>> on this edition of "native report," we view the alternative portraiture and landscape photography of joseph allen... >> it's helped to revive some of the film, you know, keep it alive. >> we learn about the client outreach efforts by
the office of special trustee, and we attend the graduation of the first master of tribal administration and governance cohort. we also learn something new about indian country and hear from our elders on this "native report."
>> production of "native report" is made possible by grants from the shakopee mdewakanton sioux community and the blandin foundation. [indistinct chatter] >> welcome to "native report." i'm stacey thunder. the camera of choice for
photographer joseph allen is a medium-format model he bought for $20. it has uncontrollable light leaks, is often slightly out of focus, and there is a drop off of the image at the corners and edges. in the eyes of joseph, though,
those imperfections are what make perfect images. >> on most days, joseph allen can be found teaching the finer points of video production or photography or layout and design to students at the white earth nation tribal college. but today, he's cleaning up
some photo files from his website. >> here's pike island. it's gonna be kind of slow. i did pretty, uh, pretty large files for this. i've been working for in electronics industry for a while and got laid off, so i went back to
school, and i was going to get into video, actually. i went to minneapolis community college, and i enrolled in their film and video program, but as soon as i took a photo class, getting in that darkroom, and i was hooked, and that was back in the early '90s
or about 1990, i think. so i really loved photography. i'm a more of an introvert type person. i know video, you have to work with a crew. you know, i mean, back then. you know, you had to have someone who knew how to do the lighting or audio, and so
photography was this, you know, me and the camera, and i could go anywhere. i didn't have to worry about, "is there a plug-in somewhere if my battery's gonna run out," you know, with my videocamera, and i just had the knack for it, the natural eye. i took some classes, but, you
know, i just really--i would spend days in the darkroom. >> after college, he went to work for the circle, a monthly publication devoted to native news and arts. >> i started, you know, as a--doing photography for them, but then i learned how
to do the layout, i started selling ads--you know, because they're monthly that, you know, there's not much opportunity for a photographer. maybe one photo a month, but if you learn more stuff, so eventually i worked up, i was editor for about 5 or 6 years.
there's not too many mentors out there for a native photographer. you know, there is now, but back when i started, you know, there was very few role models. and, you know, part of my work was, you know, because i'm native american, my work was focused on my community and,
uh--and so there's not too many arti--photographers out there that do that work, so some of the people that really influenced me more were painters and other native artists. you know, george morrison, his work... influenced me a lot. his later work is--when he did
the long horizon series. i started doing panoramics. my work is not curt--you know, is not just straight photography. i use a different camera that is, uh, lends itself to do these panoramics. >> the camera joseph does much of his photography with
is a russian model that he purchased for a mere $20. >> this is a holga 120 camera meaning it's 120 film. it's made out of plastic. it's all plastic except for, you know, some of the shutter parts. and it's part of the whole movement of photography,
it's called lomography, where you try to find toy ca-- it's called a toy camera, too, where they're cheap plastic, and it has helped to revive some of the film, you know, keep it alive. this is color film. and it's an old emulsion that they cut out a few years ago
maybe, like, in the '90s, but they brought it back, and film is now more of the realm of the art for people wanting that analog, that chemical, the magic of not knowing what you have on your film until, you know, you have it developed. ready to go.
there's frame one. i use my cell phone as my main camera right now, but that's more of a sketchbook. i do, you know, because i always have it with me. i don't always have my other cameras with me, but when i, you know, driving around, pull over, take some
pictures with my camera, and then to me, the immediacy of that. you know, i can take a picture, upload it to my, you know, social media, and 3 seconds later, someone in russia can click "like" on it. that's-that's totally amazing to me, you know, you know, how
quickly it is. you know, you know, i don't have to wait for my film to come back, so that's a draw, too, and it's helped me become a better photographer, i think, because i get out there more, and i don't have to have the excuse, "i can't afford the film," or, you know, that kind
of--you know, i just get out there and do it. >> joseph has received awards and recognition for his photography, and he's trying to get gallery shows. most currently, he had 4 photos on display at the state capital as part of a larger exhibit.
>> they chose 28 artists from the state to take part in this, artists that had received money from the arts and legacy funding, and i received a grant a couple years ago. they're from a series i did on dakota sites. i did a series a few years ago exploring my dakota heritage,
visiting sites that are in and around the twin cities areas that are significant to dakota, and, you know, and ojibwe history, too, but, um, one of the pieces is a diptych. it's called coldwater springs. and the other one is pike
island, and then i have, um, stone arch bridge, which is downtown minneapolis, which is also there was an island there called spirit island that was totally obli--destroyed, quarried. you know, it's not there anymore, but it had a lot of dakota history there.
and then also minnehaha falls. one of the images of the coldwater springs actually has the number 7 in the upper corner and you can see it that it's reflected because of a light leak, you know, which is, you know, most photographers would throw a camera away like that
because, you know, it's imperfect, you know, it's not right, but to me, that was what made the image was that little imperfection, that little reflection made the number 7, which is a sacred number for, you know, most indigenous people on this continent, so...
you know, i'm native american. i can't separate that from who, you know, who i am, but the art form i have is not looked at as a traditional native-american art form. you know, most native ameri--are either painters or bead work or quill work,
and so it's kind of hard to fit into that category of native art, so i see myself as, you know, just as george morrison said, you know, "an artist who happens to be native," but my subject is always native. >> did you know that the office
of special trustee was established by the american indian trust fund management reform act of 1994? the special trustee was set up to reform the horrible management of indian funds held by the federal government. however, 2 years after
the office of special trustee was created, a banker from the blackfeet nation, elouise cobell, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that billions of dollars held by the u.s. since the 1800s had been mismanaged and accounted for improperly.
this case included hundreds of thousands of individual american indians. the cobell case was one of the largest class-action lawsuits against the u.s. in history. in 2009, the case was settled for $3.4 billion with 1.4 billion going to the plaintiffs and 2 billion
allocated to repurchase land and return it to communal tribal ownership. under the special trustee act, the office will continue to exist until all trust reforms have been implemented. >> the office special trustee was created to improve the
accountability and management of indian funds held in trust by the federal government. most recently, there has been a coordinated effort by the ost to utilize social media for reaching clients and individual indian money account holders and as a tool to find
those they cannot reach. >> on the south shore of lake superior in ashland, wisconsin, is the bureau of indian affairs great lakes agency. the agency falls under which, in many ways, is similar to a financial institution. >> there's 50 fiduciary trust
officers nationwide, and i cover the great lakes agency, the michigan agency, and the midwest region. so i have all the tribes in wisconsin, all of the tribes in michigan, and then tribes in the lower part of minnesota and then one in iowa. manages all the individual
indian money accounts. that also includes tribal accounts. we do investments for the tribal accounts, so what i will do is contact tribal leaders as the councils change and leadership changes. i make sure that i have all the proper authorizations in that--and their signatures
and permission on how they want their accounts invested. but then we're also here for all beneficiaries, not just the tribes. we're here--we have approximately 22,000 individual indian money accounts, so we handle those accounts and manage those accounts much like bank
accounts, but also we offer financial training--literacy training opportunities for tribes, too, at no charge, and we'll customize it how they want. say they want us to provide it to a group of young people who may be getting some money when they turn 18. we talk
to them about budgeting, credit scores, or perhaps it's to their older individuals maybe working at the tribe who are possibly thinking about retirement, and we'll go over retirement options and investing and things such as that. so it's a really great offer that we give to the tribes
to provide this financial literacy training. >> as jewel noted, the great lakes agency oversees over 20,000 individual indian money accounts, but nationwide, that number is well over 300,000. >> we have about 380,000
individual indian money accounts for individual indian beneficiaries who own... you know, either own a piece of an allotted indian trust land or who receive payments as a result of a settlement. typically, in those type of awards,
the individual who doesn't have any restrictions on the receipt of their money or the management of their money would get that money distributed to them individually without any restriction. however, minors, under law and by our regulations, are what are
considered supervised or restricted accounts. there are other categories of individuals who may not have the capacity to manage their financial affairs or need some assistance in managing their financial affairs. we would receipt those monies
on their behalf and manage them for their purposes. and so we can distribute them based upon plans that have been developed and approved with the best interests of that individual in mind. >> in an attempt to find those listed as "whereabouts unknown,"
the agency offices do what they call outreach events. they also use facebook and other social media in their quest to reconcile accounts. >> the office of special trustee has been working on the whereabouts unknown initiative for quite some time.
it's really just trying to track down individuals, trying to connect them to their account. sometimes people move, they change their address with everybody else, but they forget to do it with us. so what we do is we will go out on outreach events. we'll go out
to powwows, we'll set up an information booth, and we'll bring what's called our whereabouts unknown listing, our wau listing. i bring it-- i bring the list for the whole nations because you never know where you're gonna find people, and they look through those
books and they find their name, and then we connect them to their account once we get back to the office, and then they will be able to get their asset statement quarterly and know what they have. some people don't even know they have an account. they may have inherited
from someone who is a distant family member who maybe didn't have children of their own, an aunt or an uncle, and they don't even realize that they've inherited. we now all have facebook pages, and we have links to the whereabouts unknown listing, which is also on the
ost website, so we have links for people to get there and to find as many people as we possibly can, and facebook is-- it's huge popularity is a good venue for us to go, but i think it also does more than that. i think it's a really good public-relations tool. i think
that some people don't always know what the office of special trustee for american indians can do and how we can help them, so it's just really a great way for us to connect with beneficiaries. >> many young people, you know, that's how they communicate,
and so, i mean, we wanted to incorporate whatever media capabilities were out there to help us locate these individuals, our whereabouts unknown folks, and also just to, you know, to interact with our beneficiaries, get information out to them. so in the course
of the last couple of years, we have created facebook sites at all of our--for all of our fiduciary trust officers. we have 49 of them across the country. you know, there are some very dedicated people that are working in ost field operations, and throughout ost
as an organization. we're committed to doing, providing, you know, premier fiduciary services, trust services to indian country. >> they need to get either in touch with our office or if they--we try to have them fill out forms on the spot,
but sometimes it's at powwows. they're busy. they want to keep going and doing what they're doing, having fun, so we give them the trust beneficiary call center, and they can call, and we just tell them, you know, "tell them you found your name in the book and that you want to
update your address or update your information." i like to call the office of special trustee the customer service of indian affairs. we can reach into other agencies and grab their information for beneficiaries on really anything, any question they
have, whether it would be with bureau of indian affairs or the office of natural resources revenue. any question, we tell them to call us and then we can help them with that information. >> ok. >> i remember arguing with the priest over some theology
because i didn't--i thought it was--i didn't think it was... logical, and so i argued about it, and i remember i was about 7 then when i was arguing about something like that, but we were--we had to go to church, and we had to do all the stuff there. there was no, as you
know, with boarding schools and how they were designed. when i taught federal indian policy, i asked my students what--they were just aghast at a boarding school--and i asked them what-what was the most ingenious thing that the white man did with the indian,
and they couldn't come up with anything. they thought it was all awful, and whether it's awful or not, boarding schools really worked, didn't they? when you think about what the government wanted to do--you have to look at something from their point of view as well as
yours. now, from our point of view, it was awful. from their point of view, it was brilliant. they--we-we didn't get to speak out language, we didn't--we-we- we were taken away from our families, we weren't raised with our families. when i was talking to my father and i was
annoyed because i couldn't speak--i can't speak fluent ojibwe, and he looked at me and he said, "you did good in school, though, didn't you, my girl?" >> and finally, we attend the very first cohort to graduate from the university
of minnesota-duluth's master of tribal administration and governance program and hear from graduates about their experiences and hopes for the future. >> an air of expectation was evident at a pre-graduation reception in the marshall center
on the university of minnesota- duluth campus, for tonight, the very first cohort of the master and governance program will graduate. >> it's the first time ever that a program such as this has been offered. i majored in indian studies, but i never had the
time to concentrate on federal indian law, so i was able to garner from the federal indian law class the basis for federal indian law, which opened up my eyes to a lot of things in the way that it was established so that i could understand it better to be able to fight for
our rights, and in order to assert our rights, we need to know this information that we got from the program here. >> i was fortunate enough to be involved with the program when i was an undergrad. i did my undergrad here at umd, and i got to kind of see
the program develop as i was a junior and senior with heidi stark and tadd johnson, they started it, so i got to kind of see it develop and see it progress, and at that time, i didn't--i was on my law-school path, and i thought to myself, "you know, i really want to
come back and do this program, though." and i was fortunate enough to be able to do it before i started law school, so... it was really beneficial just because i was fresh out of college, and i went back and worked for my tribe, and the classes that we had here really
applied to everything i was doing and really supported my professional development in my job, so it was a lot more than i expected, and it really helped out a lot more, you know, professionally and educationally as well. >> the mtag program kind of
represented a way for me to get a crash course in tribal administration and governance. i work on the economic development side of the fence, and so i don't get the benefit of sort of learning all the ins and outs in the day-to-day operations of the tribe,
so i kind of saw this as a way to take my business experience and add on to it by learning sort of all the different things that go into running the tribe day to day. we covered a lot of things from indian law to the history of tribal sovereignty, how to budget and different
accounting practices for how you get grants and manage grants. those are all important things for being a tribal leader. >> joining the graduates and their families was kevin washburn, the assistant secretary of indian affairs, who delivered the evening's
commencement address. >> i will tell you i have been to a lot of commencement ceremonies in my life, having been dean of a law school and a professor before that. graduates, each of you reaches this important moment in your life, this day, after working
very hard to achieve a goal, and this goal was not easy for any of you. it took years to accomplish, it took planning, and it took many different skills that you may not have had at the very beginning of this journey. you've come a long way. you developed those skills.
and you proved to the rest of us that you're goal-oriented. >> and then it was time for their graduates to receive their certificate degrees. >> tonight, i'll be graduating in front of my 2 grandchildren, and that means a lot for the next generation to see that it's
never too late to learn. you should be continuously learning through life. indians have always valued wisdom. indians have always stressed education. even in our broken language way back in the day, we gave up millions of acres of land for the right to be educated
and for health, but we still need to realize that from the united states government, so unless we get more people in the field to fight for those rights and assert those rights, we're never gonna get those rights, so that's my stance on why i went back after many years to get
my masters degree, and i'm so happy that the university of duluth is offering this program, and it seems like they're on the rise as far as meeting the needs of our community, and for that, i thank the university of duluth. >> katheryn josephine beaulieu.
[cheering and applause] >> one way or another, we always move home to our reservation, and this program, and what really drove me to be a part of it, is that education is at the front, and we really need to be educated, our council people and our younger
generations, and i think we're making that turn, you know, as a generation right now. we're making that turn where we're moving from great high- school dropout rates to more college-graduate rates, which is a big deal, and i'm thankful i have this under my belt, and
i'm more than prepared for law school now, so i'm looking forward to moving on. >> one of the big benefits of the program was the whole cohort environment, so kind of developing these lifelong relationships with other tribal members from around the state
and being able to kind of take our collective wisdom to come up with kind of new ways to solve issues for our own tribes, so i think that's kind of one of the key things i took away were just these great lifetime-- or lifelong relationships that i want to take forward and, you
know, to have somebody to call if we're going through a similar issue that they went through, just to have those resources now, i think, is gonna be a big benefit to myself and for the tribe. >> for more information about "native report"
or the stories we've covered, look for us at nativereport.org and facebook. thank you for spending time with us here on "native report." signing off at the end of our ninth season, >> stacey thunder is a member of and legal counsel
for the red lake nation, and tadd johnson is a member of the bois forte band of chippewa and is chair for the american indian studies department on the campus of the university of minnesota-duluth. production of "native report" >> on the next "native report,"
we'll view the photography of joseph allen... >> ...helped to revive some of film. >> learn about the client outreach efforts by the office of special trustee, and we'll attend the graduation of the first mtag cohort.
[cheering] we'll also learn something new on the next "native report." >> photographer joseph allen
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