have a committee of 13 members who are...they're identified into each individual group. We have Redby, Red Lake, Little Rock and Ponemah. We have two from each one of those districts and they're the representatives that represent those people there. So they're the liaison between the people and their voice and then the committee. And then we also have a chairperson and we have a cultural advisor and we have a legal advisor. So those people are all citizen-members of Red Lake and my job is to help them to engage the community, is to get out there and do the grassroots, hit the ground running, try to figure out what they want.

But initially when I first came on, I was hoping everybody would be at the same level of education that I was with...and that wasn't the case. So we did probably like six to eight months of just real intensive training on what is a constitution, what is our constitution, researching our history, how did we get those constitutions, what was the relationships between the tribes and the governments, whether it be the state or federal during those times and what was...what were the catalysts of why they wanted to make an actual constitution in the way they did. So we did a lot of research and we put a lot of time and effort into figuring our what other tribes have done, what our tribe did in the past, how they made decisions and it was really an enlightening and learning experience for the whole committee.

So from there then I get to connect them with the community. So I coordinate community events, I coordinate... we do like powwows or celebration feasts. We also do just small group meetings. We do an advisory meeting. So my job is to make sure all of those go well, get all the people there, do all the coordination, get all the food. So it's a really intensive job, but I'm pretty good at it so I hope I'm doing a good job so far."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned when the group first got together and you guys were trying to wrestle with, ‘How do we tackle this and this challenge that's before us and how do we develop a process,' that there was some internal learning that needed to take place and it started with developing a constitutional history of Red Lake. How important is that and what is the constitutional history of Red Lake? Where is your current...I guess first and foremost, how did Red Lake come to have its first written constitution and how did it come to have the current constitution that it governs by?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Okay. So in 1918 we created a constitution and that constitution, it's basically identified a chieftain system, which we had the clan systems before then so it was similar to the same kind of system. But we needed to identify people to go to to make decisions about resources, about...because the government wanted trees, the lumber barons were there, the railroad was trying to come through. so there was a lot of people that needed to get access to those and also needed resources to go in and out of what we had as the current...the reservation. So when...they didn't have...they didn't know who to go to like, ‘Well, what clan deals with this or what clan deals...?' Instead they just created the constitution so they knew, ‘Okay, this is who we go to when we need to make a decision based on do we need to...require X amount of land or we want to get these trees from here so who do we talk to?' So that was one of the ways to limit the confusion between the federal government and also the businesses that were trying to do business with the tribe.

And then ultimately in 1958 we created a new constitution. This was a boilerplate IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution and, that's essentially what it was, but they had been proposing since 1937, 1938 to get that constitution in place, but the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] was dragging their feet and saying, ‘No, the way it's going right now with Red Lake, we like it. We like the way it's going.' They did a big land grab with us. They got 11 million acres and we got to keep our tribe intact. We fought the Dawes Act so there's no allotment. Red Lake is one whole parcel, which I think that the foresight that our ancestors had for that was amazing. But in retrospect, looking back at it, the BIA had their hands in a lot of things for Red Lake, but Red Lake was a champion of sovereignty so they were pushing back and so they didn't want...’No, we don't want to implement this constitution because then there's democratic rule, then there's going to be some...we like the way the chief system works so we can just go, ‘Hey, we need this,'' and it was easy to work. So ultimately in 1958 they finally pushed it through and they adopted the revised constitution for Red Lake and that has been what we have been governed by since then."

Ian Record:

"So it sounds from talking with others that are involved in the Red Lake reform effort that there's a sentiment among many in the community -- including, as you mentioned, some of your own relatives -- that this current document that we govern by, it's not a product of us, it's not reflective of who we are. How much of that is driving this current movement for reform?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think a lot of that is. We look at our culture and our values that we hold to high esteem and none of those things are involved in that constitution. There is nothing that talks about our children, there's nothing that talks about our elders, there's nothing that talks about our language, our culture, the ways that we made decisions in the past. It's essentially a business model constitution on how to run like say for example a board of directors like Target Corporation. So it takes into account nothing that we hold near and dear to us and talks about our culture, none talks about our land. Our lake is one of the things that we're very much proponents for and stewards of and even that isn't included in there and unfortunately because of that we have lost a portion of Upper Red Lake due to mismanagement of how they did the survey and nobody was held accountable because nothing said in our constitution that ‘We are going to protect our lake in its entirety,' in the whole thing and that's going to be first and foremost. So ultimately we lost because of that."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to go back to the initiative in terms of how it was established. Can you briefly give us an overview of what this initiative looks like, how is it structured and why was it structured in the way it was and what is its I guess ultimate charge?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. Our charge is in the committee and that's who I help, is they're responsible for getting information to the people to give them a reason to kind of respond to stimulus. So if we want them to talk about something like land and natural resources, we put out a survey and ask them for information and then they respond back. And then based off that information we can kind of mine down the next questions to make them...to get kind of a smaller scope of how we're going to detail parts of the constitution and that's worked out well for us. We're separated completely from the tribal government, we're insulated in the fact that they signed off saying that they're going to be hands off for the committee and we also have contracts with each one of the committee members that states that they can't have a direct...somebody in their direct family that's either on the council or is going to serve on the council. So if like say somebody gets voted into office in our upcoming election, we have the runoff, then that means that if they were on our committee they have to step down then because that's in their contract. So that I think is...the way that is structured is good in the sense that it gives the people in the...the citizens, your average every day citizen, it gives them that sense of ‘Okay, this isn't the tribal council's idea. This is ours. This is our document, this is something that we can get behind, this is something that we can put our fingerprints on so to speak and it'll be ours.'

So it's, I think...we learned that from a couple other tribes who have done it differently and it didn't work out so well for them. It either...they either extended their time period that they...some of them even got basically...for lack of better words got their throat cut. They couldn't do constitutional reform anymore so we wanted to make sure when we set it up initially, that was one of my first questions to Sam when he asked me I said, ‘Is the tribal council going to be involved?' and he said, ‘No.' Then I said, ‘Okay, then perfect.' And I think that's the same...I don't think that I'm alone in that. I think a lot of the community members also have that kind of mistrust and it's not to say that our leaders are bad, it's just been over the years things have happened here, things have happened there and that trust has been broken and trust is very hard to build. So then to limit that, kind of the naysayers, or whatnot, we decided that we're going to keep the tribal council out of it and they're going to just allow the people to have this thing and it'll be ours."

Ian Record:

"And how important is that to send that clear message to the citizens who you're trying to engage, you're trying to get them interested in this discussion about reform and get them to offer their input, how important is it to send the message then that this is bigger than any one single elected leader or this is bigger than any current crop of leaders? It's got not just an independent nature to it, but it's got a larger, longer term nature to it, it's got a longer-term purpose to it than just who are the holders of the power right now."

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think the legacy of our forefathers -- like I talked about -- fighting the Dawes Act and that kind of shines through. And then when you tell them, ‘Hey, this is about us,' then they don't feel...they feel safer to share their ideas. They don't feel like there can be repercussions or, ‘My husband or my brother might lose their job or whatnot,' because that has happened in tribes over history that if you start political turmoil then things can happen to your...you can lose your spot on a housing list, you can lose some resources, you can get fired from your job. So making sure that there's that insulated barrier there, people will feel a lot more free to share their ideas and that fear isn't there and then that's where you get that real raw feedback and emotional response to some of these things. Where we talked about our children who are not enrolled because of our own standards of membership to the tribe, they are not covered under the Indian Child Welfare Act. So if something happens to like say myself and when my kids, they're not enrolled right now because they're 1/100th of a percent off of blood. They have enough Native blood to be enrolled in other tribes, but not just in Red Lake. They're not covered under that. They can be taken and then given to...anywhere. They can be sent anywhere in the states or whatnot and that's something that a lot of them it resounded with them like, ‘We need to protect our kids and we need to protect our land and we need to protect our people.' But none of that is covered in our current constitution. It just essentially talks about building a tribal government, a makeshift tribal government and how the resources can be divvied up then."

Ian Record:

"So I've been to the website for the constitutional reform initiative; very impressive. And I know some of your colleagues on the committee are doing a lot of...developing a lot of educational materials that will enrich that site moving forward, but I want to talk a bit about the vision statement because something in there struck me that explicit in that vision statement is this idea of strengthening ideas of self-governance in the constitution. Can you provide perspective on that and what is the nature of the conversation around strengthening this idea of self-governance? Because if you read that the implication is that, ‘Our current constitution doesn't fully enact our sense of what self-governance means.'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, self-governance, deciding what we're going to do and where we're going as a nation is important. And one of the things that we suffer from is the fact that we have to chase grant money and federal dollars and things like...we always have to jump through other people's hoops. So we're not really governing ourselves. We're governing by dollars or governing to whatever extent that a grant source wants us to do to get some money funneled and to try to help alleviate some of the hardships that the citizens face. So self-governance is taking that accountability, creating our own government, creating our own future, creating what we're going to do for economic development, what we're going to do to create better institutions and governing structure, how do we align our schools with our tribal government and how do we align our schools to be able to help our citizens become entrepreneurs if they want. It's creating a place where our tribal leaders can actually worry about what we're going to do in five years, 10 years rather than worry about who's going to get a job tomorrow or who's going to get a raise next week. Those are the things that...the decisions that they're making on a constant basis, and those are management-level decisions that should be made by the directors and managers. Those are not governance issues. Those are things that I believe and a lot of other citizens believe that those should be dealt with on those managerial levels, not necessarily on a council level. So they're dealing with every day, ‘Who's going to get their lights on,' those kind of things, when they should be worrying about, ‘What are we doing strategically to move ourselves into the next 10 years, next 20 years?'"

Ian Record:

"So you've touched a bit about...you touched on a bit already about some of the things that you guys are doing, some of the activities that the reform initiative and the committee members in particular are engaged in. Can you talk about some of the strategies you and the committee are taking to engage the people and sort of hook them in and then keep them engaged throughout what could be a multi-year process? From everything I've heard from you and others, you're going into this knowing that this is going to take a few years to get done if we want to do it right."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes. So we started off and once we got the information that we thought was going to be relevant to us to start the process, we started off by doing an initial survey. We did some excerpts in the papers, we did some kind of op-eds and discussing what we're doing, what the project looks like, what the timeline is so people could get an idea of, ‘Okay, if you ask us some questions, we're not going to expect you to give us a new constitution in two weeks or in a month, something like that.' So they understood the process and the timeline. And then we also first initially started talking about things that are near and dear to people's hearts. So we talked about language and culture, which is very important to us, to our tribe, to our nation and we also talked about our natural resources, which is another thing that we hold very dear. So that was the thing that we could get everybody to rally behind. So it wasn't a polarizing thing, it wasn't like talking to them about membership or something like that where you've got people on extreme opposites of that continuum. It was easy for us to transition everybody into getting behind the project and see what it is and then give them feedback on that level. We also met people where they were so if they couldn't come to a meeting, we offered the website, we got a Facebook page, we got a YouTube site that we up materials on. So if we have something that we think is really important, we'll put it out on those mediums so that they can see it on the phone when they're in the car or at their house. If we've got elders that can't make it into a meeting, we can bring them a DVD of what we did. So it's really important that we find out who needs to be at the table and then find out how to get them there or find out how to bring that table then to them."

Ian Record:

"You've talked about some of the strategy you guys are employing to get and then keep people engaged and I'm curious, what are some of the challenges that you've encountered thus far? I know it's early, I know you guys are in terms of full-bore implementation of this reform process you're about a year in or so, but what are some of the challenges you've encountered and how are you working to overcome those?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think life is the biggest challenge. People have lives, people have things that they're concerned about. They're concerned about keeping food on their table, their lights on. Those are real-world issues and we're not a rich tribe. We don't have money coming in from casinos, and so we're just trying to combat what the I guess side effects are of that, then try to keep people engaged in that. And it's hard when you're looking at something that's a grandiose idea like a constitution versus, ‘How am I going to get food in my fridge for my kids.' And then also get them to say, ‘Okay, now I need to stop what I'm doing over here and invest some time into this.' So it was hard to initially capture their attention, but then keeping them engaged is something that's been very difficult. I think being transparent and continuing to kind of not so much bombard them but keep them up to date with information has been the easiest way. Posting things on Facebook, questions, throwing ideas out there. If somebody comes by my office and they have a really great idea, I'll put that out on Facebook and put it on our website and say, ‘What do you guys think of this?' And it gives people an opportunity to weigh in and then those things get shared by a bunch of people and pretty soon it's kind of like this landslide of things coming in. So it's easy in that sense where if using a tool, a technology like Facebook that something can happen like this and next thing you know 10,000 people have seen it. So just kind of capitalizing on those things has been an easy way to try to alleviate the issues of life happening.

Another thing that's recently happened is we went through...we lost our chairman. We lost 'Buck' Jourdain and that's not to say that the new Chairman Darrell Seki isn't going to do a good job, but he [Jourdain] was a big supporter of constitutional reform, which isn't bad or good; Darrell Seki is also a big constitutional reform proponent. And so he comes along and says, in his statement he says, ‘I'm going to support this fully.' But there's other people that are on the council that may not like the idea of losing kind of the way things are...change is a hard process for anybody, it's hard for me. So then if you go in and somebody identifies, ‘Uh oh, this might change the way we do things.' ‘Well, we've been doing this...I've been on council for 15, 20 years. What are we going to do? I won't know what I'm doing.' So that's kind of scary for them. So it's easier for them to kind of sit back and not help us with it and in the same sense we did tell them to kind of stay out, but those have been two of the things that have been kind of the hardest to keep people engaged because of the idea that once you...when you have an election, it is a polarizing thing. Families start fighting and people who are husband and wife start fighting. It gets down to that molecular, granular level that we have to try to keep these people focused on the big picture and not just the here and now."

Ian Record:

"So keeping them focused on the big picture; and you mentioned people have real issues in their lives, people are busy, in many tribal communities there's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of social ills that people are wrestling with, it's very time consuming, it distracts their attention from these sorts of things. Isn't part of the way to combat that though is instructing people on the role the constitution plays in their lives currently and then how a stronger constitution could benefit their lives, enhance their lives, enhance the lives of their children, that sort of thing? Is that part of the argument and the education that you guys are sharing with citizens in these community meetings and through other ways to say, ‘Look, the constitution matters. You may not see it operating in your lives every day, but it matters and on many levels'?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, when we first started, probably about 85, 90 percent of the people had never even read the constitution, didn't really know what it meant and didn't know how it applied to their life. And that was one of the questions, like you said, we got was, ‘Why does this matter to me?' So then finding out that tie between where we're at now and some of the problems that have stemmed from us not having a constitution that matches our culture and then identifying with them some places that have changed their constitution and look at the things that they've been able to do now. They've been able to grow as a nation, they've been able to implement new procedures that helped them get new economic opportunities, that helped them revitalize some of their language where they were losing it, get some more fluent speakers. These are things that people really, really want and these are things that our current constitution isn't going to allow to happen. So that aligning their ideas of what they want in their own lives with what the big picture is that'll help the tribe is something that we've done as a committee and is part of my job, yes. And it's been very important on keeping people engaged and also identifying with some people who were the ones sitting on the back like, ‘Oh, I don't think that I really want to get involved in this.' ‘This matters to you.' ‘Why does it matter to me?' ‘Are your kids enrolled?' ‘Yes.' ‘Are your grandkids enrolled?' ‘Well, no.' ‘Aren't they part of your family?' ‘Yeah.' ‘Are they part of this tribe? Well, I guess not. So let's talk about that. How can we figure this out, because these are problems that a lot of people face? You're not alone in this.' So then they're like, ‘Oh, that's...okay, so the constitution can do that?' ‘Yeah, the constitution covers our government and how it...how we as a people want that government to function.'"

Ian Record:

"One of the issues that Red Lake has been focusing on and discussing in the early stages of the reform effort is whether and how to remove the Secretary of Interior approval clause from its constitution. Why the attention to that specific issue?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, historically Red Lake has been a champion of sovereignty and also pushing the limits of what the government thought was okay and not okay and that's one of the things...if you look back to the Roger Jourdain era, he was going to D.C., he was a very vocal person, he was the "squeaky wheel" that pushed a lot of these issues that other tribes also face into the laps of Congress to say, ‘What are you going to do about this?' So then looking at that, Red Lake has not necessarily asked anybody what to do. They've decided what to do for themselves, but somehow they included that we have to ask for the Secretary of Interior to approve our constitution, our changes to it, our membership stuff. So those are things that people have said, ‘Well, why do we even have that? We ran the BIA out of here a long time ago.' Well, we wrote that into our own constitution, we asked for that to happen.' So they're, ‘Well, why don't we just take it out?' ‘Okay, let's talk about that.'

They decided to do that, they put it up for referendum vote back in 1990...I think 1998 and it lost by over 600 votes and so that was concerning to me. I was asking -- at the time Bobby White Feather was the chairman -- and so I went and asked him, I said, ‘What was going on during that time? Like why were people...why were they not...they were okay with kicking the BIA out, but they were okay with keeping this language in here that says we've got to ask them for approval to do things. Why were there...' And he said he thinks that it was -- and I'm kind of paraphrasing here -- he thought it was because of the mistrust that [people had of] the tribal government had at the time. They had just gone through an era in 1979-1980 where there was turmoil in our tribal government. There was shootouts going on, there was buildings being burned down, a lot of our history was actually lost because our tribal council building at the time was burned to the ground. So we look at, that's where our archives were, that's where a lot of our important documents were.

So the people were like, ‘No, we think the government should be involved in this because we want them to watch.' But they didn't really know that the government's not really caring what the tribe does, they just...’You put that in there in 1930, they cared back then. 1980, 1990, 2000s, they don't really care what you're doing. Look at some of the Supreme Court cases,' they said. ‘You figure out your membership. You figure out what you're going to do with your people. You figure out what you're going to do with your resources. You now have the ability to do your own self-governance stuff so we're not going to have our BIA people in there anymore.' So they kind of cut those parental ties so to speak, but we still have that in there because we thought we had Big Brother watch so ‘The tribal council can't screw us over,' or something to that effect is kind of what I got out of it. And there wasn't a whole lot of education done with it. They didn't go out and say, ‘This is what's going on with this. This is why it's important that we take ownership back of our constitution.' So I think that if they'd have done a little more education behind that and a little more transparency, I think that probably would have passed back in the ‘90s and we wouldn't be worrying about it right now."

Ian Record:

"I know, being a student of a lot of different tribes' constitutional reform efforts, I know that this is a common topic, common issue of concern, and I know that some tribes have approached this as they engage in sort of comprehensive reform to say, ‘We're going to go ahead and take this...we're going to do this as round one. We're going to get rid of this approval clause.' Laguna Pueblo is a good example of that. Back in 2012 they just said, ‘We know one thing that everybody can...we've gotten everybody to agree on, let's get rid of this language. Because we then want to engage in a discussion about what sort of constitution we want for ourselves without any sort of secondary or perhaps even primary consideration of what the feds are going to think.' Where's your nation right now? I know it's early, but is there a consensus yet on, ‘Is this going to be part of the overall package that we ultimately get the people to vote on or are we going to break this out as a separate amendment again?'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"That's the big question. We've been posing that to the community and one of the things we did is we actually wrote to the Secretary of Interior and asked them, ‘Can we just take this out and you guys will approve it?' He said, ‘Of course. Definitely take it out. We encourage you to take it out because we don't necessarily want to be meddling in your business.' So they wrote us a one-page letter that's going to be good for helping us to educate our own people like, ‘Look, this is something that can benefit us. This is some...we don't need somebody else approving any of our documents, approving what our government is and how it works. That's up to the people.' So that was one of the first steps we took. We also polled them. We did a survey, ‘What do you guys think of the Secretary of Interior? What does it mean to you? How do you think that it applies to us as a nation?' So that was enlightening too to kind of get those different responses and kind of get a feel for where everybody's at in the process. That way we can tailor our message to whatever individuals we have to to try to get the education part of it out so they can make a decision, an informed decision on their own versus, ‘I don't know what that means so I'm going to vote no because I know how things go when it is in there.'"

Ian Record:

"You've made...you've discussed...you've touched on some of the issues that have sort of been coming out in some of these meetings: culture, language, obviously the Secretary of Interior approval issue, membership as you mentioned is a big issue. What are some of the issues that have been bubbling to the surface as you've guys begin to engage the community and get their thoughts on constitutional reform?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"It's a lot of the buzz words like the transparency of the government. ‘Why don't they come and tell us in the individual communities what they've been talking about, what they're doing, what they're working on?' A lot of the people, they find out after the fact like one day all of a sudden there's this building going up. ‘Well, what is this? Why didn't anybody tell us there was a...why didn't anybody ask us what was going on?' So transparency is a huge thing. They want the tribal government to be transparent. They also want them to be accountable. They want them to be accountable to the people and to themselves. So that means...I guess it would mean some sort of job description they've been talking about like, ‘What does...what is the secretary-treasurer, what is their job? What are they supposed to do?' Because how can you hold anybody accountable if you have no idea what they're really supposed to do. So it's looking into some of those things.

Also they want to talk about our economic development not just trying to get casinos, but also working with the tribal members to kind of make it where the tribal government will allow the citizen entrepreneurs to actually have their businesses versus making them get a license, making them jump through this hoop, making them do this, making them do that, which is I think was important to them in the past to be able to kind of control what was going on in the communities, but now there's people who are very well educated. There are some very, very smart people in Red Lake that want to start their own businesses, want a culture that has a bank that they can go to. There's no bank, there's no banking system. So a lot of those things that would be extended to you in an outside world or an outside community is not available there so they want to talk about that.

What is economic development for the tribe? What does it mean for our people? Also, what does it mean for our government to get involved in the economic development versus we're doing it on our own or is it a separate entity, setting up tribal businesses like we have right now in Red Lake, Inc. Is it that? We have Red Lake, Inc. and we've had them for quite a few years now, almost four years, and our businesses are turning profits now. They never did before in the past. Not to say that any one person or any one thing is responsible, but to give that back to people who went to school for business, who know how businesses run, who now how to do budgets and who know how to do just anything that has to do with business. It was good for our tribe because we're making money on those businesses where we were just kind of pouring money into them and trying to get them to work before. So it's how do we separate all those different silos and then how do we then created a government that's going to be looking at what's more important for our future, what's more important for our children, dealing with the issues that we have rather than putting Band-Aids on things."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned this early on about how you, in structuring the reform initiative, 'I'm trying to figure out what's a proven strategy that will work for us,' that you looked at some other nations. Can you talk a little bit more about how you're learning from the constitutional reform experiences of other tribes? And perhaps on the flip side, yes, it's early on but what could other nations that are perhaps just discussing reform right now and when they start reform, what could they learn from Red Lake?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. I don't know for a fact what they can learn from us, but I can talk about what we've learned from other tribes. We've learned from some experiences that White Earth [Nation] had, that the Blackfeet [Tribe] have had, that Gila River [Indian Community]  have had, that the Cherokee [Nation] have had and just looking at kind of dissecting and mining through what they've done and how they got their process going, how they worked it. Did they have a committee, did they just have like a quorum of people that came together? How did they identify those people? How did...so it was kind of a learning experience for us to first initially set up like, ‘How are we going to do this that's going to be a good way, that our people can get behind and respond to?' And what we came up with is a committee of people who are from each individual community so that they felt represented. Sometimes in our communities, and it's a funny thing, the divide-and-conquer mentality. We have four communities and people identify with those communities more than they identify with the nation as a whole. So we decided, ‘Okay, that's how they identify, that's how we're going to work it. We're going to give them two representatives from each one of their separate districts and then those people will be the ones who they go to or can be a liaison for the committee to bring back the information, to bring back the ideas, also to share them forward. So they're like a conduit for each individual district.

And then like I touched on, we needed to figure out how to engage the community because we looked at, let's say White Earth for example, they got together I think it was about 40 people and they did some sessions where they would kind of hammer out all these details. And they did it with good hearts I'm sure and good intentions, but I looked at the videos of the people in the communities and they were really upset. ‘Why didn't you come to us? Why didn't you ask us what we thought? Why weren't we involved in these conversations?' And that's something we didn't want to answer in the future so we thought, ‘We better get them involved first in the process and then figure it out,' versus bringing it to them after the fact and saying, ‘Here this is good for you.' Because historically that's happened for Native peoples throughout history since first contact is, ‘Here, this is good for you, take this.' So we wanted to get them involved so that their DNA and their fingerprints and everything was on it. So their ideas were in it, it resounded with them, they can get behind it and say, ‘I had those ideas. I shared these ideas. These are now in our governing document. That's awesome!' So that was something that we learned from them.

Gila River, with Anthony Hill, he came in and he did a full meeting. We had about four hours. And so basically he came in and told us everything, how the whole process worked for them, how they started, how they got these road bumps along the way, how they worked past some of them. Then their regime change came and kind of put a kibosh to everything so they had to work really, really hard, but their documentation process was I think the thing that we learned the best from Gila River is they kept everything that they did and they kept record of everything they did so that way they could I guess regurgitate that at any time to anybody, ‘Why did you guys do this?' ‘Well, because we polled everybody in a survey or we had a community meeting and this is the results from what you guys said you wanted to see done.' So that was important for us so that we could, in the future, if somebody came along, even if somebody comes along in 50 years and they had no idea of how this constitution was here, they can go back and they can look through the whole process. We have it digitized, we have video, we have it in a lot of different forms. That way if some...one written form or something gets destroyed, it's always going to live on and it'll always be there so people can go back and say, ‘That's how they did that.'"

Ian Record:

"Isn't that critical also for interpreting the constitution because we hear a lot of attorneys, in particular tribal attorneys, talk to us about, the constitution's typically these short documents. They don't go into a whole lot of detail. They set up the basic parameters and judges say this too, ‘If I'm being asked to interpret the constitution, often it would be really helpful for me if I know the back story.' What was the motivation behind why this provision reads the way it does?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Anthony Hill came to me and I actually got to ride with him. I drove him back and forth from the city so he got a good 10 and a half hours in the car with me. So I was asking him and he said, ‘The biggest thing is legislative intent. When I'm sitting on my...I've got my judge hat on, I'm sitting there and I'm trying to figure out is this a constitutional issue, how did they make this decision, how do I apply this?' He said, ‘And so I thought, that's the best way to do that is to actually have that in there with our documentation inserts, this is why we decided this. So then when a judge picks that up they can say, ‘Oh, legislative intent -- this is why they did it so this is how we can apply it.' And then if it needs to be changed, then you know why that decision was made so you know how you can change it then ultimately."

Ian Record:

"So I'm curious, I know it's early but looking forward, if this process succeeds, it reaches its fruition, what will success look like when all's said and done?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Success I think for the committee and for myself, too, is that a new document ultimately gets written that's accepted by the people, but I think the real success is the implementation of that, is getting to that final product, is getting everybody onboard and I think that the way we're engaging the community now and getting their feedback and getting them involved in the process is going to help to expedite that process in the future because then when you sit down and you have a director of a program who's ultimately going to be their daily, day-to-day, basic stuff that they do is going to be impacted by this new constitution, that they're going to know why this stuff was done, how it was done because they are going to be part of the process. So then they can buy into it and everything can move, that transition can happen more quickly and also less painfully, the growing pains of trying to implement that. So I think that for us would be success is when that finished product is done and the implementation is done."

Ian Record:

"And isn't that really critical because when you think about it, when you ratify a new constitution, you're simply changing a document. You're changing paper and then you've got this much larger challenge I would argue of actually having to change the political culture of the community, not just of the elected leadership and those who work within government, but the citizens and how they interface with government, right?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes."

Ian Record:

"It's an on...does that not require some sort of ongoing education, educational challenge to remind and instruct people, ‘This is why the constitution is set out the way it is. This is what we decided at the time and why and this is what it means for you, citizen, program director, council member, chairman.'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes, for example, let's say I'm under a hardship and I need some help paying my light bill. Right now the process is they can go and just kind of ask one of the council members and say, ‘Hey, I need help. I need my lights paid.' And then they can then in turn pay that, but with the new...the way that the government will potentially kind of be set up it's going to have those checks and balances where if I don't do what I'm supposed to do and use my due diligence, then those...I'm going to have to go through the hoops of whatever we have for programs available to help me out rather than trying to just go right directly to one of my elected leaders and saying, ‘I need help. I want help.' So that's going to be a growing pain for some people because they're used to that. They've been doing that now for 10, 15, 20 years saying, ‘Hey, I need help with this. Hey, I need help with that.' So that is going to be very difficult for some people, but I think the overarching goals that we're going to have in place are going to kind of supersede any of those, the little...the intricate things that are going to have to get ironed out in the end. My hope is that that learning curve isn't so hard and it doesn't take as long, but I guess the people will ultimately be the ones to judge that and then the success will be based on how we adopt it and then implementation of it."

Ian Record:

"Well, Justin, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule -- I know you've got a lot on your plate -- to share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Awesome. Thank you."

Ian Record:

"Well, that's all the time we have on today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2014 Arizona Board of Regents."