Area Tribes Pumped By New Blood Young, Educated Leaders Provide Indians With Optimism And Clout

Jaime Pinkham once swore he’d never raise his family on a reservation.

Pride and guilt changed his mind. At 41, he’s helping run the place.

“One of the first things I did when I moved home was start singing with the Nez Perce Nation Singers,” says Pinkham. “When you sit around and drum and sing those old victory songs that have been there for generations …”

There’s a drumbeat of optimism sounding among Inland Northwest tribes, as a generation of well-educated Indians takes the reins. Combined with new economic clout, the effect in some cases is like going from horseback to hyperdrive.

“It’s a lot different. A lot better,” says elder Lawrence Aripa, vice chairman of the Coeur d’Alene tribe. “I don’t think the people of 20 years ago ever imagined we’d have the opportunities that we have now.”

Power brokers who were once reluctant to deal with tribal leaders are sitting across the table from them, according to David Matheson, chief executive officer of the Coeur d’Alenes’ gambling operations.

“Today, we have a monthly meeting with the governor. We know our congressional delegation, and they know us,” Matheson says.

“We know how the game is played. And we’re getting good at it.”

More sophisticated management - combined with profits from casinos, logging and other tribal businesses - has improved the odds of winning a better life for long-impoverished Indians.

There are paychecks to be made on the reservations.

The Colville Confederated Tribes, for example, had fewer than 20 staff members 30 years ago. Now, there are about 1,000. An equal number are employed in tribal businesses.

What’s really revolutionary, though, is not the number of jobs available.

It’s the fact that so many of them are professional positions that can be filled by Native Americans, because they have the education to qualify. They’re slowly taking over from white people as accountants, scientists, counselors.

The most successful of them move smoothly from power lunch to powwow. Yet they don’t separate the white and Indian worlds, says Peter Campbell, a Native American counselor at Eastern Washington University.

Instead, they meld the cultures.

Campbell uses the example of Indian scientists.

“If you’re linked to tens of thousands of generations of knowledge that’s specific to an area, and you combine that with the Euro-American body of knowledge, then you have something that nobody else has.”

One of his favorite examples is Tim Peone, an EWU graduate who manages the Spokane tribe’s fish hatchery.

Says Peone: “I not only have concern for the tribe’s well-being and natural resources, but I’m an avid fisherman and hunter. I’m very protective of that.”

Peone wanted to be a veterinarian, then got sidetracked when a good-paying fisheries job came along. But never doubted that he wanted to work on the reservation.

“All of my family wants to live here,” says Peone, one of eight children.

As with the Matheson family, several Peone siblings have degrees or are earning them.

Some Indians chose a career primarily because they know that skill is needed on the reservation. They often value community success over individual success, says Alan Marshall, who teaches social studies at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston.

White people are much more likely to abandon their families, heading to the big city in search of better jobs and salaries, says Marshall.

“This to many Indian people is like abandoning your wealth.”

Pinkham rediscovered his cultural wealth.

Born in Lewiston and raised on the Yakama reservation, he got a forestry degree and saw it as escape into a richer world. He worked for the federal government, for industry, then for the state of Washington.

Then he landed a professional program that included travel. In Peru, he found pride in his own past.

“Our guide was explaining the achievements of the Inca people. She said. ‘They adored nature and that made them wise.’ It sounded like something my grandfather would have said.”

Visiting Detroit, he remarked to a classmate that a soup kitchen reminded him of an Indian reservation.

“It made me feel guilty,” he says. “I thought, ‘If my heart can go out to these people, why can’t my heart go out to the people back home?”’

In 1990, he accepted a job as the Nez Perce Tribe’s natural resource manager in Lapwai, Idaho.

Now he’s tribal treasurer. His recent accomplishments included helping to acquire the first Oregon property that the Nez Perce have owned since Chief Joseph fled his homeland 120 years ago.

Pinkham had to prove himself when he returned to the reservation, but says he understood the need for that. The education and outside that tribal elders value can make them wary, too.

Get a degree, or spend much time off the reservation, and you may have to prove that you’re not an “apple.” That means red on the outside, white on the inside, says Harvey Moses, Jr., of the Colville Confederated Tribes.

Moses, 48, earned his business administration degree gradually and held progressively more responsible jobs with his tribe. He rose from clerk to chief financial officer.

He never left the Nespelem area, instead commuting from Nespelem to Eastern Washington University. That approach can make it harder to get your ideas heard on the reservation, Moses says with a sigh.

“It’s easier to be accepted if you leave and come back. Those people are somehow more intelligent.”

Ideas brought back from college often clash with the native culture, says Michael Pavel, a Washington State University professor and Skokomish Indian.

“A child leaves the reservation and gets an MBA, and knows one lifeline of the tribe is economic development.

“So he comes back to the reservation and says, ‘Let’s log those trees because the timber will give us good money to support tribal enterprises or build desperately needed homes.”’

Wanting to protect wildlife, Pavel says, the traditional tribal leaders in that scenario object. But they are influenced nonetheless.

“What happens now is people will listen to the MBA and say, ‘Maybe we should take a few of those trees.”’

Elders look for young leaders who understand their heritage, says Adeline Fredin, manager of the Colville Tribes’ history department.

She points to Moses, who served on the tribal council like his rancher father before him.

“He’s college educated and also understands that spiritual responsibility,” she says, adding that education isn’t just “a certificate you hang on the wall.”

Velma Bahe doesn’t have a college degree to frame. But at age 45 she’s gotten enough on-the-job training to help guide the Kootenai Tribe out of desperate times.

At 20, she was the tribe’s youngest-ever chairman. She was among a group of high school graduates whose families called upon them to help fight for recognition. Hopeless, plagued by alcoholism and nearly landless, their numbers had dwindled to 67.

The core of young leaders - mostly women in a male-dominated culture - have stayed on. Tribal enrollment is up to 116. Casino profits are replacing dropping federal dollars, and the tribe is looking for another businesses opportunity.

Skip Smyser, a lobbyist who represents the Kootenais, is deeply impressed with their leaders’ steadfast search for self-sufficiency.

“Velma is a perfect example,” says Smyser, a former Idaho state senator. “She is dedicated to enhancing the life of her tribal members, and she’s going to do that.”

“She is quiet, not pushy in any way. Always the ultimate in decorum. In these battles with a lot of heavy hitters, this diminutive young woman digs in her heels and won’t be swayed.”

Matthews, the Coeur d’Alene tribe’s gaming manager, was also his tribe’s youngest-ever chairman. He was 31. The year was 1981. The tribal pig farm, sawmill and retail center were bankrupt.

“They wanted somebody who could do something,” he says of his election. “I think that’s why they were ready for a youngster.”

After four terms on the tribal council, Matheson put his political science and MBA degrees to work in Washington D.C. He worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, eventually becoming its director in the Bush administration.

When it was time to find his next job, Indian gambling operations were on a roll throughout the country. Matheson turned down some lucrative management offers to return to Idaho.

“I wanted to come home,” he says.

Things are looking up at home. Way up. Tribal businesses are doing well, gambling profits are being plowed back into education. A highly successful clinic is serving both Indians and general public in Plummer.

“Gaming will only be a footnote in our history,” Matheson predicts.

His vision for the future of his people includes high-tech industries, worldwide telecommunications.

In a way common among Native American leaders, Matheson speaks of his own future and his tribe’s in the same breath.

“Someday, we may take a seat at the table of corporate America,” Matheson says.

“They picked the wrong guy to go to school, and the wrong guy to go to D.C., if they just want us to hang around the res and sell jewelry.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo