By ROBERT JUMPER
One Feather Editor
I am not going to cover new ground here. We have for literally a decade tried to promote the importance of this community being informed and that there is an inherent imperative that the government be transparent in its dealings with the community. Like the professor who was asked why he kept going over the same material every class, we feel obligated to keep reminding our community until we all “get it”.
“An informed citizenry is a prerequisite to maintaining the social contract between the established government and those governed by it. The people who constitute nations, states, or localities require unimpeded access to information to continually assess and evaluate their governments. The government must accept the responsibility to provide its citizens unrestricted access to public information on government activities. This responsibility includes providing information regardless of the geographic location or mobility of those who require it. Public information must be made available to the public without impediment through deliberate policies, charging fees that intentionally or unintentionally limit access by those unable to pay, or by limiting access through the use of format(s) that are not equally accessible to all citizens.” (www.ala.org)
As the current government moves closer to a tribal information portal, these are thoughts that every community member needs to consider. Our tribe has not been “transparent” since the pre-adult gaming days. In those days, there was less concern about telling the people what was happening because much of our income was federal and state grants, both of which are mandated to be public information by the laws governing the individual state and federal grantors. The laws outside the Qualla Boundary, in those cases, protected the community’s right to information. Even today, any information about government-to-government contracts or grants that might be unavailable through tribal government that flows through state or federal government channels may be accessed by the general public by the party that is outside of the tribe.
“The free flow of information between the government and the public that it serves is essential to maintaining an informed citizenry. The public’s right to know about government operations and functions is essential in holding government accountable to its citizenry. To facilitate accountability, it is the government’s responsibility to collect and maintain all information on its policies, program, debates, deliberations, and legislative, judicial, and executive activities, limit classification, regularly review for declassification, and disseminate unclassified information to the public.” (www.ala.org)
One of the significant challenges of creating a person-specific, coded access to information is the defining of who gets the information and who does not. To paraphrase a former U.S. president, it all depends on what your definition of “public” is.
Our government has created two distinct definitions. One “public” is everyone (which is the definition most of us understand). The other definition of “public” is enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians only. The tribe is at the beginning of a journey to electronically filter public information, allowing access to certain information only to be disseminated via an internet portal that presumably will have tight restrictions on who may access that information, namely, if you ain’t on “the roll”, you are restricted from accessing the portal and the information held there. In its infancy, this portal purports to be the answer to disseminating information to the tribal masses while keeping the rest of the world in the dark.
Tribal portals have been a challenging concept for Native newspapers and those concerned about public information access across the continent. On the surface, restricted information access looks attractive. After all, we are a sovereign nation, and that information belongs to us. And if we want anyone else to know about those things, we will tell them. But may we? Tell them?
One of the purposed purposes of the tribal portal is to prevent “them” from having access to it. “Them” has been defined as those who seek gain at our expense. We never have had a session of laying all that on the table, that is, who specifically is out to get us.
One previous elected official went so far as to say that explaining information on the high-level workings of business and government was too much for the average member to digest and make decisions on and that releasing that type of information would only cause confusion and misunderstanding. One tribal attorney stated that they were not in favor of allowing the membership to vote on a tribal constitution because the average citizen does not have the education or experience to decide how they should be governed. We once questioned an action by a tribal entity, requesting and not receiving information from them, and a tribal member derided us stating that if law enforcement “wants you to know something, I guess they will tell you.” These situations illustrate what can happen when the community is taken out of the authority equation when it comes to decisions about public information.
Lastly, the recent denial of the people’s ability to vote on a constitution and elected term questions, both of which were unanimously added to the ballot by leadership at the time, reinforces the perception that the people have only one avenue of exerting their authority, and that is at the ballot boxes during tribal elections every two years.
Elected officials are tribal members too. They come from varied backgrounds. Some have worked in the private sector, while others have been government employees, appointees, or politicians for the entirety of their careers. Their jobs are not pie-in-the-sky positions. If they are doing it right, they know that they are public servants. They are there to plan and use our resources to make a better life for us and generations of Cherokee people to come. They are the conduits of the people’s will, not necessarily their own. While they may ask us what direction they think we want to go (as in the cases of the referendums on cannabis and alcohol in the last election), unless they are transparent and share as much information with us as possible, our opinions and recommendations are going to be skewed by a trickle of information influenced by a mountain of gossip and speculation. As I have said before, the absence of information breeds gossip.
“Just as the government has a responsibility to collect and disseminate information to the public, the government must also guarantee that information collected by the government is presented to the public in its entirety, without editing or omissions that may change content or interpretation. Government information is a public resource collected at public expense. A comprehensive catalog describing all government information and information services, regardless of their format, is necessary to ensure that the public has knowledge of and access to the resource. The catalog must provide sufficient information to identify and access government information.” (www.ala.org)
Putting a tribal portal in place is a tall order. Our leaders are doing the best they can to find the balance between “public”, “tribal public” and “private”. Not an easy task. An example of the task ahead is that for many years, there have been laws and protocols in place regarding executive sessions of public meetings – Dinilawigi (Tribal Council), School Board, Police Commission, etc. Of those, the Dinilawigi (Tribal Council) is the only meeting disseminated via live broadcast. Also, on the books for Dinilawigi (Tribal Council) sessions is a law that allows part or all the open sessions of Dinilawigi (Tribal Council) to be conducted with the cameras and internet streaming turned off. While it is true that the chambers remain open in these open, off-air, sessions, most of the viewing public, including a majority of our tribal members, are blinded to whatever is going on during those sessions. It must be an enormous challenge to decide what you will see, what some will see, and what no one gets to see.
As the tribal portal is rolled out to the membership, take every opportunity that the administration gives you to provide input. Don’t sit silent while decisions are being made about the portal and seek answers from your leaders about what your rights are regarding obtaining and releasing information you get from the portal. I know our immediate response is that it is a good thing that will keep our stuff from “them”. But, as in most things, there is good and bad to be had, even in this case.
