White Earth Nation prepares to choose new leader

The White Earth Nation will elect its new leader this week, five months after tribal chair Terry Tibbetts died while in office.

The two candidates who want to lead White Earth for the remainder of the term have different approaches to governing — but they agree that the election is an opportunity to rebuild trust in tribal government.

"We need to set all of our personal agendas aside, ... sit down and focus on just one thing here,” said Brent Gish, 72, a retired educator who has lived most of his life on the reservation. “All of our actions should reflect what's in the best interest of the White Earth Nation and the people that we serve."

Michael Fairbanks, 56, who is also running for the seat, was born and raised in the Twin Cities, but returned to his northern Minnesota Ojibwe roots when he was 18.

He said he’s had firsthand experience navigating what have become some fractious dynamics within tribal government. He now runs an environmental group called Toxic Taters, which works to reduce pesticide use in agriculture, but he was laid off from a job as deputy director of administration for the White Earth Tribal Council last year. He said disagreements on the council were to blame — and he’s eager for the opportunity to bring together White Earth leadership.

“I'm not no team this or that, you know, I'm Anishinaabe,” Fairbanks said. “I'm here to help everybody and listen to everybody. I'm for all of us.”

Fairbanks said leaders on the reservation get into trouble when they focus on money and power, rather than helping people.

“I think it's important that we lead with our hearts, not with our heads,” he said. “We are the employee and all the members are our bosses.”

He said his embrace of traditional Ojibwe values and practices makes him the kind of leader White Earth needs at this point in its history.

“I put down asemaa (tobacco) and talk to the Creator every day and ask for help,” he said.

Gish also believes every decision tribal leaders make should be imbued with traditional values.

“How does this reflect the traditions of the Ojibwe nation? We should always measure: Is anything that we're doing in conflict to what we really believe in the traditional values of the Ojibwe people?” he said.

But Gish also finds value in measurement — and numbers. After 47 years as a teacher, principal and superintendent on the White Earth and Red Lake reservations, he said he likes to use data to inform those values-based decisions and monitor progress.

The winner of Tuesday’s election will face a daunting list of challenges: There have been charges and counter-charges of financial impropriety within tribal government. The nation is wrestling with an ongoing opioid crisis. Both candidates also name homelessness, unemployment and reform of the tribal Constitution, which was imposed by the federal government in the 1930s, as top issues.

The new leader will have a short time to make headway. The next regular election for tribal chair is set for June 2020.

White Earth is the largest Native American tribe in Minnesota, with more than 19,000 members. Fewer than 5,000 live on the northwestern Minnesota reservation, which covers all of Mahnomen and parts of Becker and Clearwater counties. Tribal members who live anywhere are eligible to vote.

Gish said the cornerstone of his platform is building a safe, drug-free community on the reservation. He applauds tribal government for being proactive and implementing innovative programs to deal with the ongoing opioid epidemic that has plagued communities across the state.

But he believes the loss of hope that fosters drug abuse needs to be addressed by improving education and job training, and bringing more jobs to the reservation, located in northwestern Minnesota about an hour from Fargo-Moorhead.

Fairbanks also thinks economic development is important. He looks to industrial hemp — and potentially also marijuana — production as an opportunity to create jobs and bring money to the reservation, where the primary employers are tribal government and the White Earth-owned Shooting Star Casino.

He said he would also focus on expanding tribal sovereignty by taking on greater control of federal and state programs on the reservation.

“We're left out of a lot of things,” said Fairbanks. “I think we're so used to getting crumbs from the state and from the feds, I think that we're content with that. And I think with me being elected, I think that we're going to ask for more than crumbs.”

Among the possibilities: The White Earth government has considered assuming control of parts of the reservation’s health care system, which is now run by the federal Indian Health Service.

Some White Earth members would also like to see more tribal government control over law enforcement and the judicial system, which now works under a sometimes confusing mix of federal, state, county and tribal authority.

Other members are calling for the tribe to implement environmental regulations that would replace state rules, especially to protect water and wild rice.

Many of those changes, Fairbanks acknowledged, would take years to implement.

Gish is calling for a more cautious approach to expanding tribal sovereignty. He said he would only begin to implement those changes if he can ensure that tribal government would have the resources to successfully take on programs now run by federal or state entities.

“We should expect that we can actually do it better,” he said, “because we live here.”

Voting happens in villages across the reservation and also in Minneapolis and Cass Lake, Minn. After the election board certifies the results, the winner will assume tribal chair duties from Eugene “Umsy” Tibbetts, who has been serving as interim chairman.

Not long after he takes office, the new chair will need to start campaigning for the regular election, only about 10 months away.

Correction (Aug. 5, 2019): A caption in an earlier version of this story misidentified Brent Gish. The caption has been updated.