Native American Press/Ojibwe News

Greed, ego and secrecy—Red Lake style

January 18, 2002
What’s happened to Houston’s giant energy corporation, Enron, appears to also be what’s happening at Red Lake. Greed, ego and secrecy led to the financial collapse and filing of bankruptcy at the Enron Corporation. Hopefully, Red Lake will not end up with that kind of shambles, but the financial situation is imploding around us.

It’s almost shocking that tribal treasurer King has never made any effort to answer the questions raised by this publication and others about the $40 million in casino expansion construction costs, and about the bidding process for construction contracts.

If King has nothing to hide, he would have certainly made those records available. Construction costs should not be a “state secret”—they are expenditures of the tribe’s money which are required to be open to the scrutiny of tribal members. King refused to answer any of the questions that I raised at the November tribal council meeting. He has refused to respond to telephone calls.

Instead of facing up to the questions raised by many Red Lakers, King has tried to raise a plethora of side issues, such as accusing me of not showing up for a meeting about a mid-year audit that was done by an in-house accounting firm that was done to address embezzlement of casino funds. This was yet another one of his attempts to divert attention away from the real and serious financial problems that are the result of the $40 million that have been spent in the last year or so in the casino expansions at Warroad and Thief River Falls. Are the casinos making a profit? Was the casino expansion a good idea? Open the books, Dan, and we’ll see for ourselves.

Now that the Red Lake tribal council has accepted the petition to recall tribal treasurer Dan King and has set an election date, the people of Red Lake should be commended for their courage and participation in this historic event.

Instead of facing the problems as a leader and a person who has taken an oath to manage our affairs properly and protect our interests, King has reacted to the Red Lake community movement to recall him by releasing a flood of half-information in his personal “report” publications (published at tribal expense) and in his several-page articles including, “…Hatred, jealousy and political posturing … are the real reasons behind the current recall nonsense,” in the tribal council’s newspaper, The Red Lake Nation.

However, it’s still mind-boggling that King has never addressed the charges made against him. Instead, he has continued his campaign of deception, as well as trying to divert attention away from himself by blaming others. King’s evasive strategies have caused animosity and divisiveness within the tribe itself.

King has spent tribal money like it was his own and like it was inexhaustible, an endless supply of golden coins (or maybe new Buffalo chips). He has exposed the assets of the Red Lake Band to excessive risk—and then blamed his problems on the 9-11 terrorist attacks, on other tribal council members, on petitioners, and on tribal members who have been critical of his seemingly irresponsible financial management.

King’s reactions to the financial problems at Red Lake reminds me of the way that Finn and Wadena reacted to stories and allegations about their management of tribal financial affairs. Does Dan King – as Finn and Wadena did – have something to hide? Time will tell, and people at Red Lake are concerned enough that the matter will not rest until we get to the bottom of it.

In spite of the hoopla of get-rich-quick casino mentality, $40 million dollars is still a lot of money. It isn’t your money, Dan, it belongs to the Red Lake people.

Some of King’s supporters seem to be following the same kind of strategy as King does, making unfounded allegations blaming people who speak out. For example, in the most recent issue of the Red Lake Nation, there was a letter to the editor by Kim Baker in which she discusses news articles and editorials that I’ve written or published in The Native American Press/Ojibwe News. Sending that letter to the tribal council’s newspaper rather than to the newspaper she was writing about is her prerogative, and I respect her right to express her view wherever she wants. However, I also have the right to express my views.

The Native American Press/Ojibwe News has been the voice of the people since we began publication in 1988, strongly supported by a grassroots movement of concerned Red Lake members. Our mission has always been to advocate civil rights and accountability. Red Lake tribal members are no different than any other U.S. citizen in that we have a right to know how our money is being spent, and asking for the audits is not only reasonable, but also: we have a right under the tribal constitution to examine them.

Indians have particular problems with civil rights, since unlike other citizens we do not have a bill of rights that protects the people from abusive practices by our tribal governments. We also do not have a separation of powers in tribal governments, therefore our tribal councils wield too much authority. The recently passed recall ordinance is small step in the right direction, and hopefully there will be more steps toward community empowerment to follow.

Press/ON takes responsible journalism seriously, and anyone who actually reads the newspaper can easily see that we cite the sources we get our information from unless those people ask to remain confidential. We publish a lot of original documents, so that our readers can examine the information for themselves and make up their own minds, rather than this newspaper editing them down or interpreting them according to our own editorial bias, like most other publications do.

Letter-writer Ms. Baker couldn’t have been reading this newspaper very carefully, since I have never written that I want “to get rid of the blood quantum for enrollment in Red Lake.” The way that blood quantum is currently administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior is statistically certain to cause ever-worsening problems for Indian people during the next couple of generations. Don’t take my word for it; wait and see. The Native American Press/Ojibwe News was fortunate enough to have been given a copy of the enrollments and genealogies compiled by Wub-e-ke-niew and his wife Clara. They spent more than a decade going through original records and working with elders to compile those genealogies.

Ms. Baker was right in that I was fortunate to grow up in an athletic family. I was active in sports in my youth, have been a runner for more than forty years, and I have run and finished the Twin Cities Marathon for the last two years. Enjoying athletics does not make a person whatever kind of sellout Ms. Baker was trying to imply. In my case, it certainly has made for a much healthier and enjoyable life.