I overheard one of the councilmen out here talking about how the tribe doesn’t have enough funds and that the U.S. government should give more money to the tribes. I believe this to be a misleading statement. In my opinion, it hides the truth from the people.
It may look, on the outside, that we are poor and have very limited funding (even to the tribal member), but as recent issues revealed to us, it isn’t about having little funding, its that tribal governments have been mismanaging and embezzling the funds we have.
My council, for example, gave themselves raises. Why, what did they do to deserve a raise? The cost of living on the reservation isn’t that much and many councilmen don’t even pay rent on their homes.
We are told time and time again that the tribe has no funds or that we cannot get help because the programs are broke. I find it hard to believe these excuses. If the tribe ran the programs the way they were supposed to with accountability, checks and balances, there wouldn’t be any need to complain that we are consistently broke.
The truth is that the people are seldom told what, where or how their money is spent. In some cases, relatives of councilmen or educational staff get paid for doing nothing.
I find it insulting when councilmen or tribal presidents complain about what limited funding they have when they are living high off the hog. They shouldn’t be whining about needing more money from the U.S. government because they don’t have any controls in place to ensure that the full potential of funding they get is used.
I have an idea. Why don’t these leaders try sovereignty and-self sufficiency? It’s been decades now since we started to actually call our tribes sovereign governments. Why haven’t any of the tribes actually become sovereign and acted like nations since that time?
Our ancestors knew what self-sufficiency was. We should be living up to their standards.
If these tribal leaders would stop embezzling, mismanaging and abusing the tribal funds we do get, then we shouldn’t have any problem with not having enough money to help the people.
A wise man once told me, ‘Personal gain is prosecutable.’
It seems to me that many tribal leaders and program people don’t realize that if they use tribal or school property, not to mention funding, for their own use, they can be charged with a felony.
In my opinion, if the people want justice and equal treatment on their reservations, forensic audits need to be done on all tribal and educational funds. These audits specifically look into fraud. Once these audits are completed and those who have stolen from the tribal people are caught, this weeds out the crooks from the professionals.
Checks and balances in many aspects of our tribal programs, governments, court and law enforcement will bring about a new form of responsibility and respect.
Eliminating the internal cause of our funding problems will bring more resources to our youth, elderly and our middle-aged people who raise these youth and take care of the elderly. They provide for the well-being of the people, ensuring a stable environment and a stable system of government.
There can never be a true, Native utopia. Nations are not without an element of corruption. The problem with tribal governments today is that they are unbalanced or unequal. The good is overwhelmed by the bad motives of tribal leadership and it will stay this way until the people demand what they always have been missing ? accountability.
And through accountability, our tribes can learn to save money while making the funding we have work for the people rather then ending up in the pockets of the few.
I know many of you who reside on the reservation and struggle to make a living every day don’t understand why our tribes are broke. You must try to look at it like an older sibling who is stealing from the family for his or her own selfish needs.
A time will come when we will actually become sovereign or independent.
When that day comes, and we haven’t learned accountability, we will fail at it.
What tribal leaders and employees need to understand is that funding we get isn’t for their personal use and, when they sign checks for relatives or themselves that isn’t justifiable, then they are in actuality stealing from the people.
Tribes need to learn how to build their nations. When long ago we were one Teton nation, today we are divided into reservations. Building our nations up eventually will lead to a reunification of the Teton tribes as one.
Today we don’t need more funding, we need more honesty. Dishonest leaders cost too much. We can’t afford them, we don’t need them and we don’t want them.
The United States shouldn’t give anymore money to my tribe or others. We just need to clean out the rats who are eating at the grain stores of our people.
If we remove the thieves from our tribal governments and educational institutions, we will find we have enough money to run the tribe. It’s that simple, yet when you have Third World leaders leading the people, you will find it hard to remove them without forensic audits and felony convictions.
Nation building begins with the people and their voice, and only through the people can we achieve sovereignty.
