State of the Tribes

Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes communications director Rob McDonald gave the “State of the Tribes” address at the Polson Chamber of Commerce luncheon this month to reflect on the past year and to look forward to future endeavors.

The luncheon took place in a conference room at the Kwataqnuk Resort. Polson Mayor Heather Knutson and Mission Valley Power General Manager Jean Matt were among the attendees, along with business owners from around the area.

“How do you measure a year?” McDonald asked at the start of the 20-minute speech.

“We are in historic times,” he said.

McDonald said the CSKT taking ownership of the Kerr Dam (before it was renamed the Salish Kootenai Dam the following Saturday) was a long time coming. The CSKT was proud to have set the goals and that the ownership was the result of many years of planning and negotiation. He referred to 1980s tribal leader Mickey Pablo and the vision to look forward to the coming day when the CSKT would take over operations of the dam.

McDonald broadened the speech to other projects and said the CSKT was in a time of great change.

“No one’s getting any younger,” he said. “Our workforce is aging.” The CSKT has 8,000 tribal members and of that, 1,200 hundred are employees. McDonald said the change is dynamic and challenging, and moving at a speed that the CSKT is not accustomed to, but is ready for.

As Tribal spokesperson, McDonald likes to say he gets a lot of phone calls during his workdays and that he meets a variety of people who visit the Reservation. He used a recent visit by Chinese scholars as an example. They had come to visit and McDonald caught wind of the visit and drove them around showing them historical sites. The Chinese scholars told him that they study English literature and one of the subjects they teach and study is Native American literature, specifically N. Scott Momaday, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of “House Made of Dawn.” The Chinese scholars wanted to visit the Flathead Indian Reservation as part of their studies. McDonald joked that somewhere there’s a picture on Facebook with him and two scholars posing in a “selfie.”

McDonald listed some achievements that the CSKT is proud of this year: the increased circulation of the Char-Koosta News, the official paper of the Flathead Indian Reservation, marketing success with Pizza Hut in Polson to generate business on Monday nights, and the creation and recognition of an official CSKT license plate for vehicles in Montana.

The most contentious issue the CSKT faces is water rights, McDonald said. Along with the ownership of the dam, these are the biggest issues that they are working on, and that requires the most careful attention. Signing the Water Compact and having it passed in the Montana State legislature is a proud moment, not without some sorrow. McDonald said he was glad they were getting to the end of a long process spanning decades.

“Air and land is our religion,” he said.

He closed the speech by thanking the people and city of Polson and other areas that have reached out to the CSKT in cooperation and partnership.

“We want to thank you for the outreach of goodwill,” he said. “We notice.”