The cavalry is coming: How a small tribe of Oklahoma Indians is saving the region

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Summarize

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content  
 
 
THE CAVALRY IS COMING: 
HOW A SMALL TRIBE OF OKLAHOMA INDIANS IS SAVING THE REGION 
 
by 
 
Rebecca Schoenkopf 
 
 
 
A Thesis Presented to the  
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM) 
 
 
 
May 2011 
 
 
Copyright 2011  Rebecca Schoenkopf 
ii 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
Abstract iii 
Host Introduction 1 
Act One: Wanette 2 
Act Two: Rocky 8 
Act Three: The Promised Land 20 
References 26  
 
 
 
 
 
iii 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
The Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a small band of Oklahoma Native Americans, has 
found economic success for itself and its members by implementing the main tenets 
of local economic development: equitability and sustainability. The Nation invests 
its revenues back into social services and business opportunities rather than 
dividing its income into per‐capita payments for its members. As other governments 
around the United States have cut spending and laid off workers, the Citizen 
Potawatomi Nation has grown and prospered.
1 
 
HOST INTRODUCTION 
 
The Citizen Potawatomi Nation found its economic footing in the modern era with 
tax‐free cigarettes and a bingo parlor, but they’ve parlayed that easy money into a 
host of commercial enterprises — along with social benefits for their members and 
for the region. Rebecca Schoenkopf visited Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, to see 
how to develop a local economy sustainably and equitably — and to find out why 
local Anglos say the Indians are trying to take over the town. 
2 
 
ACT ONE: WANETTE 
 
[TRAK] 
Rocky Barrett is driving in his big Toyota pickup truck around the area where 
Oklahoma stops, and the sovereign land of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation begins.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
We were here before there was a city or state. This land came to us in 1867. We’re 
not in Oklahoma. We’re the law here.
 
[TRAK] 
Barrett is a charismatic man in his mid‐60s. He’s been chairman of the Citizen 
Potawatomi Nation for close to 40 years, and right now he’s remembering the words 
of a mean old mailman who always went out of his way to let Barrett know what he 
thought of his tribe. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
He would never fail to buttonhole me and say, ‘You guys are a wart on the ass of 
progress, and on the dole …’ Finally, I guess it was after we bought either the bank 
or the radio station: ‘You guys are trying to take over the whole damn town!’  
 
3 
[TRAK] 
Stopped at the narrow intersection, Barrett waves his hand at the wide, empty fields 
leading to the hundred‐foot‐high manufacturing plant looming in the distance —
that’s the side that’s Oklahoma. On the other side of the street, cars are jamming the 
parking lots for golf courses and groceries, health clinics and senior centers, 
museums and casinos. That’s the side that’s Indian Country. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
They object to us, and try to hamper the development, but they don’t have much 
luck with it.  
 
[TRAK] 
Before the empowerment politics of the ’60s and ’70s, and before Indian casinos 
started lighting up the landscape, Indian Country meant dire poverty, and being 
Indian wasn’t something they advertised. Things have certainly changed. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT]
This’ll be a sufficient number of ballparks to hold the world softball tournament. 
This is the bowling center … This is where the bank [FADE UNDER] and the Women 
Infants and Children Nutritional Center and the new police station, are all gonna go 
on that lot right there. [FADE OUT] 
 
4 
[TRAK] 
Now they own banks and radio stations—and if not the whole town, certainly a 
substantial portion. 
 
[AMBIENT SOUND: BIRDS AND A LONE CAR] 
 
[TRAK] 
About 30 miles away, down long straight highways carved through empty hills, is 
Wanette, Oklahoma. Plastic and plywood cover the windows of abandoned houses, 
and one roof swoops up into the sky as if God reached down and pulled the pop‐top 
on a can of Spam.
 
[ACT JAMES BUXTON] 
The biggest challenge is jobs. 
 
[TRAK] 
That’s James Buxton, Wanette’s mayor. There are fewer than 300 people in town, 
and the Census Bureau figures only about a third of adults are working.
 
[ACT JAMES BUXTON] 
Getting businesses in to have jobs. The opportunities for people to work that can’t go 
out and drive 30 miles to get to work. 
5 
[TRAK] 
But in a couple of seemingly small but important ways, the cavalry is coming to 
Wanette’s aid. And in this case, “the cavalry” is the Indians. First they bought the 
rural water district and invested millions, saving it from failing. Now it’s hit the 
papers that the Potawatomi are putting in a grocery store.
 
[ACT JAMES BUXTON]
Now it’s been printed in black and white, so the people who had a lot of doubts can 
back up and breathe easy! 
 
[TRAK] 
If you don’t know why a grocery store would cause a ruckus, then you don’t have to 
drive your busted‐up jalopy 30 miles to get your victuals in Purcell. 
 
[ACT JAMES BUXTON] 
For our older folks that can’t go out and depend on others, it’ll mean a place they can 
go get groceries and not have to go to Norman, Purcell, Shawnee, Ada. There’s just 
about not any other place to go! 
 
[TRAK] 
In Pottawatomie County, about 40 miles east of Oklahoma City, the Citizen 
Potawatomi Nation is now the biggest employer. They’ve got 2000 employees, and 
6 
they’re putting $400 million a year into the local economy. With a boost like that, the 
county’s unemployment rate is under seven percent even in these tough times —
except in troubled places like Wanette. How did a small tribe of Indians become the 
best hope for a struggling town like Wanette — and the economic engine for an 
entire region? We called the Harvard Project on Indian Economic Development, and 
spoke to the co‐director, Dr. Joseph Kalt. 
 
[ACT JOE KALT] 
It may be the only place in the country I know of where you drive onto the 
reservation, and things get better, not worse. They’re rebuilding the whole 
community there: for white people, for black people, for red people. It’s an amazing, 
amazing success story. 
 
[TRAK] 
Except to some people. Rocky Barrett’s old mailman for one, along with just about 
the entire government of Shawnee, the biggest city in the region. James Collard was 
Shawnee’s city manager. In 2006, he received his doctorate, studying the 
interactions between tribes and municipal officials. Here’s Dr. Collard. 
 
7 
[ACT JAMES COLLARD] 
The tribes did not feel they were being afforded the respect they were due, and my 
research showed they were right on that. The municipal officials by and large don’t 
respect tribal officials, and that causes a lot of rubs. 
 
[TRAK] 
Collard left his job as city manager for Shawnee, and went to work … as the director 
of economic development for the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
 
[ACT JAMES COLLARD] 
I had a great relationship with the tribes as the city manager, and there were a lot of 
forces at work in the city that do not view tribes in a favorable light, and that’s 
unfortunate, and it’s to their loss and their ignorance, frankly.
 
[TRAK] 
He says there are some exceptions, and some good leaders in the city. 
 
[ACT JAMES COLLARD] 
But the political culture is such that it was inconsistent with my worldview, so to 
speak! 
8 
 
ACT TWO: ROCKY 
 
[TRAK] 
Wanette might be in the saddest shape of any place in Pottawatomie County. 
Shawnee, the county seat, has about 30 thousand people. Tecumseh, a few miles 
away, is the other major population center, with about 4,000 people — and even so, 
until five years ago, you had to go to the Love’s gas station to buy a loaf of bread. 
Then the Citizen Potawatomi Nation built Tecumseh a discount grocery store — just 
like they’re doing in Wanette now. 
 
[AMBIENT SOUND, GROCERY: “THAT’LL BE $2.59.” “THANK YOU.”] 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
This place is gonna hit $50 million I think this year. 
 
[TRAK] 
The Citizen Potawatomi’s land is stuffed with the kind of services you don’t find 
much in Oklahoma. There’s the eagle rescue, the old folks center, the low‐income 
subsidized housing, where a woman with a couple of kids can earn up to $31,000 a 
year and still pay only $300 a month in rent … On the curved and gently climbing 
9 
road that cuts through the tribe’s land, just about the only thing that doesn’t belong 
to the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is the Baptist Church.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
We took US citizenship as a body, first tribe to do that, and then bought the 
reservation for cash, thinking we were citizens and had the equivalent to a deed, 
we’d get to keep this down here. 
 
[TRAK] 
The Potawatomi’s history is particularly well‐documented, and touring the heritage 
center with Barrett is like taking a master class in American history. Barrett explains 
that in 1838, before ending up in Oklahoma, the tribe was forced from Indiana to 
Kansas. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
This is the Trail of Death. About a fourth of the people died on the way. 
 
[TRAK] 
Once they got to Kansas, they joined up with a radical antislavery outfit … 
10 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
[FADE IN] the Sixteen Guns and a Bible bunch. John Brown camped at Potawatomi 
Creek. We were a primary way station on the Underground Railroad, to help 
escaping slaves. 
 
[TRAK] 
But Barrett’s got a thought or two on why his people had been forced from Indiana 
in the first place.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
We were at the time in control of commerce. We owned every inn, every grist mill, 
every livery station … We were removed for our assets, not because we weren’t 
acculturated. 
 
[TRAK] 
The tribe’s history may explain why they’re reaching out to lonely Wanette. Today, 
the little town is less than 10 percent Indian. But back in 1875, the Potawatomi 
invited Benedictine priests from the south of France to help them set up schools and 
churches on their land in Sacred Heart nearby. Sacred Heart became Oklahoma’s 
first university. And at that time, the land around Wanette was where the Citizen 
Potawatomi made their home.
11 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
It was a huge operation, burned down in 1901, the whole thing, fire you could see all 
the way to Purcell. My people all went there. We’ve restored a great deal of it. This is 
the old bakery and that was the old cobbler’s cabin. We restored all that down there. 
 
[TRAK] 
Maybe it’s sentiment, the wish to “restore” things. Maybe the tribe’s interest in 
Wanette is just shrewd business sense; the southern part of Pott County is the only 
place within 50 miles of Oklahoma City that’s still undeveloped. Or maybe the 
Citizen Potawatomi Nation just wants to do the right thing. Regardless of the motive, 
the tribe’s results are getting noticed. The Harvard Project’s Joseph Kalt. 
 
[ACT JOE KALT] 
I know people at the World Bank are looking at Citizen Potawatomi, people around 
the world … If we human beings can put in place a stable, capable government that 
runs on the rule of law rather than by a rule of raw politics, we’re amazingly 
productive, we human beings. And that’s what CPN has done is built a system there 
that really is a model not just for other American Indian tribes but nations and 
governments all around the world!
 
 
12 
[TRAK] 
When Rocky Barrett joined the tribal government, they worked out of a trailer, with 
$550 in the bank. Now they do $400 million a year. A good chunk of it comes from 
gaming revenues — about 60 percent — and some of it comes from federal grants, 
like the money to operate their clinics. Those are open to all Native Americans in the 
region, more than 20 thousand doctors visits a year. Rhonda Butcher is the tribe’s 
director of “self‐governance,” coordinating block grants from the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs so the tribe can do for itself what the BIA used to do for it.
 
[ACT RHONDA BUTCHER] 
I would be lying to you if I said we could meet every need that hits the door. Services 
are wonderful, and we are constructing another clinic at this moment because we 
realize that there are people that can’t get in to access the services, simply because 
of our capacity. 
 
[TRAK] 
But the Harvard Project’s Joseph Kalt says the tribe’s self‐governance programs are 
the poster children for how to do it right. 
 
[ACT JOE KALT] 
These tribes, they just want to govern themselves, fully call the shots in their 
community, from what they serve in the school lunch program, to whether to put 
13 
money into eye care or dental care. Citizen Potawatomi is well‐known as being at 
the frontier of these efforts in a very responsible way. 
 
[TRAK] 
Some tribes use their earnings to send “per‐capita” payments to their members, like 
a stock dividend. Not the Citizen Potawatomi. 
 
[ACT JOE KALT] 
There’s tremendous variation out there. Citizen Potawatomi is known for its strong 
policy of, as Chairman Barrett says it sometimes, ‘that new ball field is your per‐cap, 
that new dental clinic is your per‐cap.’ That is, plowing the money back into the 
community. And many tribes out there are developing policies to follow that lead.
 
[AMBIENT SOUND: SENIORS GREET BARRETT] 
 
[TRAK] 
At the senior center, they feed lunch to about 100 tribal elders a day.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
They have dominoes and shuffleboard and such. 
 
 
14 
[TRAK] 
There are eyeglasses and free prescriptions for seniors. The tribe gives out millions 
of dollars in college scholarships every year, and serves more than 2,000 kids 
annually at the highest‐rated childhood development center in the region. But there 
are more urgent needs as well. The tribe oversees the welfare of children who were 
abused or neglected — Barrett says, often due to meth. Wherever in the country 
those families might be, someone from the government will get on a plane and go 
pick up the children.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
This is rescue housing right here. They’re full. All eight units are full all the time. 
White men beating Indian women. Indian women are the most likely to be abused, 
raped, killed, more than any other ethnic group.
 
[TRAK] 
Now, if a white man is beating a Potawatomi woman, tribal police can arrest him. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
They’re the only white people we have jurisdiction over. We didn’t have that till 
three years ago. On other reservations, it’s Indian men. But here, it’s not! 
 
 
15 
[TRAK] 
Barrett’s face is grim. He can arrest the men, and he can build shelters for the 
women. But he can’t stop it from happening in the first place, and he takes the 
welfare of his people very much to heart. How do his people feel about his 
leadership? Every four years, Barrett runs for reelection. He perks up when he says 
the elections are “bloodbaths.” 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
Most of ’em that run against me run based on ‘We’re gonna send you a check.’
 
[TRAK] 
It’s a question that speaks not just to Indian tribes with gaming revenues, but to the 
country as a whole: a tax refund, or should we go ahead and shore up that hundred‐
year‐old bridge? Are we a nation of rugged individualists, or can we do more 
together than apart? Tim Berg is the director of the Shawnee Economic 
Development Foundation. He’s in his office in Shawnee’s historic, and virtually 
abandoned, downtown.
 
[ACT TIM BERG] 
They’re not an entitlement tribe. If you need a job, they’ll get you a job, if you need 
education, they’ll get you training. If you need healthcare, housing, they’ll help you 
16 
with that. They’re not gonna give you a check. They’ll help you stand on your own 
two legs. 
 
[TRAK] 
Barrett says economic independence is a part of their history. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
Our people were tradespeople, politicians, orators, authors. They were adept, they 
didn’t let themselves be victims. They were victims, but they didn’t go easy! The 
entitlement, and the sense of dependency that comes with the reservation system, 
we never did go through that. We never did line up to get rations.
 
[TRAK] 
Among the Citizen Potawatomi, Barrett estimates unemployment at under two 
percent. The tribe’s payroll totals almost $65 million a year, and they’re sharing the 
wealth. Only about a third of their employees are members of the tribe. Right now, 
they’re pouring new bridges and grading new roads for a new Fire Lake RV park 
across from the golf course. They had studied the effects of the new Fire Lake Grand 
Casino on their older smaller one, and decided they were eating off their own crowd. 
 
 
 
17 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
We have a huge investment in infrastructure here already with the golf course, now 
the bowling center … what we need is to make this a destination of some kind.
 
[TRAK] 
Barrett says it’ll be the only RV park with a golf course, a casino, fuel, and food … 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
… and a place where an RV vendor that sells these million‐dollar units can come in 
and show his wares to these people whose whole existence is about this RV, and the 
thing they like most is trading up in RVs!
 
[TRAK] 
They’ve been testing it for about five years now and Barrett says average spending 
on gaming and food, over a two‐day period, is $500 for each visitor.
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
And if we had something else for them to spend it on, they’d spend it on that! We’ll 
give ’em gas, a golf cart, a disposable grill, a couple a ribeyes, give ’em a package!
 
 
 
18 
[TRAK] 
The RV park is due in June of this year. The tribe’s also been working on luring a big 
box store. Once they have a deal, it can be built in four months. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
We’re working a … not Lowe’s, the other one. Home Depot. Did you have to fight the 
city? –We were here before there was a city or state, in 1867. They’re trying to 
impede our sewer development to handle this much traffic, without understanding 
that the effluent, rather than dumping it in the river like they’re doing, we’re gonna 
bring it back here for geothermal purposes. 
 
[TRAK] 
But Tim Berg from the Shawnee Economic Development Foundation notes there’s a 
reason Shawnee may be trying to block the tribe’s sewer development. 
 
[ACT TIM BERG] 
The city doesn’t have a lot of revenue streams other than sales tax, and water and 
sewer are one of them. What if Rocky’s able to get a water truck and go around the 
county and cut the city out?
 
 
 
19 
[TRAK] 
And that sales tax? While the city of Shawnee would usually garner three percent of 
every dollar spent, the Citizen Potawatomi are sovereign, and they get to put that 
sales tax money straight into the bank.
 
[ACT TIM BERG] 
They do remit some back to Tecumseh, and that’s because the relationship is 
different with Tecumseh than Shawnee, and they realize if they didn’t remit back to 
Tecumseh, Tecumseh would really, really be suffering.
 
[TRAK] 
But Berg also points out how things are in Pott County.
 
[ACT TIM BERG] 
Haven’t had a track record of the Anglos being benevolent to the tribes, so got a lot 
of animosity and a lot of longtime issues to overcome. There’s a lot of racism here. 
You can drive to the towns in the south part of the county and they fly their 
Confederate flag quite freely, and of course that’s their choice and it’s fine!
20 
 
ACT THREE: THE PROMISED LAND 
 
[AMBIENT SOUND: CASINO NOISE] 
 
[TRAK] 
How did they get here? Barrett thinks it’s right there in their DNA. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
Before the Europeans came, we were the guys who went all the way to Mexico and 
got seed corn, went to Tennessee and got the best flint. We were the people who 
fostered trade among all the other tribes! 
 
[TRAK] 
But in modern times, everyone was doing pretty poorly. Indian poverty was high, 
and education low. Of the five‐person government in the 1970s, Barrett was the only 
one who’d graduated high school. But things started breaking the Indians’ way. A 
tribe to the north started selling cigarettes tax‐free.
 
 
 
 
21 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT]
We weren’t real sure they weren’t gonna get put in jail! We were watching it real 
close. We went up and bought ’em retail, and started selling ’em over the glass 
counter at the heritage center there.
 
[TRAK]
They started with 12 cartons. The Oklahoma state tax commission couldn’t sue the 
tribe without congressional permission. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT]
So they sued the tribal chairman, me, instead, for $1.7 million. –But they didn’t get it. 
–I didn’t have it! 
 
[TRAK] 
After the Seminole and the Cabazon had paved the way for Indian gaming, the tribe 
started a bingo game. They used the profits to build their first convenience store, 
which became a grocery. The bank became six banks, with $90 million in loans out 
to the community.
 
 
 
 
22 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
Anyone who wants a mortgage for a home, we’ll give $2150 regardless of their 
income, just to encourage homeownership. We’d like to get the mortgage business in 
our bank …
 
[TRAK] 
Barrett says the reason their banks enjoy the highest rating is that they never gave 
out a single adjustable‐rate subprime loan; he says they think gambling with other 
people’s money should be illegal. But people are more than welcome to gamble with 
money of their own. The tribe’s little bingo parlor grew into a casino, which then 
spawned the Fire Lake Grand up on Interstate 40. 
 
[AMBIENT SOUND: CASINO JACKPOT, THEN FADE UNDER TRAK] 
 
[TRAK] 
This is the Fire Lake Grand. It’s quite elegant inside, with a round, lighted element in 
the lobby that resembles the tribe’s ceremonial roundhouse. It’s about 10 a.m. on a 
Tuesday, but there’s no shortage of people. Barrett says if they know someone’s 
gambling their settlement from a car wreck, or if a family member calls up and says 
there’s a problem, they’ll turn them away. But gaming isn’t just a danger to 
degenerate gamblers. The Shawnee Economic Development Foundation’s Tim Berg. 
 
23 
[ACT TIM BERG] 
That will come to an end or will shrink in volume as states say ‘we want bingo,’ ‘we 
want slot machines.’ It’s happening in Texas, in Kansas; the draw to Oklahoma won’t 
be as unique.
 
[TRAK] 
The Nation is doing what it can to diversify for the future — “don’t eat the seed 
corn” is a favorite maxim. They’ve got their eye on limestone from Choctaw country. 
They’re gonna get the railroad back in service from McAlester to Shawnee, so as to 
transport concrete beams. They’re going to start commercially producing 
“pemmican,” a traditional food made with pecans and cranberries and buffalo meat. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
Is it good? –It’s delicious! 
 
[TRAK] 
They’ve got the ready‐mix plant, and the air‐conditioning outfit, and the propane 
they buy in the offseason for the elderly. They’ve been doing their economic 
planning strategically since the 1980s, and it’s all focused on one point in the future, 
one that most people don’t know about. The Promised Land. 
 
 
24 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
What will eventually happen here … is this will incorporate as another town.
 
[TRAK] 
Barrett cites an obscure appeals court case that says in order to qualify as what’s 
called a “dependent Indian community,” a tribe has to control the sewer, water, 
police, fire, education, medical services, and transportation for a given area. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
It means that we can govern it ourselves whether it’s in trust or not. –So you just 
need some transportation. –Well we run bus lines now. We run the only buses in 
town.
 
[TRAK] 
… Eighteen buses for tribal elders and kids. 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
The seven elder buses do it for all the veterans, Indian or non‐Indian, and soon we’ll 
open it up to the public. Otherwise there’s no public transportation in town. They 
got one taxi! –One taxi company, or one taxi? –One taxi. One lousy taxi, and it’s bad! 
 
 
25 
[TRAK] 
Joseph Kalt from the Harvard Project says the Citizen Potawatomi are already at the 
forefront of a tribal movement to self‐determination. If it happens, if the Citizen 
Potawatomi Nation is able to incorporate its own town of Fire Lake, the city of 
Shawnee won’t just be out the sales tax. They’ll be out property taxes for all the 
residents as well — not to mention the water and sewer fees — and a lot of people 
will probably be angrier than they are now. But whatever happened to that mean 
old mailman, anyway? 
 
[ACT ROCKY BARRETT] 
I looked him up one day, said, ‘Yeah, the taxpayers’ money went into this initially, 
but about 30 cents on the dollar. The rest we made.’ He’s a believer now. We swung 
him over! He’s still a racist, but he stopped saying it cost him. He doesn’t like Indians 
any better, but he doesn’t think it cost him any money. This is our corner right here. 
I would love to put a Chick Fil‐A there. 
 
[TRAK] 
Even that old mailman could get behind a Chick Fil‐A. Rebecca Schoenkopf, from 
Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. 
 
26 
REFERENCES 
 
 
 
 
Begay, Jr., M.A. (1991). Designing Native American management and leadership 
training: past efforts and future options. Harvard Project on American Indian 
Economic Development, Project Report Series. Cambridge, MA: John F. 
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 
 
 
Collard, J.C. (2006). Tribalmunicipal cooperation. University of Missouri ‐ St. Louis. 
 
 
 
Cornell, S. & Kalt, J.P. (1992). What can tribes do? Strategies and institutions in 
American Indian economic development. Los Angeles: UCLA, American Indian 
Studies Center.
 
 
Cornell, S. & Kalt, J.P. (1991). Where's the glue? Institutional bases of American Indian 
economic development. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic 
Development, Project Report Series. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School 
of Government, Harvard University. 
 
 
Cornell, S. & Kalt, J.P. (1998). Sovereignty and nationbuilding: the development 
challenge in Indian Country today. Harvard Project on American Indian 
Economic Development. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of 
Government, Harvard University. 
 
 
Shangreaux, V.D. (2006). Resiliency in a Native American community. Oklahoma State 
University.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a small band of Oklahoma Native Americans, has found economic success for itself and its members by implementing the main tenets of local economic development: equitability and sustainability. The Nation invests its revenues back into social services and business opportunities rather than dividing its income into per-capita payments for its members. As other governments around the United States have cut spending and laid off workers, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has grown and prospered.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Schoenkopf, Rebecca (author)

Core Title The cavalry is coming: How a small tribe of Oklahoma Indians is saving the region

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 05/02/2011

Defense Date 04/01/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Citizen Potawatomi Nation,equitability,Indian Country,local economic development,OAI-PMH Harvest,Oklahoma,sustainability

Place Name Oklahoma (states), Pottawatomie County (counties), USA (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Suro, Roberto (committee chair), Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth (committee member), Muller, Judy (committee member)

Creator Email rebecca.schoenkopf@gmail.com,schoenko@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3841

Unique identifier UC1281486

Identifier etd-Schoenkopf-4450 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-456005 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3841 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Schoenkopf-4450.pdf

Dmrecord 456005

Document Type Thesis

Rights Schoenkopf, Rebecca

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu