Dear Santa: Buy Indian Christmas List

Dear Santa, I've been good this year. Please bring all of this stuff for me and my big Indian family:

For my mom, please bring Sister Sky bath and beauty products made from natural indigenous ingredients. They will make her feel so good.

For my dad, please bring him all the Umqua Indian Foods beef jerky he can eat. He loves the stuff.

For my younger brother, please bring him a pair of custom-made Eighth Generation shoes, size 8. Louie Gong is awesome.

For my older brother, please bring him Sherman Alexie's book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I don't like to read but he does.

For my older sister, please bring her Gyasi Ross. She really needs a boyfriend and he's pretty cool. If Gyasi's out of stock, please bring her a Litefoot CD.

For my cousins, please bring them cool gear from Native Threads. They'll be psyched with a new hoodie or hat.

For my aunties, please bring them fine Indian made jewelry from any of the vendors with the Indian Arts and Crafts Association. They like those big, dangling ear rings.

For my uncles, please bring them prime cuts of all-natural, native grass-fed, free range beef and buffalo from Native Grasslands Beef & Buffalo Co. You can't go wrong with a big steak for all of my big uncles.

For my great aunties and uncles, please bring them gourmet, indigenous harvested coffee from Native Coffee Traders. Coffee is gross but they love the stuff.

For my grandmas, please bring them each a quilt from Concow Quilts in Covelo, California. They are the finest Indian quilts around.

For my grandpas, please bring them each a gift certificates for a Quinault Indian guided fishing tour. They would love to get out of the house for a day.

For my teachers at school, please bring them Indian smoked salmon from First American Natural Foods.

For my tribe and our tribal leaders, please bring them the tools to build a vibrant small Indian business sector so my tribal will thrive for generations to come.

As for me, I just want my own per capita.

Anyway, I hope you like the cookies I made for you.

Thank you, Santa.

Jimmy Indian, age 8

State & Local Government Should Consult With Tribes

According to Stephen Cornell and Joe Kalt:

As we look to the future, there are signs of instability in the support for self-determination. The rising economic and political clout of Indian nations are often seen as threats at the local level to non-Indian governments. Although beyond the scope of this study, this is raising inter-jurisdictional conflicts, often resulting in litigation.

Indeed, while the United States endeavors “to regular[ly] and meaningful[ly] consultation and collaboration with tribal officials in policy decisions that have tribal implications” per President Obama’s Tribal Consultation Memorandum, state and local government often feel no such obligation.

Instead of attempting to resolve inter-jurisdictional differences with their tribal neighbors through consultation and collaboration (which could result in inter-local agreements or compacts), states, counties, cities and townships increasingly turn to litigation for "resolution" of such differences.

Unless the attitude of local government changes in this regard, it is the local citizenry -- Indians and non-Indians alike -- who will literally and figuratively pay the price. Litigation is a zero sum game when governmental monies are used to fund court costs rather than essential programs and services for citizens.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

Buy Local = Buy Indian

Saturday, November 27, is Small Business Saturday. Small Business Saturday organizers proclaim that “for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures." While Indian small business owners do not pay taxes at the same level as non-Indian small business owners -- but they do still pay taxes -- this calculus is likely the same for every $100 spent at a tribal or Indian family owned businesses. Indeed, whether the idea is to Buy Local or Buy Indian, the concept is the same: keep your family's hard earned monies on your reservation and otherwise in your local community because by doing so, that $100 recycles and multiplies there, rather than elsewhere.

“Small Business Saturday recognizes the importance of small businesses to the overall economy and local communities. It’s a day to support the small, independently owned businesses we can’t live without.”

Buy Indian Day -- be it November 27 or any other day this holiday season -- should recognize the importance of small Indian businesses to the overall tribal economy and reservation communities. It's a day to support the small, tribally owned businesses Indian Country can't live without if we are ever to realize a vibrant tribal private sector.

Buy Local/Indian: what are we waiting for?

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

Buy Indian Part II: Calling All Casino Managers!

Tribal Casino Managers: As you know, fueled by a stable $26 billion in annual gross gaming revenues, tribal governmental gaming operations wield hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian purchasing power.  You wield the tribes’ enormous purchasing power.  You hold the purse strings.

Before tribes might pass Tribal Buy Indian Acts that mandate their casinos’ procurement of Indian goods and services, Indian Country needs your help.  We need you to dedicate tribal casinos’ purchasing power to Indian goods and services, not because you have to but because “it’s the right thing to do.”  Buying Indian really is the right thing to do, for Indian Country.

As the post, Calling All Tribal Leaders! explains, Buy Indian is critical to the development of a tribal small business sector.  It is important for you to understand the reality of not having Native family-owned businesses flourishing on the reservation you are helping improve through the tribe’s gaming enterprise.

Without a reservation private sector:

• Indian job opportunity is lost. The “Indian brain drain” – the drain of tribal talent from the reservation – will continue.
• Reinvestment in tribal businesses and homes, and the modernization of reservation infrastructure, does not happen at acceptable levels, if at all.  As a casino manager, you of course want there to be aesthetically pleasing roads, sidewalks, streetlights, landscaping and parking lots, as well as other businesses, surrounding the gaming enterprise.
• Opportunities to diversify tribal economies away from cigarettes, fireworks and gaming, towards more sustainable industries, and for tribes to tax Indian business activities to enhance governmental programs and services, do not flourish.
• Tribal quality of life – for example, not having to drive hours to go shopping – cannot improve.
• Indian sovereignty and self-determination is not fully realized.

With the goals of a vibrant private sector and in turn a better way of reservation life in mind, Indian Country needs your help buying Indian.  The tribal community you serve needs you to focus the tribe’s procurement power on Indian goods and services, which are increasingly available to your casino.  To give you a few examples: Sister Sky, a business owned by two Spokane sisters, manufacturers hygiene products made from traditional Indian botanicals, which they sell at shopping malls and to hotels and spas. Yakama Juice, America’s first Native-owned juice plant, produces organic juices that are fine enough for Costco to sell wholesale, as well as purified water and sports drinks.  Caddo Solutions, a Caddo Indian-owned enterprise out of Denver, provides a wide variety of office services and supplies to businesses all over the country.

Unfortunately, at virtually every Indian casino, hotel or resort in America, the bathroom products are still furnished by the likes of Sysco, not Sister Sky; the beverages are provided by Coke or Pepsi, not Yakama Juice; and the office supplies are purchased from Costco or Office Max.  Indian Country needs your help to change that reality.

That said, does buying Indian come without any challenges?  No.  Might Indian goods and services, as with those of any other local business competing with national or multi-national companies, come at a higher price?  Sure.  Could Native family-run businesses need a little bit of help from you to get integrated into your casino’s sophisticated way of procurement and doing business?  Maybe.  Yet should any excuses be made for tribal small businesses that do not provide you service at the level you expect from Corporate American?  Absolutely not.  Buying and selling Indian will most certainly take effort, patience and resolve from everyone involved.

Like my grandfather always preached to me: “Where there is a will, there is a way.”  Indian Country needs you, as stewards of tribal economic resources, to instill in your mind and heart, the will to buy Indian.  With your and your management team’s will to buy Indian, there is a way towards equipping your casino with the Native goods and services you need to succeed – and Indian Country with the hope it needs for the future.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.