BREAKING NEWS: FEMA trailers sold, patients notified and more...

I have several breaking news stories to report on in today’s blog, which include news that our tribal council sold 41 FEMA trailers that were supposed to come to LCO and aid in our housing shortages. This is a huge story and the truth is just surfacing. But, first I’d like to talk about the letter our tribal council sent out to the 229 people whose files were removed from the clinic.

Apparently, our leadership has decided that the employee who took the files did nothing wrong. Tribal Attorney Jason Stark said that what this employee did was in the course of normal work procedure. This is what he told me at the tribal office on Tuesday. It gets better…our leadership, in their letter to the victims, is recommending that everyone file a complaint against me with IHS because I had the list of names and decided to do the right thing and inform those people their files were taken from the clinic. In the letter, it states that I can be fined $50,000 to $1,000,000 per person.

 

Stark told me that the decision to send this particular letter wasn’t made by the tribal council, but was actually sent out by the HIPAA office and that it is now up to the Department of Justice prosecutors whether to pursue these fines against me. The BS just gets deeper and deeper.

He’s flat out lying to me because Gordon Thayer said they presented this letter to him to sign for tribal council authorization and he wouldn’t sign it. I asked Stark about that and he said it was an earlier version of the letter. Both Little Guy and Larry K. said the same thing, there were multiple versions of this letter passed around, but that Stark was seeking their signatures. Little Guy said the original letter he saw never mentioned anything about filing complaints against the person who had the list of names.

Stark then claimed that it was a different version of the letter that was sent out and had nothing to do with our tribal council. There won’t be any type of charges against me and he knows this. The letter was sent out by him and authorized by the tribal council. It is another election ploy to try to make you all think that I’m the one who actually did something wrong here. They continued to cover up the story, lied to us and even tried to keep from firing the employee, who happens to be Norma Ross’ niece. The only reason they eventually admitted anything happened and fired the employee was because I wrote the past stories that I wrote. Now they are mad that I forced their hand. Funny how they finally sent out a letter notifying the victims just days before the election and in it, they recommend people file a complaint on me. If this weren’t so serious a matter, it would be hysterical.

Some unanswered questions in regards to TGB statement on patient files

Our tribal attorneys have continuously given bad advice to our leadership. This is one example, and later in this blog, I will show another major example in the sales transaction of those FEMA trailers. Jason Stark can’t even practice law in Wisconsin. When he travels outside the reservation to represent our tribe, we have to pay for two attorneys to travel. He has Courtney Allensworth, another one of our three attorneys, travel with him so that she can actually represent the tribe.

Our tribal attorneys actually said in the statement released by the tribe a few weeks ago in regards to these patient files that their investigation was forwarded to the district attorney’s office in Hayward for possible charges against me for having the list that was dropped off on my doorstep. This leads me to another story about our district attorney, Bruce Poquette. If you didn’t know this already, now you are being informed that he is married to the daughter of Norma Ross. Yes, that’s right, he’s married to Sara. My wife and I have been living with the concern that they could trump up some ridiculous charges in this matter because I have been writing the truth about Norma Ross and her activities highlighted in the audit report.

Here’s why this is a serious concern. It has to do with the trash-letter that Paul Demain is passing around about me. He has a police report from the city of Hayward that indicates I have a battery charge against me prosecuted by Bruce Poquette, Norma Ross’s son-in-law.

Here’s the truth of the matter. My wife and I went out for a couple of drinks and some dancing and we ended up at the River’s Edge Saloon. We don’t get out much, but we should be able to as responsible adults, go out occasionally. It’s hard to get these times out for each other when you have four kids. So, here we are that night and not long after walking into the bar, the owner and two other men attacked me (one of them a tribal member) and I defended myself accordingly. I walked out of the bar and the police were already outside waiting for me. My first thought was that I was set up. Remember, I was already writing about our financial situation last fall. This event happened in January. There was no physical injury to anyone and one individual said he walked into a door. I was charged with disorderly conduct. I went to court without an attorney because I planned to plead to a fine if I could and accept responsibility for being there in the first place when I shouldn’t have. The district attorney hands me the new report and the charges had been upped to a battery.

I left the court in shock and soon found out that Poquette is Norma Ross’ son-in-law. Aaah, it made sense then. I talked with several law enforcement officers afterwards and they all agreed that normally, for a battery charge to take place there must have been physical injury and the officer on scene will take pictures, or a victim went to the hospital afterwards with an injury they didn’t know about. None of this happened in this case. They all agreed that the case was weak and it seemed that maybe I was being targeted. It seemed like a set-up from start to finish. I know that if someone was writing about my mother-in-law, I would want to do something about it if I could.

This is an obvious conflict of interest but not only for me, folks, but for our entire tribe. Any political foe of Norma Ross better hope they don’t end up in the Sawyer County Court System, for he may target you for a more serious crime or punishment. I didn’t batter anybody in my case but yet, he thinks he actually has a case. Good luck. I’ve heard other things about this district attorney as well, and it may come out eventually, and yes, it has to do with our tribe. It’s a sad fact, but Norma Ross through her son-in-law can actually pick and choose which of our members may go to jail. I say that any and all tribal members in his court should ask for a conflict of interest!

The main reason that Paul Demain is handing out this letter is that the bar owner of River’s Edge said to the police he kicked me out of his bar for snorting cocaine in his bathroom. This is an absolute lie. Everyone who knows me well knows that I don’t do any drugs. I haven’t even smoked weed since 1998. There isn’t one person on this Rez who can step forward and say they saw me do any cocaine or any other drug for that matter…EVER! Good luck Paul Demain trying to produce that and other than that, all you have there is a piece of hearsay from a worthless drugged out bar owner in Hayward, who was wasted drunk in his bar starting fights. I even blew low enough that I could legally drive when I took the breathalyzer that night. Like I said, my wife and I were out for a few drinks and some social time, and weren’t even drunk. Now I know to stay away from these types of atmosphere because there are many who are determined to silence me anyway they can.

Speaking of silencing me, there is another story that I won’t be silenced on because it’s another example of how little our tribal leaders care about our people. Housing shortages is a major problem in our community with some families having to wait years on the waiting lists. Many of our people are homeless, some living in the woods and others shacking up with family members. It’s a major problem here that our leadership likes to turn a blind eye to. But, what is tragic beyond belief is when our leaders are given 41 homes to shelter our most needy families and they turn around and sell them!

You heard that right. Our tribe was awarded another batch of FEMA trailers a few years ago, but, those trailers never showed up. Our tribe stored them down in Oklahoma and other states instead of transporting them here. Within the past year, Norma Ross and Little Guy signed the sales document, a deal to sell them to Mobile Home dealers for a substantial amount of money. Some of them were traded to pay the storage bills and then the rest were sold. Where did the money go? How much did they net? These are questions I suggest you all go up to the tribal office and start asking right away. This is just sick beyond belief!

We have people waiting years on those housing lists. We have people sleeping in the woods. We have people overcrowded in homes and yet, our totally disconnected elitist tribal leaders thought it in the tribes best interest to sell them. I’m sure that will be their excuse…we didn’t have the money to transport them here and then how much would it have cost to get them settled in.

Here’s what I say to that…It doesn’t matter how much the cost, it would have been money well-spent to help our people who are suffering out there. Look at it like this. It may have cost anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 to move them back to LCO, and then we would have to make them Northern Zone Climate ready by insulating them. You’re looking at another $100,000. The best choice at this point would have been to build a mobile home community close to the water and sewer system of the Rez so you only have to run piping to each home, so how much, another $100,000. For the price of $300,000, which wouldn’t even build 6 tribal homes, we could have housed 41 families and they believe this isn’t worth it? We had $220,000 in overdraft fees at Chippewa Valley Bank last year for insufficient funds. That would have nearly paid for the whole project. Also, these trailers sat for several years and FEMA announced in the beginning that HUD made grant funds available for moving the trailers. Over the course of several years, I’m sure we could have found grant dollars to pay for the whole project.

Besides all that, if the council didn’t intend to get those FEMA trailers back to LCO, then they should have refused accepting them. Those were federal tax dollars that built them and they were given to LCO to help with housing shortages, not to be sold for a profit. This is a serious matter and an illegal one.

I asked Jason Stark about the tribe selling those FMEA trailers and he said he had no comment. I then said it was illegal to sell them and he said no it wasn’t. FEMA built 140,000 of those trailers for Hurricane Katrina victims but couldn’t place them in New Orleans because of the flood plain, so then FEMA began auctioning them off to recoup some of the taxpayer dollars. The tribes across the country asked for some of them to help with their severe housing shortages. FEMA decided to give a couple thousand trailers to the tribes free of charge. The tribes just had to pay for moving them back to their reservations. In our case, it was around $3,000 a trailer.

FEMA would have never given those trailers to us so that we could sell them and make a profit. If FEMA wanted them sold to mobile home dealers, they would have done it themselves, as they were doing. This is another very serious matter and so I decided to call FEMA and ask them about the trailers and how many were given to our tribe over each award (this one and the previous awards that were handed out). I asked them for the serial numbers on each trailer awarded to our tribe because this is public information due to the fact that taxpayer dollars built each one of those trailers. They are getting back to me on that in the next few days. With that information, we can track the sale of all of these trailers through the DMV in the various states they were held. These trailers were valued at $30,000 each. Several of them in the first two batches didn’t end up in private tribal member ownership either, but were sold to a real estate broker right here in Hayward. And someone illegally profited on that deal as well.

There is so much more corruption and blatant disregard for our people that I could go on and on. You’ve read all the past blogs and there is a lot more that I haven’t even written about. It’s too bad that some people try to say that what I’m doing is running a negative campaign. I just don’t understand how shedding the truth on corruption is considered a negative campaign. Our people deserve better treatment and deserve respect from our council members, not mishandled grant funds, disappearing money, corrupt construction contracts, and cronyism. This is not a negative campaign folks. A negative campaign would be if I started calling them jerks and #@&... Or, if I started writing about the other rumors I’m hearing about some of our council members. I’m not doing that though, I’m sticking to stories that can all be backed up and that I have documentation for. If my stories are so wrong, then why hasn’t there been any public response claiming otherwise from our leadership? It’s because I’m right and they have nothing to say.

Go back tribal members, read some of the blogs. Read the audit report story. The auditors found 17 different findings of widespread fraud and corruption all leading back to Norma Ross. This is not me saying this folks. This is in black and white from a professional outside auditing firm. This is no joke.

 

Auditor's Report states there may be widespread fraud at LCO

We simply can’t afford two more years of this leadership. The same status quo has brought our tribe to its knees, so we must vote for change, vote for candidates that oppose keeping things the same. I know there are a couple dozen candidates that truly won’t support these leaders and their corruption any longer. But, I also know there are a few candidates that support the leadership and feel that there’s nothing wrong with the current road we’re on. Four of those candidates are Jason Weaver, Jason Schlender, Brian Bisonette and Gary “Little Guy” Clause.

Weaver posted on his Facebook page that he supports Schlender, who is a supporter of the status quo. In the very next post, he singled me out of 36 candidates to say that he doesn’t support me, although I’m doing a great job for the tribe and that I’m an asset to the tribe. Tell me I’m a nice guy while you push the knife deep into my back. Well, I know I must be doing something right if he felt compelled to single me out of the crowd to say he doesn’t support me. He has finally shown what he believes in for the future of the tribe, all the while claiming he doesn’t support the leadership and wants change. He is Mic Isham’s cousin after all. Weaver flat out told us candidates at the BBQ last Saturday that he does not support Mic, claiming that he hasn’t done anything for him, and yet he comes out supporting the most Pro-Mic candidate (Schlender) and bashes the most Anti-Mic candidate (myself) all in the same breath.

Win or lose my fellow tribal members, I promise this. I will keep writing right through this election and I will help those candidates who oppose this crooked regime!

See you at the polls on Saturday and good luck to all the great candidates this year. Remember, you have four votes and I’d appreciate one of those spots, a vote to Restore Native Pride! Vote Joe Morey.

A Few Good Reasons to Vote for Joe Morey

My name is Joe Morey and I am a candidate for the LCO tribal council. Some of you may know me from my days as editor of the LCO Times and Ojibwe Times over the past 20 years. It was during that time I gained vast experience in dealing with the tribal council and learning how our tribal government functions. Those 20 years prepared me for my next chapter in life, that as a tribal governing board member representing you, the membership.

Because of my background as a watchdog reporting on stories over the years you otherwise may have never known, it is one of the strong points that makes me the best candidate for the council. I know how important it is that our membership is informed of the activities of the governing board. I strongly believe that there shouldn’t be any secrets unless it is dealing with personnel issues, otherwise, you the members have every right to know what’s going on. As a tribal council member, I won’t forget that I am beholden to you, the membership because it is you who I will work for. This was a philosophy that I held as the news editor for LCO over all those years and I’ll carry that mentality with me always.

I pledge to maintain openness and to hold the other governing board members accountable to openness as well. How do I plan to achieve this goal? Simple. As many of you know I write a blog on a regular basis that has been a whistleblower of sorts about the corruption that grips our current council. Well, I will continue to write that blog focusing on all activities of the council while I am a sitting council member. There will be no more secrets and that’s a promise. I have no big family to own me. You, the membership will get me elected, not a big family, and so it will be you that I account to through openness and being approachable. I also pledge to push our council to hold at least one of the weekly meetings each month in the Peter Larson Room so that you can come and see the council in action. The council is very uninviting behind two sets of doors and rarely do regular tribal folks come to a meeting because of this. It is my hope that if we have at least one of those meetings each month in the Peter Larson Room, you will feel welcome to stop in a meeting and express your concerns or questions at any time. It’s the way it used to be and it’s the way it should be again.

Over the past two years there has been a lot of suffering on our reservation through deaths, homelessness, losing jobs and the pain continues to grow. Our tribal council has aided in this despair throughout our reservation by shifting jobs away from our members which I’ll talk about it in a minute, but also by refusing to acknowledge the serious housing problems we face from shortages of adequate housing to mold-infested homes making our people sick. Several years ago FEMA gave our tribe another batch of trailers totaling 41 homes but those homes never made it to our reservation. They were never even transferred here but instead stored down south and eventually members of our tribal council, unbeknown to others members, sold them all just this year to mobile home dealers to make a profit. Norma and Little Guy signed the document to sell the trailers. Those trailers were given to our tribe free of charge and were meant to provide housing and shelter to 41 different families in need here at LCO. They weren’t meant to be sold. This is another sad example of the care less attitude our leadership has towards our suffering members. When you elect me to the governing board I will find the funds immediately to clean up the mold-infested homes and begin improving the health of our people here at LCO. The sale of these trailers was meant to be another corrupt tribal secret you weren’t supposed to know about, but the information was leaked to me, and I will be writing a separate story in the next couple of days about these trailers.

And in my mission to improve the health of our people, I will fight for our people’s right to have a job at home instead of traveling to other reservations for work, and I’ll fight for your right to feel secure in your job. This starts with filling in all the executive jobs on our reservation with our own tribal members who are qualified through years of experience or education or both. We need to start with a change of management at the LCO Casino as well and at the same time we need to return jobs to everyone who lost their jobs this past year. I will also get the TERO office here so that our tribal workforce is protected and all businesses and contractors operating within our boundaries or on any of our contracts has to hire at least 75% tribal members and then pay them equal wages to non-tribal members. It’s the right thing to do.

And I will fight to repeal the social media in the workplace ordinance that our council recently passed. Our council has no right to intimidate the tribal membership from speaking out against the actions of this council through fear of losing their job. The council is elected officials and they should have some tough skin, I know I do. You have a right to speak out, especially now during election time.

I have many other ideas that I’ve shared with the membership through my blog at lcotoday.blogspot.com where you can read about my campaign platform and where I stand on all the issues. If there is any candidate you know, who isn’t part of your family, it’s me because I’ve been writing news for you and sharing my opinions with you for the past 20 years. I’m an open book, always have been and always will be. Remember, you can vote for up to 4 spots and I’d appreciate your vote of confidence in one of those four spots on May 16 in the primary election for LCO Tribal Council. 

Supportive Housing plan for 30 units shot down by current chairman

A project meant to help fight homelessness at LCO and help at-risk families was recently cut short by the current tribal administration. The Supportive Housing Project was initiated by former chairman, Gordon Thayer.

As chairman, Thayer visited the Fond du Lac Reservation in northern Minnesota to visit their Supportive Housing project, which has received praise on a national level. He immediately put in a plan of action to bring the project to LCO in an effort to reduce homelessness in the local community. The project is aimed at providing housing for at-risk families who otherwise couldn’t get housing.

The project at Fond du Lac includes a 24-unit complex, with single bedroom efficiency-style apartments and two town home facilities with up to three bedrooms as well as a community facility and playground. Thayer said the project at LCO would have been similar with a community center and 30 units.

During his administration, tribal representatives from support services across the reservation met to discuss pursuing the grant funds. Thayer said the project was in its pre-development phase looking into federal grant funds and tax credits. Thayer said there would have been some subsidizing from the tribe.

The project would have been under construction at the corner of Hwy K and Froemel Road if it hadn’t been cut short by current chairman, Mic Isham. According to witness reports, Isham had commented that he didn’t want to have a place for drunks to be hanging around.

Isham didn’t respond to numerous attempts to reach him about this story.

The project in Fond du Lac was funded by no less than 15 different sources. The final construction cost was $4.6 million.

“This incredibly successful project received rave reviews and tremendous applause from local, state and tribal officials,” said Zoey Lebau, coordinator of the project.

The Fond du Lac Supportive Housing program not only places at-risk families into affordable housing, but it provides services to meet the needs of the clients, addressing their barriers to maintaining housing. The program creates a support system around the families to prevent homelessness from re-occurring.

Some of the families that would receive housing include long-term homeless, chronic homeless, which include double up occupancy, tripled up, overcrowded, those in shelters, facing evictions, leaving institutional settings, or those living in abandoned housing without running water or electricity.

Thayer stated that to go after these funds, it was a lot of work. “You had to have your ducks in a row,” Thayer said, which is what LCO did.

“This was a great project that would have helped a lot of families in need. It would have helped them get back on their feet,” Thayer said.

Is neglected Housing making our people sick?

Time and time again our leadership has shown they don’t care about our people. It’s become an obvious “Who you know” culture around LCO and nowhere has this become more apparent than with the housing situation. We have a major housing shortage at LCO and it doesn’t help when houses that are livable are in serious need of repair. These homes have been neglected despite the fact that HUD allocates money every year for upkeep of these homes. There are many stories across LCO about housing concerns, but here is one that gained a lot of attention in the past couple of months, the story about a baby named Aaron and the disrespect our leaders have shown this sick little baby's family.

On Monday at the regular council meeting, the council by consensus told the Housing director to put Baby Aaron and his family, which includes his parents and two siblings, into a different house on Gurno Lake Road after complaints of mold in their current house. The family also discovered that the previous residents of the home in Drytown were cooking meth there.

The baby was born in January and at five weeks old, became very sick and was transported to ICU in Duluth fighting for his life. The illness was respiratory. After a 9-day stay in the hospital they went home. Before too long, the baby was sick again. This has happened three times now in his short little life, poked with needles, prodded, hooked up to machines and struggling to breathe. Here is a Facebook post by Aaron’s grandmother, Sue Quaderer, after the second hospital visit;

“Our little one "Aaron L. Quaderer" is home tonight feeling a little better. We thought he would end up in Duluth again. He had a rough night last night, stopped breathing once! Thanks to Don C. and Deanna Baker for being on "stand-by" to help the family, if the baby had to be sent to Duluth again. The BIA Health Department is coming in on Tuesday to inspect Edwina's house for possible mold contamination that might be causing the baby to keep getting sick. The housing director was very ignorant when he was approached about the possibility, so we went to the Tribal Council with a letter and pictures. If the house is found not to be the source of the baby's sickness, I will face up to being wrong, but if mold is found to be the cause, ....hold me back..., I will be one mad grandma....There must be other homes on the rez with the possibility of this problem, come on people, take a stand, report it, and stand up for our right to live in a healthy environment and to keep our kids safe...”

There are in fact many homes on our reservation that are mold-infested. The home on Gurno Lake that our Housing director, Mark Montano, said was ready for them and they could move in right away, was in some pretty bad shape. It looks like it probably has mold problems as well. Sue Q. posted pictures of the exterior of the house and the siding was peeling away and all the windows were still boarded up. Rightfully so, the family refused to move into this home.

It is Housing’s responsibility to fix these problems but they have neglected to and why? Supposedly, it comes down to money. They don’t have the money to fix them properly, but they should. They receive HUD money for this but all the funds that come in from the federal government for Housing purposes is shipped over the tribal office and comingled with everything else. Federal dollars and tribal dollars all thrown together into 62 different bank accounts so that no one has any idea who or what department has how much or what funds. These Housing funds that should be used to repair homes are at the tribal office under the direction of whoever has been controlling tribal dollars for the past decade and mysteriously, the funds aren't there. It's the same story with the clinic...they are supposed to have money but they don't. It's the same story with the tribe's health insurance premiums...a large amount of money is supposed to be safely tucked away in a bank account for this, but the funds disappear supposedly used for other purposes. It's the same story with so many federal grant funds...money comes in for a specific project and then it disappears, used for other purposes, for example the Headstart construction which the Audit report revealed was misused.

Back to the tribal council meeting on Monday. Montano came to the meeting while Sue Quaderer fought for her grandson to be able to live in a mold-free home. Sue also told the council that she had heard in the community that the house had previously been a meth-house. Vice Chairman Rusty Barber then proceeded to ridicule here about the “Moccasin Telegraph” and we can’t rely on that, but come on people, our community is a small one and we all know each other, and we all know which houses are the drug houses. Montano continued to be rude to Sue and tell her that he didn’t believe it was mold or meth residues that were making Baby Aaron sick. Rusty Barber agreed with him and said council needed proof and documentation all the while the little sick baby is sitting in the council meeting room hacking away.

At one point, Sue was speaking about the meth in the house and Montano with a snide attitude said to her, “cooking, smoking, I don’t care what you are saying.” How our council allows this non-tribal member to come in here and talk that way to one of our Elders is beyond me, and he was backed up all the way by Mic and Rusty who continuously said they needed proof and documentation that it is mold or meth that was causing her grandsons illness, despite a poor little baby hacking away right there in front of them. For the sake of that baby, who cares about documentation... why take a chance? Would they take a chance if it were one of their grandsons? I'm sure we all know the answer to that.

In the end, Sue believes that Montano knew the other house couldn’t be moved into and had no intention of getting the family a different home. Right now the family is at the casino in a hotel room comped by the council. Sue reported this morning that the family is doing well and little Baby Aaron is doing much better now that he is outside the mold-infested home.

The argument at the council meeting centered on whether mold or meth residue was the problem and Montano didn’t believe it was. He said he sent over a health inspector to see. The health inspector sent a letter to council, which Mic was touting as his evidence, where the inspector said it wasn’t, but the inspector only did a visual inspection of the home. I know for a fact that black mold can be covered up and it doesn’t die. It will live in the heating vents and elsewhere. The home needs more than a simple cleaning to get rid of it. Many of our tribal homes have this mold infestation and it can make you very sick. Do some research on Black Toxic Mold and see for yourselves.

This week they are actually doing tests all over the home of moisture content where they stick the test into the walls. Sue said this morning that they will be at the hotel for another week while they await the test results.

Mic said that Housing had rules to follow and couldn’t simply put the family in another home, and yet, Sue presented a letter to the council that showed a list of violations of Housing policy. In her letter she stated Montano said absolutely not to the family’s request for a different home. Some of his comments included she’s lucky to have a house, some people don’t; if there is mold we’d have to tear down the house and build a new one; this matter could take months or years and there’s nothing we can do.

Here is the next part of the letter she submitted to council;

“Well on Thursday following this talk, I went to the housing office because the Board of Directors were meeting, and they used to have a 11:00 walk in during the meetings for anyone that might need their assistance. Well, wrong again. I got there a few minutes after 11:00 and I was told that a person had to sign up by 11:00 am in order to get into the meeting. The next day, Friday evening, my grandson Aaron was again sent to Duluth by ambulance for viral infection. He was put into ICU and an IV was placed in his head to combat the infection. At this time, he is doing better and hopefully will be released earlier this week. The parents asked the doctor if mold could be a factor in his sickness. The doctor stated that it could be possible, but to test children, they must be at least 2 or 3 years old. My grandsons are 1 year old and 9 weeks old, should their lives be risked until they are 2 and 3 in order to test them? Isn’t there anyone on the Housing board or council who can change the director’s way of thinking? This is about our LCO people and the health and safety of all of our children on this reservation. Does just one non-tribal person have that much authority to just say “absolutely not” because we are just numbers to him, he doesn’t know our tribal members or our communities and to me he doesn’t care, it’s just a job for him.”

In Sue’s letter she then highlights several instances of improprieties among some housing staff members who were able to move into homes without waiting on the list. Sue has posted some pictures of these houses on Facebook.

This is a very sad situation and it’s tragic that this little child will now suffer from Asthma for the rest of his life. There are probably many situations like this on the Rez with mold homes and sick families and we need to fix it immediately…for the health of our community.

A Few Good Ideas for Al Capone's Hideout

I've heard several good ideas over the years about what we should do with Al Capone’s Hideout beginning with the idea to move slots in there and turn it into a high rollers casino resort, landing them on the lake and the whole bit. Give ‘em the Al Capone experience!

Then there was the idea of turning into a drug and alcohol treatment center, charging for services and opening it up to other tribes nationwide. Lord knows we have our own problems with drugs and alcohol here at home, so we'd offer the services to our own people free of charge. A third idea was the assisted living facility, something to keep our Elder's here at home instead of risking mistreatment outside the Rez.

I like all three of these ideas, but then just recently I heard another idea from our former chairman, Gosh, and it's probably the most feasible and cost efficient idea yet, aside from putting slot machines in there. This idea we could make happen without having to seek grants. Gosh suggested making it a dinner theatre with plays re-enacting Al Capone's retreats here back in the Roaring 20’s and focusing the plays on his interaction with our tribal people during that time. We could make connections with UW-Stout to produce the plays and could get drama students from the high school, or even have the college start a drama course. During the tourist season we'd get a lot of tourists and Hayward folks who would pay a decent price to come out and have dinner and see a great historical play.

There are a few other things could be done with it and around this theme, but that's it in a nutshell. For example, there are enough rooms and buildings there that we could still have a small casino and a gift shop with the dinner theatre. I'm not sure if the land is in trust, but I don't see why it wouldn't be by now. We've owned it for what, five years now. I hope we're not still paying taxes on this land that is buried deep within our rez.

We could even seek funding for this project in a unique and unconventional way. There are many TV shows on air these days, such as Restaurant Impossible or Bar Rescue, where the hosts of the show come in to a failing business and help restore it. Al Capone’s Hideout is a historic landmark and we may be able to find one of these shows that would love the chance to refurbish the Hideout back to its glory days. They may not be able to put in all the Al Capone memorabilia that once was, but I’m sure they could still make it look like the Roaring 20’s and the one-time hideout of Al Capone.

The other idea for funding to restore it to its former glory would be to seek crowd-funding through a site such as Kickstarter.com. Many historical projects are getting funded great sums of money right now from millions of investors all over the place. For example, a local crowdfund was the Spooner theatre which received funding through Kickstarter.com to restore their old theatre.

I like the idea of restoring the Hideout and having re-enactment dinner plays and I think it's something that could be done rather quickly. We could even have this dinner theater up and running by next summer, 2016. But, like I said, I like all four ideas above and definitely would support a treatment center or assisted living facility if the grant dollars could be found.

It's important to put something in there that actually turns a profit for our tribe, which will take additional investment, or we put something in there that provides an awesome service for our tribe, like an assisted living facility. It might be possible to find grants to cover it so very little expense falls on the tribe.

We definitely can’t sit on it and do nothing like our current leadership's attitude. Right Now Mic Isham has his family members living out there. Not sure if the tribe is paying the bills, but most likely, and that’s wrong. Was this "position" posted for any other family to have that opportunity? This is what I'm talking about with this chairman and who benefits. Only a few while the rest suffer. Think of all the homeless people we have and that we can’t help but we can house the chairman's family rent free.

They should have an Open House day or something for any tribal member who wants to go up there and have a walk-through. We own it so we should be able to see it. I was given the opportunity to walk through not long after the purchase and it is a beautiful piece of property. The main building will need a little work to get back in order to bring back the Capone theme would be somewhat difficult because all the memorabilia is gone, but not impossible.

In our mission to expose the truth, a platform has developed!

It’s been quite an experience running for our tribal council. I’ve encountered a lot of things over the past couple of months that I could never have expected. I’ve been meeting some awesome tribal members that I hadn’t previously known. I’ve learned a lot about how much work it is to run for this position and I’ve also learned that I didn’t know as much about the activities of our tribal leaders as I thought I did.

Over the past couple of months Shondel Barber and I have formed an unexpected partnership in our mission to expose the truths about our corrupt tribal council members. Each of us has been leaked some pretty reliable information from many different sources since we began our quests to represent the membership of this tribe. But, prior to this when I started writing articles about the mismanagement of tribal funds and the terrible path our casino manager had us on, and especially, seeing so many of our people lose their jobs, was when I decided to rise up to the challenge of running for tribal council.

Why am I running for council? Because I got tired of sitting back watching the current leadership destroy the fabric of this community through misconduct in many forms, which include illegal activities, fraud and intimidation. They hold job security over people’s heads even going so far as creating a tribal ordinance that said no tribal employee could speak out against the tribal council or face termination. They’ve fired many hard-working tribal members only to replace them with non-tribal workers. They denied a TERO office here that would have protected workers from unfair wages and secured jobs for our workers on government contracts. They’ve eliminated positions of workers who had been in their positions for decades because they didn’t fall into line with their illegal policies. They’ve eliminated positions and fired long-time employees to free up payroll money to hire unnecessary executive positions with six-figure incomes and of course, these positions were created for their friends! Enough is enough.

I asked one of our young warriors the other day what he thought I could do for him and his generation if I were elected. What could we do better for the youth? This is what he said, “We need direction. Too many of our youth fall into gangs and drugs. There is no sense of community. Out here it’s an every man for himself attitude. If our government could do something to improve our community’s pride, that would be the first step to advance us as a people.”

Well said, and this sentiment is exactly what many of our young people feel. If we continue on this path, what type of Rez will we leave them? They are the next generation of leaders and right now, if we don’t change the course, they will inherit a mess beyond repair. We cannot allow these current leaders to continue to steal from us, destroy our communities, lead through fear and intimidation and neglect the ones who need leadership the most, our youth.

The only way things will change is if we remove the officers from their positions which include Chairman Mic Isham, Vice Chairman Rusty Barber and Secretary Treasurer Norma Ross. Unfortunately, those three aren’t up for re-election this year. But, the only way they continue to run this tribe into the ground is because they have a block of four votes, themselves, along with Gary “Little Guy” Clause, who does happen to be up for re-election. This group of four is running everything right now. The key to removing Mic from the chair is to vote for all four candidates that agree with me… we need a change of leadership! This means that you won’t cast a vote for Little Guy, or any other that supports the status quo. There are a half dozen other candidates that support keeping things as is and I hope that you, the voters who truly want change, will investigate each candidate and see where they stand.

Shondel and I are two of those candidates that will change the direction, but we can’t do it alone. We need the perfect team to be elected, so that we can remove the officers who are currently leading this tribe down a path of despair. Please vote in the primary election on May 16 from 9 am to 6 pm, and remember, you can vote for four candidates. I know many of you have a family member you support or have already in mind who you support, but I’m asking that you consider us for those other spots you can cast a ballot for. Also, on May 16, if you can’t get to the polls for any reason, don’t hesitate to message me or call me.

Here are some of the issues of our platform that we will push for when we are elected. These are a few of the changes that can take this tribe in the right direction and improve the health of our Rez!

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

We need to create jobs through business development and improving the businesses we have so they make a profit, or face closure so other businesses can be operated that may make money. We need to return jobs to those who lost theirs over the past two years, especially at the casino. We strongly believe in the “Tribal Member Preference” policy. Our casino manager is firing long-time employees who make too much money for non-tribals who he can pay much, much less to cover the outrageous executive staff positions he created. We also firmly stand behind creating a Tribal Employee Rights Ordinance here at LCO to protect our tribal workforce so that all businesses and contractors operating on our Rez have to hire at least 75% workers and to pay them the same wages non-tribals are paid. Our current leadership recently said no to a TERO!

IMPROVE HOUSING

Way too many of our tribal homes have mold problems and for the health and well-being of our families, this problem can’t be ignored any longer. Our people are getting sick. We need to seek funding to repair these homes immediately. We also need to seek funds for more housing on our Rez and work to eliminate the homeless problem. We need to put the Supportive Housing project back on the table that would have helped shelter those who need it the most.

CASINO BOND RESTRUCTURING

By next year our casino bond payment will exceed what we can pay and we’ll default all because of a terrible deal that our 2006 leaders put us into with excessive interest rates, increasing monthly payments and outrageous commissions, so much so that it resulted in a $2.3m lawsuit against the bond holders. We need a new bond deal or we’ll default losing management of our casino. A good deal with zero commissions and very low interest was almost made with the Shakopee Sioux tribe but our chairman, Mic Isham, with Norma Ross, Rusty Barber and Little Guy Clause turned it down and now we have nothing but uncertainty. We need to make sure to get four council members elected who agree that we need an immediate leadership change. It's the only way we can save our casino. We need to ask the Shakopee to sit back down at the table and give us the deal that had previously been agreed upon.

CHILDREN’S DAYCARE FACILITY

A major struggle for our people is to find work and have adequate daycare for their children. There is no daycare for our hard-working families, especially single mothers. We will work tirelessly until we get a daycare facility.

TRANSPARENCY

Our tribal finances should be open to our tribal membership. We'll make sure our people are made aware of exactly where we stand financially. We were nearly broke in November, unable to make the Christmas bonuses for employees and elders, until our council made the $2.3 million dollar settlement and received a lifeline. Very soon we'll be broke again. Repeatedly we are saved by a settlement or a bad bond deal, but what happens when we go broke and their isn't a lifeline? It's going to happen soon. Look at the millions of dollars we've run through since the last bond deal was made in 2006 or the $8m Nez Perce settlement. The $2.3 million dollar settlement last year saved the council a lot of humiliation from explaining how broke we truly were. But, it won't be long, and they will face the same circumstances and will have a lot of explaining to do. We guarantee to end these secret deals and inform the membership!

CASINO MANAGEMENT

Shortly after Lee Harden was hired as our casino manager, he hired several highly paid executives to do the jobs he was hired to do and gave himself a new title...Chief Executive Officer. Lee “the General Manager” decided to hire Dulcie Rae Wolfe in that role. He must think he’s running the MGM Grand. We don't need a CEO. We don't need to be paying well over half a million dollars on executive jobs he created so he can sit in his office and be unapproachable to our people. We’ll eliminate these executive jobs freeing up the money to get our people back to work. We’ll replace Lee Harden with a manager who knows and understands the ways of our people and be more sensitive to the struggles that us regular folks encounter. Lee has lost touch with the reality of LCO!

And there you have it! Remember to vote at the primary on May 16 and a vote for Shondel Barber or myself, Joe Morey, is much appreciated. Let’s restore Native Pride and start looking out for each other once again… like our Elders used to do!