Petersburg’s Tribe has an unusually contested election this year. Five seats are on the ballot and incumbents are running to retain all five seats. Four new candidates are working together to challenge the incumbents, including council president. The four say they got interested in running when they felt consistently unheard during Tribal decisions around how to spend more than three million dollars in federal grant money. KFSK’s Hannah Flor sat down with the four challengers and has this story.
This year nine candidates are running for five open seats. That’s not the norm in Petersburg.
Rebecca Lee oversees elections for the Petersburg Indian Association, or PIA.
“Typically, we have enough people running to fill the vacancies,” she said.
Five of the candidates are incumbents. The four challengers are running on a united ticket.
“We really are a team,” said Dzijúksuk Debra O’Gara. “The four of us don’t agree on everything, but we respect each other, and talk things through, and either come to a consensus or agree to disagree, and then move on.”
O’Gara is running for council president. Other challengers include Sha Gaaw Nathan Lopez and Kosh Kaani Jeanette Ness who are running for two of the three open two-year-terms, and Da Ta Everett Bennett who is running for a one-year term.
On a Saturday night in early December, a few dozen Tribal citizens gathered at Petersburg’s John Hanson Sr. Hall for a candidate meet and greet over soup and pilot bread.
The meet and greet is hosted by the four challengers. They say they invited all five incumbent candidates to join. Current Tribal Council President Cris Morrison, and Board Member Heather Conn showed up.
One much-discussed topic was the decision to lock PIA staff office doors while they are working during the week. Chad Wright is the Tribal administrator and made the decision. He told KFSK he was concerned about the security of employees and property, and the privacy of the information discussed in offices with thin walls.
“Wright: So that was one way to protect the staff and the clients that we serve.
Reporter: You said ‘We were concerned about security.’ Who was? Did you hear from the staff? Did you hear from council members?
Wright: I was concerned for the staff.
Reporter: Were there any incidents or anything that sparked that concern?
Wright: There was not.”
The office doors are now unlocked but remain closed. PIA’s current policy requires an appointment 72 hours in advance to meet with staff members.
All employees at PIA, including Wright, are non-Native. O’Gara said the move to lock the doors made it seem like PIA employees feel threatened by Tribal members, and that Tribal members are not welcome in their own government building.
“That has created the emotional reaction,” she said. “And there’s a lack of accessibility to the staff, by the tribal citizens. And so what has been created is completely the opposite of what the four of us are actually running to help correct.”
Ness is 65, and has worked as an employee of PIA and served on the council in the past. She was the leader of Petersburg’s Séet Ká Kwáan dancers for a dozen years. Lopez is 45 and is a pastor at the Lighthouse Assembly of God Church. He has been active as a delegate with the Tlingít and Haida central council. Everett Bennett is the Executive Director of WAVE, Working Against Violence for Everyone, as well as the cofounder of Humanity in Progress, a nonprofit that works to connect people to housing and other basic needs.
O’Gara is running for Tribal president. She is 66 and has worked in the legal field for nearly half her life. She has lived in Petersburg for five years and is the only one of the challengers not born and raised in Petersburg. But candidate Nathan Lopez said she’s the perfect fit for council president.
“She’s able to facilitate the collective voice of the council,” he said. “And so with the experience that she has, I believe it’s going to bring the most out of our council.”
There are six members on the Tribal Council. The president does not vote except as a tie-breaker.
The road to candidacy for the four started nearly a year ago when PIA put out a call to the Tribe for ideas on how to use 3.4 million dollars in federal COVID relief money. Lopez said that got Tribal members really excited about the possibilities.
“What could happen for our culture? What could happen for education, what could happen for our children?! It was just really exciting,” he said.
Candidate Everett Bennett said there was a common theme that Tribal citizens brought to the council.
“It’s sustaining culture. That was the key component that everyone had kind of touched on was, “How can we sustain our culture?” when it is, you know, aging and falling away,” she said.
But the four challengers said that the current council ignored Tribal members’ ideas and went ahead with the plan they had already been working on – a subdivision of rental housing for Tribal citizens and the general public. O’Gara said she doesn’t think the tribe needs more rentals.
“The tribe already has rental housing, and it’s a headache to manage too much,” she said. “I mean, there’s got to be a limit of how much before your main income is from being landlords, which I don’t think is a good, strong, cultural base for the tribe to be in.”
Lopez said the four would like to see more opportunities for home ownership.
“The rental issue is good for the Tribe, it’s good for the finances of the tribe. Homeownership is good for the Tribal citizen. There’s a big difference,” he said.
The four say it wasn’t so much what the decision was, as how the decision was made that rankled. Candidate Jeanette Ness said it felt like they had already made up their minds.
“It was so frustrating because people did have proposals or ideas, and the council had asked for them,” she said. “And then after it was all said and done, they go and vote on what they had in mind anyway. So it was still like, ‘Why did you bother? Why did we waste time?’”
After the disagreement over the federal fund usage, more Tribal citizens started to attend Tribal council meetings. Soon afterward the council voted to impose a five-minute limit on public comment at the meetings. O’Gara said there should be an easy flow of communication between Tribal citizens and the Tribal government.
“There isn’t, and that needs to be repaired,” she said. “And I’m not quite sure how a tribal government or any government for that matter, can effectively function without input from their citizens.”
Wright said the limit was the council’s decision.
“We just can’t sit in meetings for hours and hours listening to comment,” he said. “I mean, the council has to make decisions and move forward.”
The four challengers said that information about how the Tribe is being managed isn’t available. Wright said that it’s council policy not to make the council meeting informational packets or meeting minutes public.
“That is a council decision at this time not to release that information. We do have records here and people have been told that they are welcome to make an appointment and come up and review,” he said.
Lopez said the four candidates regularly attended Tribal Council meetings in the last year.
“We were continually looking at each other and saying, it’d be great if there was some change,” he said. “And I think there became a point where we realized that we needed to be a part of that change.”
Once they’d filed for candidacy they requested election regulations from PIA. They said they were told that while they could view the regulations at the PIA building, they were not allowed to have copies. Wright said the council decided it was best not to release the election regulations because they’re antiquated and need to be updated.
“There’s parts of it that don’t make sense and I think it would add to the confusion if it was out there and people saw that,” he said.
Ness said that lack of transparency continued even when they contacted council members or the Tribal administrator directly.
“I just felt that whatever we asked, just will get back to you. And we would never hear an answer back,” she said.
O’Gara said that the locked doors and the lack of transparency have led to a breakdown of trust between Tribal members, and the council and tribal administration.
“I think that the point came out pretty loud and clear at the meet and greet for the candidates, that there was a definite lack of communication and trust,” she said.
Lopez said increased communication is the first step to solving the issues that candidates and community members discussed at the meet and greet.
“When you are sitting around a table with somebody, when you’re allowing people to share what they feel and letting them get a little emotional and being okay that maybe their blood pressure rose a little bit because it’s something tied to who they are,” he said.
Ness said it’s one of the reasons she decided to run.
“I really want to improve that communication between the tribal citizens and the council,” she said. “It just seems like it’s been so closed door, that the tribal citizens don’t have a voice anymore, or, or are feeling welcome anymore.”
Cultural revitalization is central to the challengers’ platform. They see that as intertwined with the strong sense of community that would come with rebuilding trust. For Bennett, part of what is missing is the community of their youth.
“I can just smell it, thinking about it now. The food that was there, and hearing all the aunties laugh – we need to get back to the point where we can laugh together and share some food together,” they said.
They said that tight-knit-community would have bigger impacts
“When you have a connected community, you reduce a lot of other issues that happen in the community, and you reduce substance use you reduce suicide,” they said. “Every aspect of any impact that happens on a community is reduced by connecting to a community.”
Despite the change they’d like to make, the challengers are quick to insist that they appreciate the hard work of the current council members. Lopez said that while they may disagree with some of the decisions made by the council, the council members are Tribal citizens and he wants to work toward unity within the Tribe.
“I know each one of us, we want to say, you know, “thank you,” “gunalchéesh,” to them for the time that they put in,” he said. “But this is a great opportunity for us on this platform, at this time, to be able to make some new steps and some different directions.”
The Tribe has roughly 250 eligible voters. Last year just 26 people voted. That number is typical. Ness said she’s talked with people this year, reminding them to vote.
“Pretty much 99% was, they don’t care anymore, because they don’t have the trust anymore,” she said.
But Wright thinks voter participation is low for another reason.
“I think tribal citizens tend to be happy with the services that they receive,” he said. “So there’s no reason to, you know, to vote differently or to make any change.”
This year, Tribal members can vote early for the first time. The move is intended to increase voter turnout. Two early voting days have already been held, and two more are scheduled before election day on January 8th. There have already been 29 early ballots cast, 3 more than were cast total in last year’s election.
KFSK’s coverage of PIA’s incumbent candidates can be found here. Information on candidates, early voting, and election day can be found on PIA’s website.
