Flathead Reservation banks on diversified economy
Prague 2007: Common Ground
The Blackfeet Reservation is in the midst of a crisis. Recently, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took over control of law enforcement on the reservation, and its arrival hasn’t been welcomed by many in the community.
“They provide spotty—sometimes thuggish—law enforcement,” said John McGill, editor of the Glacier Reporter, a weekly paper based in Browning, Mont.
Aside from the obvious dangers of having an inadequate police force on the reservation, the lack of security has only added to the economic problems of the area.
“They (business owners) don’t bring businesses here because we don’t have a police force,” said Marlene Augare, an advertising representative with the Glacier Reporter.
A bright spot in the reservation’s economic picture has been the newly opened Glacier Peaks Casino. Tribal leaders hoped the casino’s proximity to the east entrance to Glacier National Park—about 13 miles—would attract some of the parks’ roughly two million visitors annually.
But construction delays forced the casino’s opening to the fall of 2006, as the tourism season was drawing to a close. The grand opening was followed by a slow start, and momentum hasn’t picked up, Augare said.
“After the excitement settled, the wages settled, too,” Augare said of the casino opening.
The tribe’s efforts to generate income through gaming have been hampered by state regulations on Class III gaming (Vegas-style gaming, including video poker and video keno). Because the Blackfeet tribal government and the Montana state government have not reached an agreement on a gaming compact, the casino offers only Class II (bingo-based) games. Roger Running Crane, the director of tribal gaming on the Blackfeet Reservation, explains that every tribe is different, and so every compact should be tailored to the individual tribe.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation have been dealing with gaming issues of their own. Since the tribes’ compact with the state expired last November, the two entities have not been able to negotiate a new one, and video poker and keno machines were removed from facilities across the reservation.
Though the tribes recently opened casinos that provide Class II gaming, revenue from casinos isn’t the tribal government’s main source of revenue, said the tribal council chairman, James Steele.
“Our tribe has hardly ever been big on gaming,” Steele said. “As far as we’re concerned, Class III gaming is not a concern.”
Situated north of Missoula, the Flathead Reservation is populated by the Salish and Kootenai tribes. According to some historical studies, the tribes are among the first to enter Montana. The Salish probably migrated from the Columbia Plateau, but the Kootenai may have lived in Montana since ancient times.
The Flathead Reservation may be the most economically successful of Montana’s seven reservations. For fiscal year 2007, the tribe estimates an income of some $31 million. Steele attributed Flathead’s robust economy in part to the natural resources in this area, citing timber harvest as the tribe’s second strongest revenue generator. Gaming ranked third, bringing in between $1.5 million and $2 million, Steele said.
But the biggest revenue generator on the reservation is the Kerr Dam, just outside of Polson, Mont., drawing in nearly two-thirds of the tribe’s annual income. With the ability to generate 190 megawatts of hydroelectric power, the dam provides electricity to the tribe, as well as the whole area from Kalispell to Missoula.
Constructed in the 1930s, the dam is jointly operated by Pacific Power and Light Montana and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The first contract between the tribes and then-owner Montana Power Company was signed in 1935 for the period of 50 years. A renegotiation of the dam’s license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 1985 allows the tribes the option of purchasing the dam from PPL Montana in 2015, an event Steele says the tribe is already planning for. In addition to the purchasing option, the renegotiated license ensured a $ 9 million annual rental fee to the tribe. Although the dam affected the fisheries on the Flathead River, the benefit to the tribes in income and job opportunities has been a boon to the reservation’s economy.
In addition to the dam, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have been making steady progress in the area of government contracting and information technologies.
Based in St. Ignatius, Mont., Salish & Kootenai Technologies grew out of Salish and Kootenai Electronics, and currently does contracting work for government agencies like the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Department of Defense, providing services such as software development or building parts for armored personnel carriers in use in Iraq. The company is governed by a tribal Board of Directors, and a percentage of the company’s profits go directly to the tribal government, said Amy Yalon, a business development specialist at S&K Technologies.
It’s part of the Flathead tribes’ strategy to avoid relying on gaming for their main source of income, Yalon said.
“What the Salish and Kootenai are trying to do is be more dynamic,” she said.
Until last year, S&K Technologies was part of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, which meant the government had to award them a certain number of contracts, thus ensuring a steady income to the tribes.
Most recently, S&K Technologies boasted some $72 million in revenues, with offices in Ohio, Georgia, Texas, and Washington and 282 employees nationwide. While the company gives hiring preference to Indians, Steele said the main benefit to the tribes is not in providing employment for Indians on the reservation, but in providing income to the tribal government.
In addition to their contracting work, S&K Technologies also does consulting work for other tribes that are interested in getting into government contracting. The mentorship is essential to other tribes who might not be familiar with the complicated bureaucratic processes of government work.
"Tribes usually don't know how to get into it, " Yalon said. "This business is about lot of networking and knowing people."
But efforts to continue to improve the economy on the Flathead Reservation haven’t been without setbacks. In the summer of 2003, the tribal council began work to establish an economic development office that would lobby investors and companies to open businesses on the reservation, Steele said.
Ideally, the office would have a director and about 20 staff members. But after years of searching for interested people to staff the office, the efforts seem to have stalled. Steele attributes the difficulties in starting up the office to those any new government organization would experience.
“It’s a new office with undefined parameters,” Steele said, adding that at this point he’d expect the office to be staffed by only a handful of people, most likely a director, a secretary, and an administrative assistant.
Still, for all the efforts and progress made on the Flathead Reservation, unemployment there is higher than the national and state averages. While the average U.S. unemployment rate is about 4.8 percent, and Montana’s is 3.5 percent, the average unemployment rate on reservations is more than 12 percent. On the Flathead Reservation, the unemployment rate is six percent. The largest employers there are the tribal and federal governments, tribal enterprises and school systems. Of private sector employers, the largest are grocery stores, construction companies, and similar service industry jobs.
Chairman Steele attributes the success of the Flathead Reservation to the tribe’s government, and to the people who make up the tribe. The tribes have been steadily garnering more and more control over their own affairs from the federal government, and Steele said it’s paid off.
“I believe self-governing tribes are much better off,” Steele said. “A government is only as good as the people in it.”
plz study islam to learn more about charater and islam for coming world.
Posted by: muhammad siddique | February 13, 2008 at 11:52 PM