Host Lisa Kiefer speaks with innovative business development leader, Tony Skrelunas about new community-based initiatives and social ventures that create paths to entrepreneurship for Native Americans while respecting culture, tradition and environment.

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness of public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley celebrating innovation. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today I'm speaking with Tony Skrelunas, the foremost expert on community-based development and it's one of the most respected native American leaders in the U s welcome to the program, Tony. Hello. So that's Navajo, [00:00:30] right? You work a lot in economic development with tribes. What do you see as the major, your 

Speaker 2:problem or problems today? Well, background, um, I come from Navajo land in, in our way. It's appropriate to introduce ourselves and our traditional way. I am a Twitter genie, which is bitter water clan and born for the Lithuanian peoples. I'm here. Yeah. Lithuanian. The idea. Yes. Yesterday it happens. Yeah. I was raised by my great grandparents, um, in the a real traditional [00:01:00] way. The place is called big mountain. It is considered a very traditional place. Um, and we've suffered a lot. This is the place where we've had a, a long standing land dispute. It's a place where mining has happened. We've had a lot of impacts of coal mining, oil and gas. So that's still a lot of extractive. And, and I saw how it impacted our people. And so that's why I got so interested in economic development. And then, um, by way of my career, I was, um, for a time a head [00:01:30] of commerce for our Navajo nation. 

Speaker 2:Well, that area, now when nation is the size of West Virginia, it's 25,000 square miles. Uh, we have 110 communities. We're a sovereign nation. We, um, covered a four corners, uh, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico. We're also the largest private land owner in the southwest. We have a real progressive, um, land acquisition program. There's a lot of, um, attention to Navajo because we're the largest, but [00:02:00] we also have a language still. We still have our ways. You know, we're, we domesticated, uh, sheep just as an example, is the first domesticated animal in, in the United States. And Dino, the story goes to the Spaniards brought some across over 500 years ago. And then we domesticated it. And, and uh, so there, there's a, a sheep called the Navajo. True. It's the first domesticated animal in the country. But, uh, we, we have a long tradition of, um, sheep herding and of, of really ecological [00:02:30] traditional knowledge passage on from elders to youth. 

Speaker 2:And that's really ensured our survival. We've been here for time and memorial research shows maybe 30,000 years though. So we've lived sustainably. We, uh, we migrated around, we moved around. We have a lot of different clans, like over 80 plans in terms of, um, challenges of economy. We're, we're a very young economy. Government was set up in 1923 as a formal structure. The federal government needed somebody to leases [00:03:00] and exploration of oil, gas, and coal. So in early 1923, they, they created what's called business council. A lot of the policies for really up to the 1960s was about culturating the native American take the savage out of the native, you know, it's a boarding school systems. The, um, the treaties, the way they were written, not only was policy like that, but when the government helped us, you know, they in essence handpicked her early leaders and of course the early leaders, they believed in that acculturation. 

Speaker 2:[00:03:30] Uh, a lot of them say, you know, didn't believe that we should have anything cultural. We shouldn't have our, our languages that are only way to, to success is to westernize our whole systems. You know, creating business include business opportunity. And that really was the case up till really recently, the reservation system was set up. They moved the tribes. You know, we, we march 500 miles, thousands of our people and a lot of them died in the 1850s when, when they moved our people to Fort Sumner, New Mexico [00:04:00] in the winter, thousands of our people died on that March. They rounded up, they burnt down our, um, corn fields, our homes, they killed our sheep. You know, again, we, we've been hurting 500 years. We're really the, the sheep hurting tribe of the world. That's something that we've always wrestled with is when government helped us build an economy, it was very resource, extractive oriented and it was very westernized. 

Speaker 2:It's what they really tried to bring into to our nation that really always clashed with our [00:04:30] communities. To this day, our government still is centralize, but newer generation, we've worked to change that structure to allow communities because communities is where it's at. Again, we have 110, we call them chapters. Yeah. We call them chapters and then taught nods and that is what we call them taught. Doesn't that in those communities we all have, the language that's primarily spoken in, in any meeting on government is still our Navajo language. You know, there's always been a clash between Westernized, top-down [00:05:00] economic pursuit versus community based. I'm a culturally appropriate, environmentally sensitive, uh, approaches. Only until recently, has there been a breakthroughs and crafting tools that allow for communities to innovate? We're fighting to system of ingrained. Um, it's really entrenched. Um, um, system of top-down development approaches. Yeah. 

Speaker 2:So meaning capitalistic. And for a long [00:05:30] time, many of the young Navajos that were getting MBAs, they really were trained in that way. They really got rid of their culture, but now more and more of us, and you can see that on our website, you can see that and the rhetoric of our nation now is that a lot of us still speak our language or some of us are very fluent still, but we see a different way. We see that we have to, we almost have to embrace who we are and build an economy around that. We have to create financing tools, business development [00:06:00] tools. We have our wait community planning tools that really engage all facets of the community. We're changing things. When did you decide what had to be done and how you were going to do that when you live a traditional way? 

Speaker 2:We didn't have one home. Navajo has always moved. You know when we lived traditional it means we grew up in the thing called a Hogan. Just as an example. It's a very ancient, it's like a temple of learning and sharing. A lot of times our parents had to work far away. So we were raised [00:06:30] by grandparents were raised hurting sheep. We monitored the land, we monitored the grasses, we monitored the sheet behavior and, and where the water's available. The same with farming. A lot of us grew up, we all had corn fields. And again, you know, sometimes the land has to rest, you know, so you rotate. Yeah. So we rotated our areas. A lot of our work was very communal. It wasn't all about self interests. The Navajo teaching is that we survived 30,000 years. But [00:07:00] it was our responsibility as an individual Denette to, to make sure that our society survive for eternity. 

Speaker 2:You know? So we had to pass teachings and knowledge. We had to make sure that all people in our community knew the stories and the ways no family was about self interests, you know, so that, that's our traditionist that's what I was taught and that's what many of us are taught. Again, we're, we're really losing those ways to more westernized self-interests, you know. [00:07:30] Well then I was, um, getting my masters in business when the light went off. I was really concerned about the, the economic situation on Navajo land and that the top down nature of planning, top down approaches to, you know, most business power plants and coal mines and oil and gas and Westernized shopping centers. Um, nothing community base. And I saw that picture. So, um, and in Grad school I started writing [00:08:00] about what could be, how, how you could incorporate tourism and that like, and develop tourism development in, in a way that's culturally responsible. 

Speaker 2:And you create tools to protect a culture. There's ways, there's monitoring mechanisms, there's planning tools to really allow the community to, to plan for development, but do it in a way that is responsible to the elders and to the culture and to the latest. Yeah. And make some money in that. And so that, that's where that light bulb [00:08:30] went off. Um, I was very lucky that, um, I had a group that was willing to support me, uh, an organization called Grand Canyon trust and Flagstaff [inaudible] still the director. I'm still the director. I'm out with the native America program. One of the, the foundations really liked what I was doing for foundation was a, a real supporter. Uh, this is in the mid nineties. You know, one of the first assignments I was given as a Grad student was, um, a tripe called the Kaibab Paiute were considering a waste incinerator [00:09:00] because they really need it and revenues and jobs, all the surrounding communities. 

Speaker 2:And all these environmental groups were really telling them that, please don't do this. Please don't do that. You know, they turned it down as a community. But what I saw was when all these groups left, nobody was helping that community. So they said no, but they didn't say, here's what you can, here's what you can do. Here's what we help. And that's where Grand Canyon trustee really a, that's where they, they brought me in and said, why did you help this community? We don't know what to do. [00:09:30] We developed a community base, economic development plan for the Paiutes and create alternatives and, and what kinds of things? It was like creating an orchard, um, improving like their herds. Um, they wanted to do a small casino, you know, things like that. I'm a small convenience store. There was no convenience store out there. The hard part is that we're communal in our culture. 

Speaker 2:Communal means that it's really hard for our individual tribal members to say, I want to be this big entrepreneur [00:10:00] and become a multimillionaire. And so there's been very little work on actually structuring companies where it's communal versus individualistic. Yeah. So we, we have to figure out a way we're a grammar can get into a business and, but that grandma's also the, the vessel of traditional knowledge. We have to allow her to still work on her sheep, still work on her teaching her kids. We can't just make it word. It's all about just a business venture. So that's where the light bulb went off about trying to find a better way. [00:10:30] Luckily the Navajo nation gave me that space after Grad school and said, you know, restructure our government. We give the power to the communities. 

Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. Public Affairs show on k a l s Berkeley celebrating innovators today. I'm speaking with Tony Skrelunas, former head of commerce for the Navajo Nation and native American program director for the Grand Canyon Trust. You worked with local communities using culturally [00:11:00] and environmentally respectful strategies that preserves and supports the culture, the language and the environment. So you had to actually change law. 

Speaker 2:Yeah. And they people, nobody's ever said no. It, everybody's always like, yeah, you know, we're very happy here thinking deep on this stuff. Do it then, you know, organize 'em, bring in the elders, bring the communities together, create policy. Or one of the things you did was you have created a limited profit [00:11:30] company company. Yeah. This is a recent space about three years ago, um, we started working with the chapters to communities. We, we sat down with our six communities. They were all complaining that there's small chapters, federal government, the state government, the Navajo nation government doesn't listen to them because they're all small. They take them for granted and they want it to come get an organize, an entity to really pursue grants. This is, we're too small individual, we can't even get grants but we don't have [00:12:00] the proper organizations to even apply for grants and we don't have the people, we don't have the wherewithal, we just are, are, are really in a dire situation here. 

Speaker 2:A couple of us that came together, a guy named Edward d, myself, Walter Phelps, uh, a few others in d, these are tribal leaders, you know, and we said, look, we will, we need to create some kind of social entrepreneurship venture. We wanted to innovate. We wanted to create not another non profit, uh, not a for profit. And we knew that there was a space in [00:12:30] between somewhere. We brought our community leaders together. Some of these leaders are elders, some of them are traditional singers in our way. We have these ancient ceremonies, you know, that that it's about getting in harmony and who does this all mean means is is you are living in harmony with the, with all the elements around you. We said let's create something that is in that arena that it's about saving who we are. That's about saving our culture. But building economy, innovating, using some of the best tools out there. 

Speaker 2:We were very lucky [00:13:00] to engage, uh, Arizona State University, so we've got a lot of help in planning this from them. The law school. In that research we found out that there was a thing called limited profit companies and that fit what we were wanting to do the best because again, it's not just about profit, it's a lot of it is about helping the community, helping save the culture, helping protect the land. We found that only a few states have that California has one. Yeah. Limited profit [00:13:30] law. Arizona didn't have one. So we said, and then the federal government has given the authority to our Navajo nation to, to incorporate, to have 'em so we could do like subchapter s for profit. S Corp's a LLCs, a nonprofits, but we didn't have a space for a limited profit. So we created that. We got our Navajo legislature to, to, to set up that structure and then we crafted our first one, which has done the hugill LTC your latest project. 

Speaker 2:Yeah. Tell me what you're doing [00:14:00] in that. There's a lot of pressures from in our nation to not only a culture rate, but to create large skill, westernized development. There was a major proposal to build all outside investors. I'm tearing apart our Navajo nation turned apart. I'm really disregarding our cultural ways. There's a tramway proposal into the sacred Grand Canyon had one of the most sacred areas where the little Colorado and the Colorado River meets. So our work has become very paramount that doe [00:14:30] that we come up with a different way, you know, because they want to build a, a thing where 10,000 visitors a day can go down into the grand cashier. Altern alternatives is let's go crazy on community base. There's all kinds of potential. We can have a plan for building USA certified processing center around um, our sheep and our lambs. That sureau is a 500 year old. 

Speaker 2:It's in the one of the best tasting lamb in the world, but it's also hardy. [00:15:00] It doesn't like destroy our, our range land. It only needs to be watered every three days. It's very hardy in terms of survival. Uh, but the taste is magnificent. The wool is magnificent. You know, we're, we're the rug weavers too or Navajo peoples, but we've never had a USDA certified operating center because it was all westernized return on investment and maximizing return on investment market rates, financing that won't work with something like that because we have [00:15:30] to keep it small. We know we have all these herders, we can't force them to have thousand sheep that won't work. It has to be small land stewardship. It has to be a high quality breeding, you know, and, and organic. And so that, that's a massive niche market. But, but not only are we doing the harvest facility, we're designing the harvest facilities called Little Colorado River valley meet cooperative. 

Speaker 2:And this is ongoing. We're setting this up. USAA has given us a startup grant. We're going to set up a communal herd. We want [00:16:00] to allow individual Navajos and non Navajos to actually be able to own sheep units in a communal herd with an offer as, and Andres grazing permits teach our ancient ways, teach our ancient traditions, cities a new crop of herders. Cause we're losing these, this knowledge, you know, but we want to make it exciting. We want to do cultural camps. And I finding that younger people, yeah, they're embracing. Yeah. There they are. There's a lot of excitement in this kind of model. [00:16:30] Another example is to, um, to create an investment vehicle. We want anybody in the world to be able to co own a Hogan bed and breakfast. Somebody to be able to own a, a venture that's reservation base, a food business, a, um, a tour company. 

Speaker 2:We don't have things like venture cap finance. We don't have any investors native, non-native or not can go on and say I wanna yes, Yup. [00:17:00] And we'll help them. We'll help the business set, set up their business plan, we'll help them, um, structure your company if needed. And then really develop the prospectus, develop the pitch to the investor. If they're comfortable, the we'll will, will, can serve as an intermediary. We can, but we'll manage that relationship for them. A lot of times they'll want our management team to, to sit on their, their management team to ensure that, you know, for level of three years, five years, seven years, but the space that we're going to operate that and [00:17:30] is an agriculture and tourism because it's really, really, uh, an innovation, great idea that other tribes, other nations, to duplicate something like this. And this is a brick through, I live in that world of economic development to find innovation. 

Speaker 2:We're going to be the first to market with, with this type of, um, our setup. We want to build on that. There's a lot of work because this is, this is really heavy duty [00:18:00] stuff we're working on, but once we set up the processes, we want to share that that's us as a limited profit company. We want to share that with other tribes. And there's lots of innovation. I mean, we're right now already doing all kinds of community planning. We're working on like teaching our communities how to have leadership on utility scale, renewable energy. Uh, we're working on a small skill of renewable energy, just as an example. This isn't, so, yeah. Yeah. Moving beyond, not just extractive industries [00:18:30] that aren't your own casinos. Yeah. One of the things that we're working on that, and we're hoping this comes through, is that the Navajo nation does like how we're innovating. 

Speaker 2:It's really communal. We're having a breakthrough and communal own and they want us to work on a, a communal own hotel. There's some times I have really become wealthy through casinos and, and other mechanisms. A lot of them have pooled their resources and they want to actually invest in a set [00:19:00] of communal owned hotels on Navajo. Yeah. It's ever been done. That platform that you're creating is gonna create the capital. Yeah. The capital, uh, the, the, the world was all the vehicles do to allow access to, to outside capital and then access to the, to the reservation business too. So this will be a massive innovation. But we see it having all kinds of application even on like traditional farming, you know, cause we have, um, farmers that know how to read all everything. Like the weather patterns, [00:19:30] seasons, they have heirloom seeds that they pass from generation to generation. 

Speaker 2:They knew how to read the the types of different types of washes and some of the tribes that we work with are like Hopi where their desert, they farm in the, in the sand and, and their carnitas thrives, you know, but they, they really know that knowledge. We have one lady that that's a farmer out in a curly valley in Tuba city. That's one of our larger Navajo communities. She only waters once a year and she has an incredible crop lands [00:20:00] at that. Our farmer markets, she's amazing. Her family's a main attraction. So why did they do that? They have an aquifer. No, no they did. And they use only organic traditional methods to keep up pests. They have their own traditional seed banks. They know which corn kernels to to plant and they know that it'll thrive in that desert environment in that area. 

Speaker 2:They know how to lay out the fields. Just perfect query that, you know, they'll build booms on the site. They know like when it does rain that they'll capture [00:20:30] that rain. But then when they do water once a year, if you do it just right, she believes if you do it, if you followed the traditional teachings just right, you shouldn't feel, our communities are adapting to climate change too because we have all tool wounds, winds. We have a lot of temperature volatility [inaudible] more to come. The scientists before we're saying that climate change is going to heavily impact our area and we're considered like a hot spot. We don't want to wait. It's our traditional way. It's our responsibility to, to, to [00:21:00] figure out strategies for the longterm. We're not shortsighted with this. A good way to put it is that our people lived for 30,000 years and they live sustainably. 

Speaker 2:They really had happiness. Our tribal peoples in this northern South America creed at 73% of the world's food, over 200 a key medicines. We were once over 100 million, one third of the world's population. A lot of that, that was decimated by disease and and, but we know how to live sustainably. [00:21:30] If I was an investor, I would invest in something that ensures survival for another 30,000 years. And that's something that hasn't been been thought through. We all have to invest in that and that's why we really put a lot of effort into preserve our knowledge systems and our ways. We also have to have a job. Our kids have to go to college. Um, our kids want to go to college, they want to have a house, they want to have running water, they want to have cell phones, you know, they want to travel the world. 

Speaker 2:So, so we were trying to build that system [00:22:00] where it accommodates both. Any of our listeners want to know more about this or get involved, what should they do? Thank you for asking that question. We know that this is something that's applicable to the world, that tribal peoples in Asia, even in Europe and in South America, Australia, Canada, there's a real desire to do things in a way that's culturally compatible. I'm a lot of our peoples who resist westernized development, [00:22:30] people like Walmart, large scale development have always wanted to bill on our lands. But a lot of our community people say, no, we just had a community turn down a massive solar plant because it was very westernized. What we're doing is really important to, to the future of these tribes that are struggling with this. We have a website right now called [inaudible], l three c can you tell d I n e h o z, h o [inaudible] and then ltc.com we're adding [00:23:00] all kinds of video. 

Speaker 2:We have a team that's very fluent in our traditional way, but we're also very business knowledgeable. You know, we're, a lot of us are MBAs and Harvard. We don't have a Berkeley Grad on our team yet, hopefully soon. But we have a Stanford Grad, we have ASU grads, we have a guidance getting his phd and sustainable economics, you know, and we have traditional community leaders that are medicine men that sing in our way. So, so we have a great team. We're building this website where we [00:23:30] can teach our methodologies and our research. You know, the, the work I've done on community governance, we're going to have a whole education area where we were going to all papers and research and even videos and how you do certain things. You know, we'll have bases around traditional economic development approaches where it's compatible with culture. A, we'll have ventures, you know, how, what we've done to create ventures, the philosophies, the tools that we use to create these companies. Um, we'll feature a lot [00:24:00] of the work that we're doing in the communities. Again, we have a great team. We have a good web team that's building this, so, but you can already see what we're doing on, on that website, but it's going to be expanded in a major way. 

Speaker 2:If a company like let's say m Elon Musk, Tesla comes to you and says, I want to follow your traditional ways, but I would love to build a battery plant. Would you work with somebody like this? We would home. I have a, a little brother, his name is Brett eyes. He's [00:24:30] a engineer and he's, um, started a company from scratch. Um, I work in the, as an advisor, uh, to his company, but it's a solar company for a long time. You know, our Navajo nation, we'll write a grant. Somebody wins that grant, but the, the systems they would sell our people. And again, after the United States, the now hold people is the one that's, we're really spread out the size of West Virginia. Uh, we still have 18,000 families that don't have electricity. And so this is really important to, to [00:25:00] our nation. A lot of times these companies would come in and sell an inferior product that's way over price with no local maintenance knowledge, you know, no local capacity. 

Speaker 2:We changed that. We create our own company, we build our own battery boxes. We, we architectured and design engineer our own rack systems. Um, we found very good wholesalers that the system that Brett is building is incredible. A whole community systems, small individual systems at all different cost levels. Um, we use a lot [00:25:30] of social entrepreneurship approaches. So we use volunteers to build a lot of them and that people's homes, we figured out real different ways to find out some. So it's very innovative. We are starting to work with solar mosaic who's in the bay. We're gonna make a breakthrough what utilities skill and we're gonna actually put some of the revenues towards a stream towards funding a bunch of, um, smaller skill systems on our Navajo land. We were working with another group here called cutting edge capital to set up this platform. So to allow people from [00:26:00] all over the country to actually invest in these local companies that that's where we're headed with this in Grad school. 

Speaker 2:I research community base development as one of the best paths for our nation, our tribal peoples, to build an economy while preserving who we are. Well, preserving our land. When I try to implement that with our Navajo nation very young, I was very in, you know, early twenties, um, I found a lot of [00:26:30] obstacles, communities that were not allowed to plan if they did, only the central government took over the plan. Implementation communities had one pace structure, very low, like $18,000 for what's called a chapter. Communities. We're not allowed to have their own legal council. They couldn't have their own accounting systems. They couldn't create revenue. There is no local, nothing like a sales tax. There's no sales tax that existed, but communities couldn't tax. They couldn't pass any laws, they couldn't zone. And a lot of people, [00:27:00] they believe in what I was trying to do. 

Speaker 2:I was hired as a young man to lead our nation to, to change our, our governance structure to a system that allows for all those things. Um, we flexibility because all the communities are different in simple terms. It's like a, how you incorporate a community in a state that they, you want to be town. You know, you're speaking of, you put in your policies and procedures, your accounting systems, your finance systems, your, you know, your plan of how you can manage the land you take over responsibility. That took [00:27:30] about 40 years of my life, my career. I worked with elders and traditional leaders and community leaders, um, had massive, massive public policy process. It's something that has been the changer for Navajo nation. I studied traditional systems of government and I was very lucky to be surrounded by people that were really knowledgeable in tribal history, our history of our nation and how things were a long time ago. 

Speaker 2:So we, we incorporated a lot of those ways into our alternative systems that government, [00:28:00] which is systems of government space in all the way. Um, so a community that gets local government certified can adop, uh, like requests while a council and not, ah, which is a long time ago, like I was saying, you didn't know we didn't have elections. We didn't say I'm better than So-and-so. We couldn't say that. That wasn't our way. Now community can adopt that and have precincts and have the elders come together and select and then nominate and pick somebody to represent them and be accountable to them. It's a real [00:28:30] innovation. It's real, a breakthrough. And I'm really proud to be the one that created that. It's easy to look at tribal peoples and say, oh, they're, they're not wealthy. They're, um, they only do in casinos. They're living in a third world conditions, you know. 

Speaker 2:But what our people tell us is that wealth is not just big house. It's not just big cars and fancy words. It's really our clan ships and our family units and our traditional knowledge systems and having the knowledge to to [00:29:00] build on your own home and farm, but using 30,000 year old knowledge, knowing the songs and the teachings and the stories, raising a family that's strong and leaving a legacy as your life. You know, a lot of us, we resist completely westernizing ourselves. We want something better and I think only now through education, through being raised in our tribal way still, but being matching that with with the best tools that we are finding [00:29:30] the pathway to to achieve a [inaudible], a balance, a harmonious way. And I think, yeah, most people, they want to be like America. They want a three branch government and commerce free market economy, but we have to be careful how we think that through. When we create governments, we have to really think about the old knowledge systems, the old ways because right now our world's in trouble. Even our, our commerce systems and our economies are really built [00:30:00] to, to benefit the wealthy. There are a lot of people in the world that are moving to that way of thinking. Non-Native people who also agree that there's no other way to do it. We can feel it though the greater university. 

Speaker 1:Hello step. This is the right week. Terry. Thank you very much, Graham. Thank you for your time and yeah, good luck. Good luck. Berkeley, you've been listening to method to the madness public affairs show on k a l ex Berkeley [00:30:30] celebrating innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes university. Until next time.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.