Tribal leaders relate challenges, vision
BOISE – Coeur d’Alene Tribal Chairman Chief Allan told a Boise audience Thursday that the greatest challenge facing his tribe is its high rate of school dropouts.
“We’ve gone so far, but we’ve also lost a lot of ground in a lot of ways,” he said. The Coeur d’Alenes gave $500 college scholarships to 18 high school graduates this year, he said. But 13 kids dropped out of school.
Ultimately, Allan said, his hope for the tribe in the future is that it will be a healthy community whose kids go off to college, then return home “and we’re able to provide jobs for everybody.
“That’s my vision, that’s my hope, that’s my prayer, and I will do my best to provide that for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe,” Allan told the Boise City Club.
Allan and Nez Perce Tribe managing attorney Julie Kane touched on tribal relations with the state, culture, gaming, taxes, jobs and more, in their talk to the nonpartisan Boise group.
Among topics that came up:
“On the dismissal of Coeur d’Alene Tribal Gaming CEO Dave Matheson after Matheson proposed distributing $1,000-a-month checks to tribal members from gaming revenue, Allan said, “He was let go for numerous reasons, and that wasn’t the only reason. … Dave was there for 13 years. He’s a great guy, but we want to move in a different direction. The tribe has always agreed in sharing our profits with everyone.” But it couldn’t so drastically change its distribution of gaming proceeds without renegotiating its gaming compact with both the state and the federal government, Allan said.
He added that recruiting for a replacement has already begun.
“Both Kane and Allan praised former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s appointment as secretary of the interior and said they look forward to working with him on tribal issues. Kane said an assistant secretary of Indian affairs position has been vacant for two years. “We are hoping to have somebody fill that post, and hopefully someone from the Northwest,” she said.
Allan said former Gov. Kempthorne proposed two new positions in his education budget this past year to address the high tribal dropout rate, but legislative budget writers turned down the proposal. “We will continue to work with the next governor to try to get that in the budget,” Allan said. “Education is a high priority for our community.”
Allan and Kane were asked how federal agencies and other employers around the state can attract Native American job applicants, when they’re not located near reservations. Allan said he sees the issue differently.
“One of the things we’re having a hard time with is to keep some of these kids at home,” he said. “We’ve got two doctors that graduated, and we can’t make ‘em come home. We’ve got a J.D. and an MBA from Stanford, and we can’t entice them to come home,” in part because they can earn such high salaries elsewhere.
Asked what persuaded him to return to the reservation after his college education, Allan said he grew up with lots of hardship and a troubled home life, but became the first in his family to graduate from college and went on to be elected tribal chairman.
Part of his inspiration came from his unusual first name, he said. “My mom, when she named me Chief … gave me that inspiration,” Allan said. “It sounds kind of corny, but I’ve always known that I was going to come home and try to run for tribal council.”
Allan said he’s always wanted to show kids on the reservation that they can succeed. He lauded the Nez Perce Tribe’s efforts to “grow their own teachers,” and said he hoped the Coeur d’Alenes could learn from that effort to help tribal students study to become teachers, then return home and teach.
“Besides that,” he added, “North Idaho – no offense to the people in Boise – North Idaho is God’s country.”