Candidates respond to Tribal member questions

 

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Candidates for the upcoming Tribal Council election spent 90 minutes Thursday, July 23, answering questions submitted by Tribal members, which included council decision making, enrollment, Tribal sovereignty, conduct at meetings, general welfare payments and more.

The questions were selected at random for each candidate, who had the chance to answer four, in addition to providing opening and closing statements.

Candidates who finished answering and still had time remaining in the two minutes allotted were allowed to answer earlier questions addressed to their fellows. Due to space considerations, Smoke Signals is not providing the entire list of questions and answers. To watch the full video, visit grandronde.org/videos/.

Lisa Leno and Matthew Haller are running for reelection, while Tribal members Valeria Atanacio, Christopher Bailey and Tribal Elders Denise Harvey and Pamala Warren-Chase are also seeking seats on the council. Harvey served on Tribal Council previously for four terms. Leno is seeking her fourth term. Haller is seeking a second term.

Tribal Council member Kathleen George gave the invocation. Interim General Manager Bryan Langley acted as moderator.

Haller said he had joined numerous committees and was eager to continue the work he had started. Harvey said she is running because “some of the things I’m seeing have me concerned.” She noted her extensive experience working with the federal government.

Atanacio said her childhood experience of going into foster care and being separated from her siblings taught her importance of family and community and council members “are not elected to lead from own perspectives alone,” but to reflect the views of Tribal members.

Bailey said he had been asked to run by other Tribal members. He said he supports having more General Council meetings take place outside of Grand Ronde and creating a stronger land base for the Tribe.

Warren-Chase said her long-time dream is to serve on council.

“All I want to do really, truly, is serve,” she said. “And the best way to do that is in this leadership role.”

Leno promised to serve with integrity.

“Serving our Tribe has never been just a position for me,” she said. “It’s been a calling.”

Harvey was asked if she would support adding 50 more people to the annual lottery for a total of 250 new enrollments.

“Absolutely,” Harvey said. “In my last term, I actually assumed that was going to occur fairly quickly. It had been talked about quite a bit. I felt like everyone was pretty supportive of that.”

A question about how to handle friends or family members asking for special treatment or favors went to Haller, who said he’d continue to handle it the way he does now.

“Nepotism is one of the reasons I wanted this position,” Haller said. “I don’t believe it has a place. I’ll use my own daughter as an example; she’s smart, she’s independent. She sits as the vice chair of our Youth Council, and she often comes to me with asks or desires and I purposely will not even entertain those questions. I tell her at that point, ‘As much as you are my daughter, it’s up to you to advocate for yourself, because I do not believe in nepotism and it does not belong in our organization.’”

Haller noted that everyone elected to council is connected to a large family.

“If you cannot remove the name from the equation, you should not be one of the people making the decision,” he said.

Atanacio answered a question how she would go about reducing programming or staff, if needed to balance the budget, with a question that noted the initial Tribal budget has been in deficit.

“Every year, this is a concern,” Atanacio said. “For me, I do believe that some of those calls are difficult and they’re ones that need to be made. I don’t think it’s the Tribal Council’s role necessarily to implement that…That’s what staff are for and they help determine what their programs need, what their services entail and who can support that work.”

She continued, “But in terms of a larger budget question, I think we can get a little bit more forward-thinking in our strategy, in our way of how we’re planning for the future. This is the first time I’m hearing some of the people in the room talk about like a general welfare plan, just making that sustainable; I love that idea. Why wouldn’t we also be looking at maybe an Elders fund? The way that we take care of different populations in the community, the way we can grow that and make sure that it is sustainable, far after we are here, you know, serving the next seven generations, because we will be here, always.  … I want to learn more about how we could do that. I think part is getting a unified vision and being able to share in what are the true priorities of the Tribe to make sure that we’re here for many generations to come.”

A question whether people who have previously sued the Tribe should be allowed to run for Tribal Council went to Bailey, who said they should.

“Is the Tribe infallible, no,” Bailey said. “I’ve worked with people in the Tribe, employees that have sued successfully because it was found they were fired without cause. … I think it’s a complicated issue. Frivolous lawsuits could be a problem. But if somebody’s mistreated by the Tribe and that can happen; we have hundreds of employees and thousands of Tribal members and things can happen, they need to have some recompense. … there could be situations, but at the same time, you don’t want to make specific rules preventing somebody who’s been wronged by the Tribe from being able to serve the Tribal membership.”

Warren-Chase was asked whether the Tribe’s general welfare amounts are sustainable.

They are at the moment, she said, but the Tribe needs to think about the future.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Warren-Chase said. “We want general welfare payments, but we also want our descendants eligible and able to enroll. How’s that going to look in the future? How’s that going to look 20 years down the road, in regard to that pool? These things all need to be thought out for not how they affect things today or tomorrow or next week, but how they affect things five years, 10 years, 30 years down the road.”

She said she would need more information to know how sustainable the payments will be in the long term.

Leno fielded a question about whether it is appropriate for Tribal members to override decisions about patient care, sparked by recent complaints that the council voted to place a resident in Adult Foster Care, whose needs are greater than the facility is designed to meet and who has allegedly been causing disruption.

“There are times we are going to have information, or be working from a value system that may not be exactly in line with a decision that a clinical employee is going to make … My perspective it’s not overriding staff; it’s looking at from a different position,” she said.