By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
I do not know about you, but I like to be in the know. Because of our “smart” phones, we can access a flood of information in a short time span. Much of what we see and hear, we must filter because along with the facts, we now deal with twists and spins and opinion in places that it should not be. Part of the process of making informed decisions is getting unbiased information to consider when making those decisions. The garbage in, garbage out theory of assessment.
I infrequently get requests to publish pieces (many in the form of press releases) from organizations and government entities that are written by Artificial Intelligence, in my opinion. I say in my opinion, because there isn’t a definitive test to identify writings as being written by AI. But there are certainly signs. If a written piece contains little substance and is littered with meaningless descriptors, it is very likely the work of AI. AI can only massage the information that the user inputs. For the rest of the content, it draws on the large vocabulary of the Internet. While evaluating that theory, I logged on to an AI site and asked it to provide a press release for the Strawberry Festival, giving only rudimentary information. As an example, I provide the following first paragraph:
“Cherokee, NC-September 2025-Cherokee Strawberry Festival set to sweeten the Qualla Boundary in September 2025. Celebrate Cherokee heritage, community, and the season’s sweet abundance with a strawberry-themed culinary and cultural experience. The Cherokee community invites visitors and locals alike to celebrate the annual Cherokee Strawberry Festival, to be held on the Qualla Boundary in September 2025. This beloved festival, a vibrant tribute to strawberry season, offers a unique opportunity to enjoy Cherokee traditions, arts, and foods made with strawberries of all kinds.”
When you see vagueness (sweet abundance, vibrant tribute) and meaningless platitude (strawberry-themed, beloved festival, strawberries of all kinds), you have a good indication that you are reading something at least partially generated by a machine (a la Terminator).
The issue for me is that when we see AI generated press releases coming from official sources, it calls into question whether history is being recorded accurately. It is a challenge either way but if a press agent or official does not have the ability to articulate a record of an action or event without the use of AI, how trustworthy can the data be that they are inputting for AI?
The same is true for us. We are tasked daily with making decisions in our lives. Good decisions require good data. Good input. But day after day, we must sift through the minutia of tons of opinion and misinformation to try to sort data and fact from manipulative fantasy. And this writing environment is custom made for AI. AI will embellish its output in the absence of substantive material. And if you are a writer using AI, then you very likely don’t have the cognitive ability to proof it for accuracy, otherwise why would you allow a machine to write your material?
There are several public meetings that occur on the Qualla Boundary every month; Cherokee Central Schools Board of Education, EBCI Police Commission, among others. In the decade plus that I have had a focus on reporting on these entities, I have rarely seen community members in attendance. You would think, because the School Board and Police Commission deal with children and public safety, there would be at least a few concerned citizens at every meeting. Not so.
We, the community, allow a law to exist that permits our government to conduct business without public access. The Dinilawigi (Tribal Council) may, at their discretion, turn the cameras and audio off in the otherwise televised and streamed open sessions, while remaining in open session. All that is required for them to do this is to keep the chambers open, so people can sit in the gallery if they are there. I would argue that this law should be abolished and that the video recording of the Dinilawigi sessions be considered on official record. I have been told that official minutes are taken but I have yet to receive a copy of any minutes taken at a recent Dinilawigi session. Side note: No record is kept of executive sessions by the government, so the community will only know what is communicated by their individual Council representative as to the content of those meetings.
The new tribal information portal is still in a level of testing and improvement. In the meantime, the government has practically shut down any access to any financial information of the tribe. If you are an avid watcher of Dinilawigi, you will frequently see items read into record redacting any references to dollar amounts, down to and including requests for donations. Secrecy, not transparency, is the order of the day. When asked why our community doesn’t have access to the financial records of the tribe, the standard response has been that “there are people out there who are out to get us and to take our money, so we have to protect you by hiding the numbers for your own good.” And since the government has not, so far, determined a way to effectively communicate that information to the entirety of Eastern Band members, it is likely that we will be in the dark for some time to come.
Requests for the most mundane pieces of information requested from the government, in many cases, go unanswered. While some high-level hires are announced, some high-level positions sit vacant with no indication as to when or who will fill them and who will fill certain shoes until a more permanent decision is made. When key members of staffing leave the organization, jobs that are public facing, the community should have access to information on those hires and terminations, especially when any of those involve public safety. The government releases little when it comes to the legal battles our tribe fights. It is also not forthcoming with lobbying efforts on our behalf on what I suspect are a host of issues. And while tribal entities are now required to provide monthly updates on assets and expenditures, those are not required to be communicated to the membership of the tribe.
Efforts to get a constitution question on the ballot in the latest election were thwarted only a month or two away from the election and elected official term questions that had been approved for referendum vote for two years were removed from the ballot at the same time. According to government officials, these actions were taken to basically protect the people from themselves. We have a code of laws that contains contradictory language in it due to the adding of laws and only rescinding within the language of the new law, not researching, and removing any contradictory language. We operate under the Charter, which provides avenues to do business with other governments but only provides a broad framework for community governance and nearly no civil rights. And the path to a true constitution “by the people, for the people” is now, by Code at the government’s direction, questionable as the effort is being led by…the government. Not the people.
Our current slate of elected officials is doing the best they can with the system we have chosen as a people. Either through our actions or inaction, we have allowed this system of governance to come to exist. It is up to us to make changes that will ensure and enhance our civil rights, including the right to disclosure. Government has a duty to keep its citizenry informed. Somewhere along the line, we put the cart before the horse in the way we govern.
As I once opined to a coworker, I would not allow my doctor to tell me that there is something wrong with me, then let him tell me that, for my own good, he would keep that diagnosis from me and then ask me to trust his treatment. The doctor would have a duty, and I would have an expectation, that they would provide me with that diagnosis, so I could make informed decisions about the treatment. If they refused, I would select another doctor.
