Tribal Tourism: Turning Visions into Reality
- Good morning, good afternoon, and good day. My name is Freddie Gipp and I'd like to welcome you to another OIED, Office of Indian Economic Development webinar series. This one featuring "Tribal Tourism: Turning Visions Into Reality From Business Planning To Implementation," presented by the Office of Indian Economic Development in collaboration with the American Indian, Alaskan Native Tourism Association. My name is Freddy Gipp and I'll be your moderator and host today. And I'd like to thank each and every one of you for taking time and just
learning about new situations in tourism. And hopefully you get some ideas outta this too, you know, and so we'll move on. So general housekeeping. So the webinar is recorded, everyone is muted during the presentation. If you have any questions, please enter it in the chat. We will address them at the end of the program. And slides and recording will
be made available to participants at a later date with closed captioning and everything too. So you don't have to worry about it if you miss it or if you wanna send this to people too, feel free after it is all situated. Also, there is a survey link that we put into the chat for everyone to complete. We do encourage for you to send this out there. It really helps us improve for future webinars as well and just for your satisfaction overall too. So moving forward,
I would like to present another guest with us, Mr. Dennis Wilson from OIED, who will introduce the Office of Economic Development. - Thanks, Freddy. Good morning everybody, or Good Afternoon, depending on where you're at. My name is Dennis Wilson. Typically this kind of overview is done by Denise Litz, our Director but unfortunately she's not available. I think she's
traveling at the moment, so I was teasing her that I could almost do her whole introduction, however many webinars and presentations we've been on. But yes, this has come together with INSA and Tribal Tech, and I can't say enough about Tribal Tech and we'll get into their folks here in a bit. But OIED, we are under AS-IA, the Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs, our Director is Onna LeBeau, she's from the Omaha Tribe. So if you think about us, we could split this in half. The other half is the division of Capital Investment. They do guaranteed loans and insured loans. So please look into that if that's something that fits your bill. But our half the division of Economic Development, our Director is Denise Litz. She's been with us since 2001, early 2001, moving forward. So our
half of OIED division of Capital Investment, we could further break that down into two halves. The Economic Development Specialist Team and the Grants Management Team. And we'll quickly look at the economic development specialist zones, not to be confused with BIE regions. So if you see there in the green, that's managed by Mr. Jim Henry. The red is managed by Janelle Green, including Alaska, and then the Eastern Zone with Rebekah HorseChief. So please contact them if you're in those zones for any other, anything that you need as far as economic development and I'll be glad to help moving forward. Our team, the Grants Management Team, so far, we have two of us. Myself, Dennis
Wilson. I'm remote, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm from Taos Pueblo and I facilitate and manage and oversee most all five of our grant programs. I pitch in here and there for other things. Elizabeth Callahan started with us last year located in Alaska, or sorry, Oklahoma,
Alaska. And she kind of covers everything else, if you can believe it. She helps us with grants and she does a plethora of other things with OIED in general. So between the two of us, we're adding a third party on Monday, our contractor, and then hopefully we add in another Grant Manager in the coming year. So between the four of us, we should really get on top of all the grant management we have, all our data and if you have any questions on these grants, please let us know. We're gonna
only offer one this fiscal year, which is the tourism grant, and I'll jump in later to speak on that. But otherwise please let us know and contact us if need be moving forward. My last slide, we'll do a quick introduction of Tribal Tech, Dr. Priscilla Belisle, Dr. U'ilani Corr-Yorkman, Dr. Kelly LaChance and Mr. Freddy Gipp. They've been phenomenal. We worked with, I've been working with them this year from our grantee meeting going forward, they've been phenomenal. So please contact them if need be and moving forward, take it away.
- Thank you Dennis. So in collaboration with today's webinar, we are working with the American Indian Alaskan Native Tourism Association and speaking on that will be Hannah Peterson. And so Hannah, take it away. - First I wanna welcome everyone to the webinar and thank you for joining today. And also start with an apology. Our board member, Ms. Kate
Anderson, the our Board Secretary and board member representative from Southern California region, unfortunately last minute was not able to attend. So I'm just jumping in to say hello and introduce us just a little bit. And also if you have an opportunity, Kate Anderson is the Director of Public Relations for Agua Caliente, excuse me, and of Indians. And they just have opened their new
beautiful cultural plaza and spa in Palm Springs and it's beautiful. So if you have an opportunity to take a look at it, I know she was going to plan on talking about it today and I'm really sorry she's not able to join us and hopefully, she's not contagious. Maybe I'm not. At any rate, I did wanna introduce AIANTA. We were founded in 1998, established by Tribes, four Tribes to address inequities in the tourism system. We are governed by an all Native board of directors from our 15 regions across the United States. AIANTA serves as the United Voice for the $14 billion Native hospitality sector. Our priorities and areas in which we focus are providing technical assistance
and training, research and publications to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities engaged in tourism and hospitality to facilitate conversations with Native communities, federal agencies, nonprofit associations and elected officials on the economic and cultural importance of the healthy of a healthy hospitality industry. To highlight the importance of visiting authentic Native destinations, including cultural, heritage, historic, and artistic sites. And to generate awareness, interest and demand for these destinations with domestic and international travelers, the travel trade and the media. And super excited to have Darian Morsette on the call today. I know he is one of your panelists. He's also a member of our Board of Directors and I did see that Camille Ferguson a shout out to her. She's our former Executive Director and
also board member from AIANTA. So you've got a great group with you today and I know it's gonna be a great presentation. And again, we're so sorry that Kate's not able to attend. And just last and probably should have been first, sorry about that. Our mission is to define, introduce, grow and sustain American Indian, Alaska Native, a Native Hawaiian tourism that honors traditions and values and really encourage you to take a look at our website at AIANTA.org and also NativeAmerica.travel. It's the only consumer facing website dedicated to cultural tourism in the United States, and there is no charge to participate in that powerful marketing tool if you are a Tribe Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian. Thank you so much for your time today.
- Yeah, thank you Hannah. So the purpose of today's webinar is to seek to provide practical steps for implementing Tribal tourism business plans, including effectively transitioning Tribal tourism concepts into actionable plants, strategies to ensure sustainability and cultural preservation, insights from Tribal tourism ventures. And so we're really excited to have two panelists with us today, Mr. Morsette and Mr. Harjo. These individuals are doing distinguished work in their respective areas and tribes and you know, we're really can get into it. So starting off with our panel is Mr. Zechariah Harjo. Zechariah is Muscogee Creek and Dine, he's the
Secretary of Nation for the Muscogee Creek Nation. But I'll let him introduce himself too. Zach, thank you once again for taking time outta your busy day. I understand that you're doing a lot of work, justice work too, and like I said before, you know your time is appreciated. So yeah, take it away, Zach. - Yeah, as Freddie mentioned, I am Muscogee Creek as well as Dine Chickasaw Seminole. I'm enrolled citizen of the Muskogee Nation and where I serve as a Secretary of the Nation, my department manages a lot of the economic development divisions and offices within the Tribe, but directly managed by my office now is the Office of Government Relations, the Office of Self-Governance, our contract employment support office. We have a Tribal utility authority, we have the planning, internal planning and economic development strategic office. And then we have the grants office. So each of the departments
within the Nation, across the board implements grant funding. And they're all essentially housed or managed at high level through our grants office. So we're constantly working on a number of projects initiatives. Recently I was able to establish a change in our code of law to be able to have a separate but congruent Office of Commerce. And so we work a lot with the Division of Commerce within the Nation to take on some larger business initiatives. And I formally manage all of them as a section nation and commerce and the commerce side manages the Tribal tourism division as well as recreation. We have some small businesses that the Nation owns and operates,
including a golf course and a few other items as well. But while I still have a hand in the ongoing management of those offices, I'm no longer directly over them. And instead I play more of a kind of collaborative role as a sector of the Nation and no longer the sector of Nation and commerce. So it's been an ongoing process and we're really excited where the Nation's at in terms of progress and especially after the McGirt ruling and establishing a very firm economic base within our reservation and as well as externally outside of the reservation and trying to make a more kind of regional and national impact the way that a lot of our peer Tribes have done successfully at the Chickasaw Nation, the Choctaw Nation, and to a lesser extent the Cherokee Nation. But in general, we're really excited to be participating in this. And we've done some, I'll say both historic partnerships, but there are a number of things that we're working on the tourism front that I think would really kind of, kind of shake the ground that we all have operated off of in within Indian Country particularly. 'Cause within the Nation's reservation we have
the city of Tulsa and that has offered a number of opportunities that just weren't possible 15, 20 years ago without the introduction of gaming revenue, as well as some other successful business initiatives that the Nation has undergone in that time where a much more viable partner, I believe, in our region for tourism as well as economic and cultural tourism that we directly benefit in the form of gaming. But there's so much beyond that that we're excited to really open the door to and move towards as we develop our economy here at the Nation. And also try to open doors for other Tribes beyond just ourselves. So with that being said, I'll turn it over to the next panelist and yeah, I look forward to participating today, thank you. - All right, thank you Zach. So the next panelist will be Mr. Morsette. Darian Morsette, he's from the Three Affiliated Tribes and he's the Executive Director for the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation and tourism. So Mr. Morsette, the floor is yours. - All right, thank you Freddy and Zechariah,
that's very impressive. Very good. And yes, I'm the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Tourism Director and I'm also the President for the North Dakota Native Tourism Alliance. And that's all five Tribes within North Dakota working together in a collaboration to develop tourism on each reservation. And we also partner with AIANTA, I'm on AIANTA board in Rocky Mountain Region, and we also partner with our state tourism department. So those are our two main people we collaborate. Also, we started with George Washington University, so this
is where the whole concept of the North Dakota Tourism Alliance came to be and came through a grant through Turtle Mountain the PTP Grant. So then we just moved on from there. But yeah, we started from scratch ground level and we've developed, came a long way in our development and we were able to secure a Bush Foundation grant and First Nations grant and get some legal advice from a legal department, which really, really helped us out. So we are moving forward on that and I'll just leave it there. - Thank you, thank you, Mr. Morsette. So as we go into now, we have three questions for the panelists. Take your time on answering this. We have plenty of it, but if you have any questions from the audience, please put it in the chat and then we'll address it later. So moving forward onto the next question. So I guess we'll start with, we'll start with Zach first. Question number one is how did your Tribal tourism initiative
strategically bridge the gap between the business plan stage and the actual implementation phase? This doesn't have to pertain to one particular thing, if you have a portfolio of it, share what's more relevant too. So in regards to that. - Sure, we are keyly positioned, as I mentioned before, in the city of Tulsa. We both have a riverfront property on the Tulsa side of the Arkansas River as well as the Jenks side. From the outside perspective, it is all the same city, but internally they are two different municipal bodies. The city of Tulsa is the much larger body, and the city of Jenks is a smaller one, but the Tribe, of course, both of the Tribe of course, encompasses both cities. And so to that end, we essentially had to empower ourselves economically
before we could really sort of realize a lot of the business opportunities and potentials that do come with being in an urban area. And so one of the ways that tourism really helped us is the establishment of kind of a hallmark tourism and recreation facility in our River Spirit Casino Resort here in Tulsa that also was supplemented by the purchase of a commercial, I guess, asset in the River Walk on the other side of the river. So because the Nation owns property on both sides, it really generated, like I said, a localized tourism economy specific to us that then our businesses later benefit from. And so to that end, because we've successfully done that on both sides of the river, we're looking to vertically integrate upwards and execute a tiff agreement, a very large tiff agreement with the city of Tulsa, probably in excess of a hundred million dollars to make the most of our Tribal tourism economy that we've generated here in the southern portion of the city to access and I guess recruit larger businesses within two miles of our casino resort. There's an established, a very large outdoor outlet mall space, and we know that as opposed to compete with them, if we set up the right environment through our tourism and the economy that we drive, that way it can really drive and develop business for everyone and not just for ourselves, but all of our partners that we value, both on the municipal side as well as, just the private industry side. And to that end, we've kind of utilized Tribal tourism and the
economy that we drive in southern Tulsa to kind of bolster all of the other governmental efforts that we have within the city, both on the health side, we purchase a hospital in southern Tulsa with the means of it being open to the general public and offering cancer treatment the first of its kind within our health system that is in part a derived from IHS funding as well as our own governmental revenue. So those are kind of the bigger picture things that we've, like through our tourism and our economic success there, we've been able to kind of expand the horizons on what's possible within our portion of the city. And then the business planning stage, I mean it's our economic base and the cultural tourism that we utilize both in terms of our gaming as well as the Nation implements one of the largest cultural events of the Muscogee Nation Festival every year. It's attended by roughly a hundred thousand people in a small city just south of Tulsa. We use those type of events as kind of flashpoints to really drive not only just the local economy, but nationally. We have a lot of citizens throughout, we have citizens in every state, but we also have partners throughout the contiguous United States and beyond. And so we use a lot of those kind of flashpoint moments, whether it be key cultural events that occur at River Spirit, our gaming facility, or our own Muscogee Nation festival, to really bring in those kind of outside eyes to see if they have any suggestions or potential for business opportunities and collaboration that they could bring to the Nation from outside. And one of the biggest things that we're really working
on is bringing the unknown into the reservation. I mean, the city of Tulsa is well established, our economies here are well established, but what is missing in the current markets that is not be what needs are being unfulfilled? And so that's where our Tribal tourism really helps bridge the gaps because we do bring in those international and national and other localized people that do not live in our region and what are we doing with their time and their money once they arrive at our portion of the city or arrive in our key economic areas. And so, Tribal tourism has been of the utmost importance, and I think that most of the Oklahoma Tribes would absolutely be remiss to not mention that our wild success in gaming since 2004 has really opened up the doors for us to move forward for all business ventures outside of gaming. And, but gaming in of itself is a form of Tribal tourism, especially in a state like Oklahoma, where we have a model Tribal compact that allows specifically the Tribes and no one else to access that kind of business portfolio. But Tribal tourism is truly the foundation of all the other business opportunities that the Nation has been able to part participate in historically as well as it's gonna be the foundation moving forward unless and until the federal government clarifies Tribe's abilities to implement their own taxation with or without consideration of state governments and the preemption of state law within Tribe's respective territories. So unless and until that's cleared up, unfortunately, Tribes will continue to need to be effective business people and business operators. And
our most kind of natural front in that space is tourism. And we to a great degree have leveraged our Tribal tourism to bridge the gap, so to speak, between just business development, planning and recruitment, as well as just providing the firm base of the number of people that would benefit from any new business partnerships that we bring into the region. So I hope I've answered that thoroughly enough, but of course there are many moving parts and if there's questions beyond that, I'm more than happy to fill those, thank you. - Yeah, that was a whole crash
course right there, so Mr. - Sorry if I skipped part two, I went to law school sadly, so. - No, that's totally fine, don't apologize for that. So, yeah, Mr. Morsette, moving on to you, we're interested to hear,
what's going on in North Dakota. - Okay, how did your Tribal tourism initiative strategically bridge the gap between the business plan and strategic or the stage? Okay, first of all, with MHA nation, we had our own Tribal tourism department. So we were kind of a moving part before NDNTA started. So we were already out there, we're all in rural communities, each of our
five reservations, we're close to cities, let's say we're about 75 to 80 miles away from the next largest city. So it takes a lot for us to bring people in because to get 'em off the interstates and to get 'em away from the cities, it took a lot of planning and a lot of meetings to get to this point where we're at now. But, so we were kind of a model for them to start because we started, getting out there marketing to act these big trade shows, local trade shows, we're out there quite a bit and we've marketed internationally also. And now I'm gonna step back for us to actual implement
these phases through being in the city. Yes, it's a lot of work, but out here it is definitely hard, but it's getting done, believe me. So when we started, you know, with the business plan, yeah, okay. But we started with a tourism assessment plan. That's where we started moving every, all the Tribes start moving forward once they understood the existing potential of attractions, market demands, supporting infrastructure and services, you know, overall competitiveness and socio-cultural economic considerations and environmental biodiversity considerations. So we did that with George Washington. You know, that was the first step. You know, we did the market
research, the local cultural heritage and history. We brought all of that because everything that was pretty much written in a book, we want to change that into our own story. And also with that, I'm gonna read the mission statement for NDNTA. The mission statement of NDNTA is to preserve, protect, promote, and educate the world about the culture, history and environment of our sovereign nations. NDNTA will promote and educate through sustainable tourism while developing economic,
social and cultural opportunities for people and Nations. So that's where we started moving forward with that and looking at ecotourism and sustainable tourism, cultural heritage tourism, those guys are back, excuse me, we're getting some phone work done. So that took a lot, the success of tourism development relies on a lot of factors from healthy environment to social and economic and political stability. So for us to bring, to develop this and bring people in, we had to educate the communities around us, even our local communities and our Tribal government that tourism, has changed a lot. You know, it's not just everybody's coming in,
it's a free for all, you know there's rules and there's regulations that we've developed. So from the business plan to the tourism, that plan, all the logistics that come into play with that, the assessment was crucial for us because I said a lot of the Tribes did not have this department set up yet. So as we're moving forward now, we have our booking platform, our websites up, we've been out there marketing and the economy is starting to change as we're educating the cities and locally, regionally and nationally that we're getting a more of an influx of people in here now. So that was the biggest test for us to do this, and getting, working with our partners, it was huge. We have like over 50 partners, advisors that we can go to that wasn't there before,
but we bridged that gap and we even went to the legislators and lobbied for money from the state, which got shot down. But we kept moving forward and each year we started this in 2016, and we have our board now, and we were a working board at one point. Now we're a governing board, with the help of the grant, again, we're able to hire an Executive Director and a Marketing Coordinator, which takes the workload out of off a us because that's a lot of work doing what we're doing and what they're doing, so. - Yeah, appreciate that. It's really nice to see the contrast from what you have to work with in the rural setting and then from Zach's perspective on being in the urban setting too. So it's really cool to see those both compare in parallel each other in that situation. So moving forward, on the second question, Mr. Morsette, we're gonna have you, since you're all warmed up,
so can you share specific steps or decisions that played a crucial role in turning the envisioned concepts into tangible, actionable actions? - Well, again, NDNTA, we started, we revived it, it was in operation at one time, maybe let's say 10 years before we started this. Then we held our first ever North Dakota Native tourism summit then we did outcomes assessments on existing new tourism products. We did FAM tours, in the Tribal communities. We presented to our United Tribes Tribal Leaders board for the first time. So let 'em know what we're doing. We've created
bylaws and a strategic plan for NDNTA and we also did board governance training for a nonprofit, so there was a lot of steps that came into developing this. And some of our, well, I took the Cultural Heritage Certificate from George Washington University through AIANTA also, and there's like three of us on a board that have that. And we developed our NDNTA budget work plan. We have a 12 month work plan and we developed a five-year work plan. And what else we have, yeah, our new, our NDNTA Executive Director, we created Native American cultural tours. So that's part of our booking platform also. So there's a lot of things that we've done and we've tested our cultural tours, we've had journalists come up here, we've done tours with after international roundup with Rocky Mountain International. We've had tour operators come
up here and we do FAM tours. So we're getting there. We're getting to that point where yes, we are a viable, you know, tourism department. - So thank you Mr. Morsette. So moving forward for Zach, can you share specific steps or decisions that played a crucial role in turning the vision concept into tangible, actionable actions? I like that, how it has two word plays. - Sure, we identified, so I'm a big fan of enumerating both the existing, I guess details to whatever it is you're working on, whatever project it is you're working on, knowing what your actual base is, whether that's economically or in terms of staff support or I mean project management, the things that, the projects that you manage that you know are recurring. And so for us, when we started looking at how to make sustained tangible and actionable plans that we can revert back to and see what progress have has been made, we identified exactly how much we were spending per year on tourism and cultural tourism related initiatives outside of gaming. And of course the biggest one that we see annually year to year is the foot traffic as well as everything, all the events leading up to after and everything leading up to, during and after our Muscogee Nation Festival. The budget for that event is in excess of millions of dollars. But finding
out exactly where the budget breakdown was, and then actually, what that translated to in terms of sales, foot traffic, hotel reservations, you know, the local economy, how it was impacted, what do we see in increases in foods and sales and beverages during that weekend or the weeks leading up to it and the weeks after it. All of those things, we put names and numbers to see where we were missing out on opportunities to turn those people and all that foot traffic into more tangible revenue as well as governmental, I guess, opportunities to provide both services or to expand the public knowledge and awareness of everything that the Muscogee Nation does, both on a citizenship level, but also on a community level for those that are non-Tribal. And so, like I said, enumerating exactly what our impact was, what we were spending and exactly what we were doing pre-development was of the utmost importance into that end. We found that, of course we had a much larger footprint in terms of the foot traffic that the region sees when we host cultural events, as well as where we're missing out on opportunities to capture that local economy and turn it into a more sustainable and replicable practice year after year event after event. And so what that translated to was a focus on the localized economy. When we do bring in additional people that don't live there, how are we best utilizing their time and their resources? Have we provided a place for them to stay in the local area? Have we provided sufficient places to eat? Have we provided sufficient places to access emergency medical care? And then also on the digital foot traffic side, is our website up to par? Is our website able to be able to handle a large amount of purchases and requests in during the time of our festival when we have citizens that can't make it, but they still want to purchase or procure items that t-shirts, hats and whatever else that we might sell on site, do they have a way to access that virtually? So the two areas that we really focused on after getting all the numbers back in terms of our economic impact as well as what we actually spend year after year on a large cultural and tourism events, was that we determined that we need to have an online presence, whether that be both a store as well as a website that citizens could click on and find out all the cultural events that are planned throughout the year, as well as integrate that with all of our programmatic and governmental services and functions and events and activities that we host throughout the year. So we're in the process of revamping our tourism website, so that's more interactive as well as the calendar being updated to the best of our ability. And to that end, providing
a way for citizens and not just citizens, but everyone of course the general public, being able to access some of the goods and services as well as products that are sold at those events, particularly at the Muscogee Nation Festival. So all of those, like I said, enumerating, I think the most crucial way that you can actually track your progress is enumerating exactly what you were working with before you started taking action and trying to change things for the better. Because you can compare those same numbers and the same things that you took a litmus test or a measuring stick on before taking any action. And then directly referencing those numbers and how they've changed and what portions of your new developmental phase or whatever, a new initiatives that you're focusing on, what their impact has been upon, I guess the key talking points of your overall goal as well as what was realized before. So I think those are probably the biggest areas we focus on. And like I said, based off of the express numbers that we pulled and we studied, we saw a need to offer more direct, I guess, opportunities for people that were coming into the region that don't live here. You know, we needed to secure their, like I said, their hospitality.
We needed to secure more places that for them to eat. And then also the online website having an accurate calendar as well as an e-commerce function so that people could procure goods and services year round or if they can't make it in person, that they still have a way to be able to purchase items that they wish. So those were some of the immediate areas, but again, big fan of enumerating, the actual details and numbers that you're working with now and then how you want them to change. If you're not working with the actual numbers, then it is truly just a concept. It's not something that you can actually envision and then plan to make progress on if you're not even clear what the picture looks like from ground zero. - All right, thank you Zach. That's really insightful. So we'll go, we'll stick with you on question three. Let's go to question three. So what unexpected obstacles did your team encounter during the implementation and
how did you navigate these challenges to achieve the envisioned success? This can be from one event to many, you know, you name it, if you're in the process right now, I understand that you're kind of going through situation with the city at the moment too, and that you can kind of brush up on that, on how that infringes on tourism as well. But yeah, first feel free to discuss whatever you need. - Well, so I guess I'll focus on the things that we've encountered specific to our Muscogee Nation Festival as well as the website. Some of the key
things that we've we're looking to implement within the next six to eight months before our next Muscogee Nation Festival. Again, going back to the foot traffic that we draw into the region, while it's very significant and while the Nation has resources to begin addressing a lot of the issues, the issue of providing appropriate, what do you call it, hospitality in the forms of hotels as well as maybe a RV park or things like that. Those are very big ticket items. And so no matter what we could do in the immediate future, it won't meet the need of the a hundred thousand or more people that enter the region, the majority of them that don't live there. So there's no way overnight for us to stand up, a hotel or something like that, that would provide, the needs that we see year after year just in terms of people needing a place to stay for the weekend. And so we've looked at a number of ways to begin housing some of those immediate, I guess, potential customers as well as vendors that also are in the region for specific cultural events. And to that end, like one of the solutions might be, the Nation has a significant property,
we might move forward with an RV park in the next six months. And that's one way, but I mean, again, anytime that we're looking at the bigger picture, there's almost certainly a need that outpaces our ability or our resources to resolve it right away. And so it's just about being strategic about what the overall goal is. And you know, if the end goal is to truly be self-sufficient wherever within the
reservation that we choose to have these events, then it starts with, again, enumerating the actual needs of the current situation and then where you want to end up. And so again, there's probably not gonna be an overnight resolution to any of the challenges, but naming the actual things that you're up against is probably the, is definitely the first place to start. The other thing that we ran into is really kind of an issue in of the modern era is when we've actually gone to implement any sort of website that has an e-commerce function, it makes that website, if it's tied to the tribe, a very large target for cyber, cyber risk management, for fraud, for all sorts of cyber attacks and so on the implementation we've encountered, like I said, a lot of issues in terms of cyber security and cyber risk management and potential fraud instances that we just weren't fully prepared for. And so that's kind of delayed the implementation and development
of a new website to ensure that when it's set up that it is as safe as can as humanly possible. But also we're a best practice and example of how to address and make sure that our client and our, the personal information that we collect to do just simple orders, all the way down from credit card numbers and addresses truly remains confidential and is safe. And so that's kind of one of the things that we ran into initially in terms of the implementation. But again, overnight we're not gonna have all the solutions for that. But having an open mind as well as, again, your
a clear end goal in mind will help you get there. And so that's kind of what we've, our experience so far and knowing that there will most likely and certainly be other challenges that we haven't run into just yet. But yeah, those were at least a couple of things that we've encountered so far. - Appreciate that, very interesting. So moving on to Mr. Morsette, what unexpected obstacles did your team encounter during the implementation and how did you navigate these challenges to achieve the envisioned success up in North Dakota? - We, again, speaking from the point of view for North Dakota Native Tourism Alliance is when it was in developmental stage, which it still is funding, funding's always a big obstacle for us that we came up against where each of the Tribes put in 5,000 each to get the NDNTA started, then we started moving on looking for grants. So funding was a huge, huge, huge factor for us. 'cause we were doing all the work plus doing our own work. And that's where once we got the big Bush grant took some of the pressure off of us,
we, our Executive Director and our Marketing Manager are doing a lot of that. So also in there, consistency when we'd hire a marketing person in that position, were they able to handle all five Tribes at once, 'cause we're all rural, we're all spread all apart, all the way across North Dakota. And so we went through a couple of those and which is fine, a big one was educating the public, 'Cause we're, yes, we're on a reservation, we all live in small towns, you know, but there's different things that happen here. So when we're having our events, whether it's horse racing,
cultural presentations or our powwows educating people that yes, you can come to them. Yes, it's not only for Native Americans, it's open to the public and we invite everybody to come. So we're bridging that. We're moving forward with that. And you know, even our Tribe, our Tribal Councils, educating them about tourism, how we're promoting with its economic development. Yes,
the small communities, yes, the artisans, it spreads out. You know, the more people we're bring in the economy bills, it's just not coming into, let's say my tourism department, but it is building within the community. So that's the part about being in these rural places that we have to deal with and we're doing it. And another one was each Tribe having a tourism office. You know, that's very critical when it comes to this because we don't have all the resources, each Tribe has one or two people in there. You know, I have six, but we're all spread out doing different jobs. So we're all taking care of this each in our regions. So those obstacles, and getting the buy-in, why should I fund you, Tribal government? Why should I do this? Okay, economic development, sustainability, wanna tell our own story, everybody's gonna benefit from this. And once
we got the buy-in, okay, great, now we're getting RV parks in each segment. We're getting a Tribal park, being built, in the badlands we have, all the communities are building rec centers, places to eat movie theaters, entertainment centers, indoor water parks, jump houses. So the buy-in there, after the education came through, they're starting to see it and they're allocating their money into different attractions that can bring people in. 'Cause I'll tell you where I'm at, let's say we have three hotels, it's not very big. We got about 2,500 people that live here and we're
probably the largest outta everybody, but we have 10,000 members living within the reservation and outside the reservation, 16,000 total. So that's the buy-in the Tribe got, each Tribe is building, we're working with THPO offices, state offices. And another one is getting the legal advice, that from a law firm really, really helped us out, making our bylaws, that wasn't easy. We revised them a lot, to get to the point where we're at and the board training that we got from George Washington University, a few other people in there, partners and that, it's been a good road. Okay guys. So that's where we really come from the ground level up is where we're at and
navigating these challenges wasn't always easy, that's for sure because we're a small board and there's six of us on there and we're developing this whole organization. So funding and making the time to do everything is critical for us. - Yeah, definitely. I personally am a big fan of your office. I really like what you guys do with cold tourism, emphasizing the importance
of pow-wows. Pow-wows are a really big driving economic factor and I really see now since you guys been doing that, it's boomed and especially with what you guys do with the earth lodge too, with those specials as well. So it's being creative too, which is really nice. And working with what you got. 'Cause it kind of seems like you were thrown in the fire, but you kind of came out chiseled, you know what I mean? So. - But yeah.
- So yeah, so moving forward. Thank you Mr. Morsette. Moving forward, we're gonna bring back Dennis Wilson. He's going to briefly talk about the Tribal Tourism Grant program and then right after that we'll get into question and answers for Mr. Harjo and Mr. Morsette, we have about five questions, so we'll get through that after Dennis speaks. So Dennis, it's yours.
- Thank you there, Mr. Gipp. I'll have about the next five minutes to cover what we're gonna do with the Travel Tourism Grant Program this year. It'll be our only grant for this fiscal year and hopefully we kind of thread in a lot of what Mr. Morsette said and Mr. Harjo talked about Rebekah and I just came back from the provider's conference in Anchorage and a lot of the same hurdles resonate across the country, across the regions, across the zones. Obviously there's some
unique to others and then some that we all have in common, but hopefully our funding, we try to tailor it. So number one, it's easy to apply for. It is a competitive discretionary grant program. So you know, there is that component, good or bad the way, depending on how you wanna look at it, but we wanna offer the right product that is in the need now, what we won't have in this grant, and I'll kind of go through this here in a bit, is it will not have a business implementation component. It is gonna still stay towards developing a business plan or getting a feasibility study completed. So the authority that we have for this grant is it's under the NATIVE Act. The eligible applicants are Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations per section four of the IED-ISDEAA, including Tribal consortia. And for those that do rank, it will be funding for subject
matter experts to complete a feasibility study or get a business plan. So you will have that money to go get that data and get those resources and get that information. Now I feel that a feasibility study, good or bad, is phenomenal for some Tribes that money is focused so that you can see if it's feasible. So when we do have to post on our webpages and those that have been selected, do note that some of them didn't pursue it because obviously was it feasible, yes or no. And then they'll make the decisions going forward, which does also have its own unique challenges when you have travel new governments coming in and new leadership, they may want to go a different direction. So, but at least you got the data to support that decision
going forward. Moving forward please. So what we hope to look forward with this grant is getting it in the system this month and it should come out sometime in January. That's what we hope we want a 90 day solicitation window that will close around April. That gives us a good four to five months to August. We want to award in August and stay out of September. We have about a million dollars total,
so the floor will be 50,000 and the ceiling, about a hundred. So we're looking at anywhere between 10 and 15 grantees do know that it is dependent on funding. As of now we still have that million, but we did get last year, we had multiple years of funding, so we were able to award a lot more this year. It may be a little bit more highly competitive. We will stretch this out to a two year period of performance. It's usually been 24 months, but you know, do register with grants.gov for the CFDA numbers and watch our webpage for when it does hit the hit the streets. The NOFO and the FOA format will be a little bit different. It's gonna look similar to what our living
language grant is now in the FOA format. The criteria may be updated, otherwise it's gonna be pretty much the same. So do look for that. Do look at our webpage on those that have been awarded. If you wanna contact them, if you have any questions on consultants, they use subject matter expertise in either your region or your industry, feel free to reach out to them directly. Unfortunately, we do the Tribal sovereignty data integrity. We try to stay out of providing that information that way we're not giving anything out that a Tribe doesn't want. We also don't provide any kinda list for consultants or contractors. Again, it would be like us promoting and we can't do that. We do
have to kind of keep that insulated conflict of interest. However, do register with Tribal Tech. All these webinars, all this information will help you apply for other grants. So, it is answering the questions of the criteria, I think are key. So there was a couple questions
that came up in the chat again, on consultants and contractors. I highly suggest you register Tribal Tech and then seek out those Tribes that are in your area. And like Mr. Isaac said, with the different challenges, it is tough. We've seen a lot and we just try to keep our ear to the floor and what can we do? What can we provide in each grant season? That way we work with our, and collaborate with our other federal partners foundations so that we're kind of keeping our grants in alignment with them, timing with them, and just making sure we're offering the products that you need within the confines of our grant program, N2CFR 200. But otherwise we try to make sure that we're putting out in the grant world what's needed. Our competitive process is out there and it's, we have policy, we're following it to the T that way we're fair and just making sure the application process is fluid. So again, I'll be around if we have any questions, but I think
that's it and that's my time. So thank you. - All right, thank you Dennis. So as we move forward, we are now in the Q and A session. This is just a gentle reminder for everybody too. We do have a webinar survey link that is posted in the chat by Kelly. Thank you Kelly. And
more information on the Tribal Tourism Grant program as well. So take some time. It only takes about one minute to fill out the survey and we appreciate your feedback too. So moving forward now to the question and answers looking through this. So I'll go through down the line it says Pipe Springs National Monument is located within our reservation. Did any of the panelists,
Mr. Morsette Mr. Harjo collaborate with the National Park Service? If so, what was that experience like? And I'll let you either or Zach, if you wanna go first, be my guest. - We actually yes, are working on a historic partnership with the National Park Service for one of our historic sites, the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park in Macon, Georgia to do a co-management, I guess set up long term. But to that end we've had some talks and really good conversations as well as onsite visits with Secretary Haaland to the Ocmulgee Mounds. And it's been a very positive experience. I think, of course, having a Tribal leader, not just any Tribal leader, but a woman Tribal leader in the Department of Interior, advocating on our behalf has been of the utmost importance and really a turn in the relationship I think that National Park Services have with Tribes. And right now we need, I would urge everyone to, if you have
lands that are considered National Parks within your reservations, now is the time to really make the most of those opportunities because we have that kind of liaison within Department of Interior at a high level, and not just in the BIA office, but I mean of course the Secretary of the Interior Affairs is Deb Haaland. So our experience with that has been one of respect and one that we are unfortunately not necessarily used to when it comes to a federal partner, particularly the National Park Services, because for a long time they have unilaterally exerted, federal jurisdiction over those areas with or without necessarily too much consent or partnership from the Tribes, even when NAGRPA or other known cultural sites are within are located within those areas. But to the extent that, again, now, I think as a historic opportunity, the co-management of those National Parks and federal lands with Tribes offers the, a blending of both protection of cultural sites as well as in what ways the Tribe is willing and able to leverage cultural tourism in appropriate ways. Those conversations are being had. And so our experiences with the National Park Service as well as our municipal partners in Macon, Georgia, has been a very positive one. I can't say that that will be the case, of course, across the country, but it has just started with the conversation both at the federal level and again at the local level. And what we've been able to do in Macon, Georgia is put large tracks of land and trust on
behalf of the Nation and in co-management with the National Park Service, with the intention that those lands have a very limited commercial use and especially for the protection of their cultural heritage. The potential use of them, like I said, in the terms of commercial aspect, would be limited to the Nation creating whatever I guess business opportunities would exist, whether that be in cultural trainings or cultural, I guess, tours of certain significant sites. We're really at the beginning stages of that. So I can't speak to necessarily a wild success in
terms of co-management of national parklands between the federal government and Tribes. But I think we're really at the cusp of some really historic, I guess, partnerships that just have never existed before. And I know, like I said, we've put large lands, large tracks of land into the trust outside of our jurisdictional area, but they're within our historical, I guess, historical boundaries of former treaties before we were moved. And so moving forward, I know that
the integrity or maintaining the integrity of those lands for their historical purposes is at the fore. But to what end can be established, a cultural tourism site that could be a, it could be a museum, it could be a gift shop, it could be a center for culturally informed artists that are citizens of the Nation or citizens of sister Tribes in that region. It might be providing them a space for them to sell their culturally relevant good services and activities in that arena. So I
think right now there's either very limited or there aren't really any wild success stories in partnership with the National Park Service, but we're, I think we're right at the cusp of doing some historic things. So I'd encourage every Tribe, particularly the one that mentioned it in the chat, to kind of initiate those conversations with the National Park Service because we have, we've got an Indian woman in office, so we might as well make the most of it. - Yeah, and it's our land too. - Exactly. - So, Mr. Morsette going to you, I know you mentioned something about the Badlands,
I don't know if that's National Park, might. - No. - It is? - We're not, we're working with the National Forest Service and Park Service to develop this. It's a Tribal park. - Okay, is what it is. - Yeah, we don't have a National Park. Closest one to us is Medora, Theodore Roosevelt National Park. That's a whole another ball of wax. I don't even bother with that. Other than that, we, from what we're doing at our point, yeah, our park's
coming along good. And we're not, don't have any other tracks that we're going after right now. So right now mine's pretty basic on that point. - So while I have you here, Mr. Morsette, we have a question from the audience that says, what opportunities do you have for Tribal artisans beyond them attending big events? So I would say minus pow-wows, another thing too, what kind of, I guess repository or representative actions do you have, you send, you have ambassador programs, I know a lot of Tribes send dancers and cultural exchanges and envoys over, but can you touch base on what the Three Affiliated Tribes are doing in regards to that? - Well, for artisans, we do have a dance group that goes around, we've Native American Month, we're at the Heritage Center in Bismarck, North Dakota, our capital. So we performed there in
front of the schools. We had speakers and dancers, we had food. And right now our local college, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College has a cultural, let's say cultural class, I don't know the correct name for it, but cultural Native American Studies program, which is a four year program there. And right now I think all the other five Tribes in North Dakota also have that going on also. So that's growing and yeah, that's, we're moving forward. We're not at that big level yet, but it's definitely gonna get there, believe me. - Nice. - On our side, I would say, I know this is a capacity thing for most Tribes, including us, especially us. I think we have a lot of citizens that have artisan based business practices. And
overnight we cannot create the space that is necessary for them. But where we have taken initiative is utilizing ARPA funding or other federal funds to be able to create spaces for our citizens who are primarily artisans or primarily have a culturally relevant business practice. We try to open space and are in the process of creating several kind of government offices or not necessarily government offices, but properties that the Nation owns specifically for those purposes and integrating them into some of our infrastructure projects. Like for instance,
the Muscogee Nation, despite Tulsa being within our reservation, we're actually based out of Okmulgee, Oklahoma, which is a small town about 20, 30 minutes south of Tulsa. And most of our governmental offices are there. But what we've been able to do, one of the planning and implementation of a new, I guess, visitor center slash governmental office that will welcome people into the town of Okmulgee is to mobilize both ARPA and other federal funds such as ICDBG funding to provide, like I said, a space for them or for citizens to be able to access year round and sell their goods and services. And so essentially what we're creating is a compliant on the federal side, a building that will offer some governmental and citizenship services in addition to having a forward facing commerce, I guess, function, where there'll be a market, again for citizens that have artisan based businesses to be able to sell their products out of. We currently already do that in a number of kind of smaller market setups, but the intention is to provide those opportunities at kind of the highest levels of infrastructure projects moving forward so that we're not only doing better on the governmental side and offering enhanced services, but also more opportunities for citizens to partake in some of the new infrastructure that we're building out. So I know that's a capacity issue as well as not everyone has the resources and certainly without federal funding, this probably wouldn't be a project that we would be able to take on immediately. So I understand that there's capacity issues and in general and
across the border in Indian Country, but that might be one of the areas that you consider is if you're already moving and mobilizing funds, whether they're Tribal, federal, or a combination of financing, any combination thereof. You might consider also establishing some sort of commerce side where there is even just like a little market that provides both your citizens as well as the Tribal government and opportunity for artisans to have a space that's theirs and for them to utilize as well as capture any foot traffic that's in for maybe a doctor's visit or who knows, whatever they might be in for. So that's one of the ways we're offering kind of year-round opportunities for our citizens. And again, the e-commerce side is another area that we're looking to as well. You know, if the nation has, it can effectively establish a online store, you know,
maybe all that we do to offer our citizens access to it that do have those goods and services. Maybe it's a $5 a year, a payment that they have to us so that we can cover some of the overhead involved in operating that website and what
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