TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE RECONVENED GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING MAY 8, 2010, 10:10 A.M. COMANCHE NATION COMPLEX GYMNASIUM LAWTON, OKLAHOMA __________________________________________________ REPORTED BY: KELLY STOABS, CSR DODSON REPORTING & ASSOCIATES 435 NORTH WALKER, SUITE 102 OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA 73102 (405) 235-1828 ~ (405) 235-1266 (FAX) dcri@coxinet.net A P P E A R A N C E S COMANCHE NATION BUSINESS COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Michael Burgess, Chairman Richard Henson, Vice-Chairman Robert Tippeconnie, Secretary-Treasurer, Edmond Mahseet, Committeeman #1 Lanny Asepermy, Committeeman #2 Darrell Kosechequetah, Committeeman #3 Clyde R. Narcomey, Committeeman #4 LEGAL COUNSEL: William Norman, James Burson, Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker * * * * * * INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS PAGE Meeting called to order at 10:10 a.m. 4 Delores Sapcut Aitson/Membership. 4 Enrollment Director speaks to 7 enrollment issue. Closing of tribal council to 49 Comanche members only. Revenue Allocation Plan. 71 Comanche Nation Enterprises. 86 Keith Yackeyonny/RAP. 107 Aurilla Craig/American Indian 107 Exposition Director and Princess. I-Care. 178 Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery. 194 Reporter's Certificate. 215 Secretary/Treasurer's Certificate. 216 * * * * * * (Meeting called to order at 10:10 a.m.) MR. BURGESS: I wanted to remind everyone that we're here to conduct the tribal council's business of our budget, the elections, and the hiring of the attorneys, which is mandated. These are mandated by the constitution. Any other activity or promotion that you have, we don't need that at this time. You have plenty of time to go out in the communities with amendments and go over some of the issues that you have, so we're going to ask that you remove these banners here that have nothing to do with the business at hand. We had concluded our last meeting due to lack of quorum. I believe Ms. Aitson was up. However, is Brian Stillwell here? Brian Stillwell? If he comes to the door, would you please notify him or let him know to come see us? Thank you. Ms. Aitson? Delores Aitson? There she is. All right. MS. AITSON: Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning, everyone. My name is Delores Sapcut Aitson, and I'm here to make a motion to rescind any and all action taken by the CBC to disenroll tribal members. Under Article V, Section 7 of the Comanche Nation Constitution, only the Comanche Tribal Council has the exclusive authority to change, modify, or revoke tribal membership subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior or its authorized representative. The tribal council has never passed an ordinance that provides due process or equal protection under the law for disenrollment of the tribal members. The Comanche Nation Constitution provides the CBC with the authority to approve enrollment, but does not provide the CBC with authority to disenroll any tribal member. Actions taken by the CBC to disenroll tribal members without due process or equal protection is in violation of the Comanche Nation Tribal Constitution and the Indian Civil Rights Act. We hereby move that the tribal council shall approve to reinstate membership and all powers and privileges provided by law to include per capita payments to all individuals disenrolled by the actions of the CBC, and no further action shall be taken regarding disenrollment of any tribal member without the absolute approval of the tribal council. Now, I would like to -- this is a motion. I would like to -- MS. MCDANIEL: I second it. MR. BURGESS: I don't think she's through with her statement, so hold your second. Go ahead, Delores. MS. AITSON: I would like to say to all of you that I know there's people out there that are concerned with this. That every time we open our mouth, something's said, you know, that we don't like. So this here tells you everything. I would like to ask the for this to be a motion that has your vote. I appreciate this very much. I know it relates to a lot of people that's disenrolled. Thank you. MS. MCDANIEL: I second it. MR. BURGESS: Before we go into all of this -- thank you Ms. Aitson -- we don't have a copy of that resolution up here. We need one of the secretaries that can help us. Nicole, that can help us. Go make some copies. At the present time, we have a presentation to make to the entity here. I'm asking you to indulge us. The enrollment department has brought together some information for all of us about past activities or former CBC actions on those people who were put on the rolls -- I'm going to be kind and use the word "erroneously". It is a PowerPoint. The attorneys were reviewing this information with us. So Mr. Burson, if you're going to be the one to be so kind. Ms. Wahnee from the enrollment office will make the presentation. MS. WAHNEE: Good morning. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Donna Wahnee. I'm the Director of the Enrollment department. I've taken over enrollment on November 7th, 2007. On November 10th, 2007, I was at a CBC meeting and our department was asked by many tribal members to do an audit of our rolls. We had several people that came forward, had mentioned many, many names of people that are on our tribal rolls that they have believed was not a tribal member or was dually enrolled in another tribe. In December of 2007, by order of the CBC, myself and my department had taken on the challenge of doing an audit of our rolls and finding out if there were people that were truly dually enrolled, enrolled outside the parameters of the constitution, or put on due to political favors. We have just a short presentation here just to kind of give you an overview of our findings, an overview of what happened, and to basically present the facts of what happened during this time that many of our people might not have been aware of, or there might be some miscommunication, and this is what we want to present this morning. Our tribal constitution says a person is a member of the Comanche Nation when the following facts are true: You can trace direct lineage to and possess 1/8 degree blood of the relationship of one or more Comanche allottees. This is subject to four exceptions: Relinquish membership in writing; they did not switch enrollment from another tribe to our tribe within 90 days of the constitution's ratification; they're enrolled with another tribe; or they have received material or monetary benefits from another tribe. Article III, Section 3(a) through (b) in your tribe's constitution under your membership guidelines: Removal is automatic. The tribal constitution states that it automatically affects a permanent withdrawal from membership when a person relinquishes or is enrolled with or receives material or monetary benefits from another tribe. Many of these people that were removed from the roll have received benefits from another tribe, whether it be money, services, material gifts or items, or they were still enrolled with these other tribes. Exceptions to ineligibility: Our constitution only allows a person to switch from another tribe in two instances: Between their 18th and 19th birthday. Once a person turns 18, they have one year from their 18th birthday to decide whether they want to stay in the tribe they're at or if they would like to switch to the Comanche roll. The second case is during open enrollment period, and we've only had one, and that was from February 23rd of 2002 until August 2002 when the rolls closed. The CBC does have the authority to remove ineligibles. There's a misconception out there. Everybody's using the terms "disenrolled," "disenroll," "disenroll." That is absolutely untrue. These people that have been removed from the roll have been determined ineligible. When their original membership had taken place, they should have been ineligible. This isn't a disenrollment. This is just signing that these people are truly ineligible to be on the roll. The tribal council is the only one that can change the rules and membership by amending it to the constitution, which Ms. Aitson did mention. If there's any amendments that need to be changed on membership, you people are the ones that get to vote on it, not these gentlemen. In our tribal constitution, under Article VI, 7(a), it states that the CBC must maintain a roll in accordance with the constitution rule. Myself, my staff, and the CBC members, we did a review. The 10 years prior to these people being removed, you can see that right in here that 82 people were actually found ineligible from 1999 to 2007. And you can see by year how many people were removed. There's another misconception that it was just the previous administration that wanted these people removed. That's inaccurate. If you look at the previous 10 years, you can see that this spans over several administrations. So it's not a political issue here. It's the CBC doing their job by maintaining our tribal roll and making sure that the ineligibles are not there. In 2007, like I said, the CBC had numerous complaints of ineligibles being on the roll. And an investigation revealed that 89 people were not eligible for membership when enrolled. In 2008, CBC withdrew membership recognition and offered hearings to all people to show any mistake because they were ineligible. They were not disenrolled, they were found ineligible. Reasons for ineligibility: 88 people that were proven for ineligibility were enrolled, previously enrolled, or had received monetary benefits from another tribe. We have one member that shows no trace of Comanche blood. 88 people switched to the Comanche Nation outside of the terms permitted by the constitution. A majority of these people were put on another tribe as they were minors, and they were allowed to switch to our tribe after the age of 19, which our tribal constitution prohibits. Of those 89, 85 were currently dually enrolled with another tribe. Many of those were receiving benefits from two tribes. We have documentation in our office that several of these people had received monetary benefits in the 10s of thousands from not only our tribe, but from other tribes; therefore, taking money away from my children, your children, your grandchildren, and your great grandchildren. The status of those 89 ineligibles: 33 people didn't even want a hearing. We had several people that came to us and said, "We didn't know you'd ever find out." And these are people that walk amongst us today. 56 people sought and received a hearing to prove that there was a mistake in the enrollment. 54 people could not prove any mistake in their enrollment situation. Of the 56, two people were immediately re-admitted to the nation. We had one person, due to an error from another tribe, they had a grandmother and a granddaughter and their names were similar, and they sent us the wrong information. We quickly got that corrected. That person's on the roll. We had one person, due to a lack of a parent authorization to enroll a child in any tribe, making the other tribal enrollment void, and that was due to an adoption. And we had four other people that actually became on -- excuse me, came on the roll legally. Once they turned 18, they were able to relinquish from said other tribe and went that one year when they were able to be readmitted to the Comanche Nation. Some possible ways of fixing this -- and I understand that these people want to be Comanche. I do not deny that. I do not deny that they possess Comanche blood. The only way for us as a tribal council, and for these people to legally be put back on the roll, is we have to amend our constitution to allow it. And the only way to amend our constitution is to look for some possible solutions. And these are just a few possible solutions that we could allow multiple tribal enrollments. We could allow them to be enrolled here and enrolled in other tribes. Do we want that? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No. MS. WAHNEE: That would allow them to receive money from us, money from another tribe, benefits here, and benefits from another tribe. But as a tribal council, do we want that? We could also say even if you receive benefits from another tribe, that's okay, we'll take you. That's another possible way. And a possible amendment, too, could be that they could switch from the other tribe to Comanche Nation at any time. Do we settle in it? Did we say you can really do it between your 18th and 19th birthday? That's another probable solution. Or we could just have another enrollment period and let everyone enroll that wants to switch tribes. A couple of additional constitution amendments that could be is we could draft an amendment to specifically reinstate the remaining 83 ineligibles by their name, decide eligibility, or lack of appeal, or we can only reinstate those by their specific conditions. We can leave it up to you. You, the tribal council, are our governing body. Do we want to follow our constitution now? If we say yes, then these people that were removed were not disenrolled, they were found ineligible. And the only way that we could legally put these people back on is by a vote by every one of you to amend our constitution to allow those certain circumstances. And I appreciate your time. And if anybody has any questions, you can direct it to myself or to our attorneys. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. Discussion? MS. MCDANIEL: My name is Eleanor McDaniel. I'd like to address this issue. We're not arguing. What we're trying to say is that a mistake was made, a mistake. Every first Saturday of the month, our CBC meets and they approve these memberships. And all these memberships, right or wrong, was approved by the CBC. They made a mistake. Now, we have to have an ordinance that's going to take care of these matters. The CBC never brought to us, this body here, with an ordinance that specifically addressed ineligibility and removing from the rolls. So before we start taking people off of our rolls, we've got to have a process that's going to provide fair treatment. And that's one of the things that our government does not always provide, is fair treatment. These erroneous enrollments were handled by our leadership. It was a mistake. But fixing this mistake because we need to affect somebody's membership, then they're like a person without a country. They're not from the Comanche, they're not going to be Apache, they're not going to be Kiowa, they're not going to be anything. They're just going to be out there with no membership, and I think that's wrong. And this affects not only some of these kids that are going to college, it's going to affect even your eligibility for any government assistance under tribal membership. So all we're saying is that this was a mistake. Put these people back on. We're asking the CBC to come back with an ordinance that we know is going to be fair and equal protection under the law. What if it happened to you? What if it happened to your kids? I know you would want fair and equal treatment, and the only way we're going to do that is to adopt an ordinance. We're going to ask the CBC to provide us with that, read it to us, and then we can fix it. But right now, we -- there was a mistake made and people are being hurt by it. So let's fix this in the ordinance, put these people back on. And I second Delores Aitson's motion. I call for the vote. MR. BURGESS: If you wish to speak out on this issue here, please come forward at this time to the center and stand in line. Thank you, sir. MR. POCOWATCHIT: Mr. Chairman, I have a question. I've seen this written up there on the screen, and we have members on our tribal roll that came from other tribes that had gotten a per capita payment from their tribe, then they were on the other tribe. Our constitution says that if you received any monetary money from any other tribes, then you're ineligible to be on our tribal roll. So why is it that we are accepting just people that we like or that has political pull to let them get on our tribal roll instead of going by our constitution? And I think that the issue should be taken care of by BIA, by enrollment. Because if we're going to let -- we can get some people off the tribal roll that are full-blood Comanches and I think that's wrong. So we've got people from other tribes right now -- and I think each and every one of you committeemen know who they are -- that are on our Comanche roll that have received money from other tribes in the 1960s when we got the per capita payment from Red River. And if we're going to abide by our -- our constitution means something or it means nothing, ladies and gentlemen. And we need to go by that constitution instead of those that say, oh, they're against us. Well, so what? They should have told you to be on our tribal roll before they got on the other tribe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, sir. And a brief response to his statements: He's correct, because the CBC is reviewing these. And if they don't meet the qualifications or criteria that you saw, then they're notified they're not eligible. That happens there on a monthly basis. But as to those who are even on the roll because they met some qualification and then later found they're dually enrolled, then we have to go by -- and ask them to be removed. So we are working diligently. MS. SANDERS: Hi everybody. My name is Vickie Sanders. I happened to be at some of these CBCs a long time ago when Johnny and y'all was having a meeting there. Everybody kept asking us was it an audit. That had never came up, because they pulled those people. I'm concerned about my kids and my grandkids just like y'all are. But to me, we need to do some research and see if you're going to put your kids on there, let's do it right. But my deal is, Mr. Chairman, when they decided to do this last year, they were all told. If you're willing to change the constitution, then why didn't we do it? Because this is what the problem is. Now are you going to change it and put the people back on? They said they had one person out there. Why don't you put them back on there, too, if you're going to make changes to the constitution and put everybody back on. But to me, it's up to the CBC to do this. This is what they're supposed to do on every enrollment. Give them a document. It's up to CBC to make sure it's right and for you to approve it. But this constitution should have been changed from what y'all called an audit. And when it opened that can of worms, that's when it should have took place, not now. Because everybody is upset. I don't blame y'all. I can see where you're coming from. I have many neighbors and relatives, too. But I'm sorry, this constitution should have been changed a long time ago and not today. MS. WHITEFEATHER: My name is Glenneta Whitefeather. This stems from the -- back when we had the open enrollment. The previous enrollment director we had -- I know there's been quite a few, because I've been out there doing a lot of research. I had a petition for a special general council to bring the people together and to decide and vote on this issue. It's gone too long already. And our children are hurting. Those people that have come to adulthood now, before they turned 18, they don't have anywhere to go for health services, education. I could go on and on. (Mr. Mahseet enters meeting at 10:34 a.m.) MS. WHITEFEATHER: But the thing about this, there were some applications with a previous enrollment director where it's not completed. They lost documents out of those people's that have come and applied. Things were mainly the original CDIB. Because I have one daughter at the time and she was in jail. The rolls were open. I went myself to the jail and got her notarized statement, and I brought it here to the enrollment director, and she wouldn't accept it because she said she had to actually be here in the physical. Well, by the time she got out, it was all over with. As a matter of fact, I had her application already done and it was dated. And my grandchildren were the same way. I had relinquishment papers from the tribe, from the tribe to me that she had come from. She gave those back to me. So I got all the original documents that she gave me, and they didn't receive a per capita payment and -- for about two or three years, and then we all were -- we also listed a statement showing that they had this much money in their account. I know -- I want to know what happened to that money that was in their children's account. Where did it go? And if any of you have relatives that were removed from the tribe, you can understand the devastation of these people. I had people call me the last part of December almost -- it was just about every day, about how they could do this, because they didn't -- they didn't know what to do, where to go. They called the business committee one on one. Nobody could help them. They were given the same answer all the time: It's not our fault that the previous enrollment director didn't do the job that she was supposed to do. And not only that, what irritates me the most is that they keep saying you, you, you. Well, it was put in the papers, our Comanche newspaper. Also, it was in the Lawton Constitution and the Anadarko paper that any -- Comanche Tribe, because the enrollment polls are going to be closed at such and such time all the way up to 2005. Now, you tell me that. When the enrollment polls were closed in 2002. Now, something's wrong with that. Why were they encouraging us to enroll? Well, they tried to enroll in 2002, but when she finally accepted that, it was beyond that date. Because we never could get the originals for one of my grandchildren. So I'm telling you people, have some mercy and understanding about these people that have been removed from the roll. Money's not everything. But the issue is to belong to a tribe with dignity, so they can go on in life and so that they could get things done, use any health services. Mainly it's because they don't have the money today to go to school or get help here. They can't get a lot of things done because they are not enrolled with any tribe. And it's right what Vincent said, they don't belong to any tribe. And they had already received a per capita payment about two, three times. So they can't -- they're not allowed to go back to that tribe. So I wish y'all have mercy and compassion and remember we got a God up there. So think about it and vote yes on this. MS. WAHNEE: I just want to clarify a couple of the statements that Ms. Whitefeather had mentioned. First of all, for those children that were found ineligible that are no longer on our roll, the per capita money that they had received that was put into a trust for them is still sitting in the bank. Once they turn 18, whether they're with our tribe or another tribe, they're still entitled to that money, and they still will be able to receive that money. So you people out there, just understand that money was never taken away from any of those children. That money is still sitting there in the bank in their name. Their parents will still get their yearly statement to show that that money is still there in the mail. Secondly, the issue that she's discussing about the newspaper, we have a copy of that article. And in that particular article it mentioned that if you wanted your per cap and you wanted to be on the roll, it was actually September in 2006 that you had to be enrolled by, September 30th of 2006. It did not state that it was an open enrollment. It stated that you must have your application in and processed by September 30th if you wanted to be counted for per cap that year. It was not an open enrollment period. I have a copy of that in my office. The CBC also has a copy of that. It's not an open enrollment period. Thirdly, she mentioned that these children had not received health benefits or educational benefits. That's another inaccurate statement. Indian Health Services, even though they are not a specific recognized member of a tribe, they still could have received health benefits. They have documentation from my department that they possess Comanche blood or did belong to a member of our tribe, they still can receive IHS benefits. Education programs: There's a couple of 638 programs. They cannot deny educational benefits to any tribe. They will take preference over that specific tribe first. But under residual monies left, they can distribute it. So those children are not denied educational monies. They are not denied any health benefits. Those are misconceptions and miscommunications that is out there that a lot of people are unaware of. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. MS. WAHNEE: If there's any other circumstances that come up, you can ask myself, you can ask the tribal attorneys, you can ask the CBC on specific situations. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Wauqua, Pratt? MR. PRATT: My name is Pratt Wauqua. Not really Comanche and would become Comanche, and all our people banned if we're part Mexican, most of us are Comanche and Mexican. Me, I'm a full- blooded Indian. Why? Because my family was there. You meet other people that came that way. Are we going to just let them in? You give us that law. We wouldn't even be going anyplace anytime. We are the tribe. We care for one another. And when we bring that family together a long time ago, they become Comanche. Now, we got seven people up there telling us how to run our tribe. As a tribal people, as far as all Comanches, we are here together. They come up here and talk a good talk. We didn't. We heard what we had to say. These people will come up here and talk to you just to be heard so they can stay in line. Think of what I wanted to say. But when we hurt our own people, we hurt ourselves. I know of a family that's in -- are Comanche and are off the rolls. How do you do that? I think it's politics that put them on. If you care for anybody, we needed that on there. Why? Because they were Comanche and we love one another. We don't supposed to hate one another. It was a mistake when they did. If you make a mistake, then you amend it. It ain't hurt nobody. The only ones they hurt is the CBC, the people they could not alter that's running. They try to say he's not. There's people in here 20 years as Comanches, and I know that -- and I know, too. And half the family is not. How do you explain that? You know, you go back as far as you go back, maybe five, six, seven years, there's people that got on there, there's people that are not really Comanche. I say look at both. Leave the people that have already been on there, leave them alone. Our constitution doesn't say anything about if you're a disenrolled member. The BIA put a grant on them. But on the accepted, quit trying to change what we are. Because if you're going to change anything, change the way the people live. How much can you do for them? We've got CBC up there. They should be helping our people, not running over them. They should host the people. They didn't take how much they could help them because how much we are. We got people that's from other countries in the United States. They become American. And I traveled. I don't like because we have to live by the case. Why do we have to do that? Why can't we just welcome and take them on the lead? They're Comanche. No matter what fella they are or what they are. If you love enough and you're accepted with that, then let's take them all back in and we'll be alright. Because we are the only people we got, Comanche people. We've got to stand up. We've been going and we still ain't accomplished nothing, because we still get the same thing we were when we were making -- and that was a lot. $43 million? And we still get the same kind of money we got then. What happened to that? You know, we should be worrying about that instead of worrying about how many Comanches we got or how many Comanches can we throw off. Let them go on there, leave them on there. He ain't hurting nobody. You know, they were Comanches and they were proud of it. That's wrong. We need to start loving one another and quit fighting with one another. Thank you very much. MS. WHITEFEATHER: Thanks, Pratt. That was -- I agree with you. Now, on that thing that -- the thing that Donna had mentioned a little bit ago, she hasn't been out there with the tribal members who know what they have gone through. So therefore she -- she doesn't have that first-hand information that some of us had to go through where our family members were removed. Now, I know several people for a fact. They call me and I have a couple of them in Anadarko. Because there was one young lady with children. She and her children were removed from the rolls. She come up here to the food distribution. She didn't have any money because it isn't much at all. They wouldn't accept her because she wasn't on the roll. Her children couldn't get any help over here because they were removed from the roll. She went -- they told her to go back to her own tribe, because this enrollment director had told them to take them back. Who gave her the authority to put them back and call the tribe? Who put them back on the roll? She can't argue with me on that, because I know for a fact, and these people will be able to argue with her. Nobody gave her the authority to call those -- that tribe and tell her to take them back. You have to do it legally. She keeps talking about legalities. Where was her written statement? A legal written statement that she has the authority to tell them to take them back, to put them back on their roll? These people have to go to the BIA. I met with two of them. I went over for support, to give them support. The BIA told us, we went to a hearing lawyer, Mancutty, and what's the name? There's three of them. They all told us, told me -- and not just one meeting, but several meetings, that what the Comanche Tribe did was not legal with them. They still consider those tribal members that were removed from the tribe enrolled members. They are counted. Every time we get monies from the tribe, or for the tribe, from the federal -- from them, those people are counted. And we get -- the tribe gets more money for them. So if they're going to be removed from the tribe, if they kick them off, they won't be accounted and get that money towards -- that doesn't make sense to me. If you're going to remove them from the roll, why are you using it to get more money from them? And then you don't get any benefit out of it, the tribal members don't get anything out of it. They are legally enrolled. So Donna doesn't know. Unless she's walked with these people side by side, she doesn't know. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. MS. WAHNEE: Yes, I have. MR. BURGESS: In response to your statement about enrollment, Glenneta, several programs have just notified us recently that the only people we can serve are those within our service jurisdiction, which is five counties. Whether they're enrolled with the tribe or the BIA, if they don't reside in the service area that we're contracted for, then we can't count them. So that's another area to think, that all our members are accounted for every area. That's not true. They have to reside in this service area. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: My daughter was one of those that was ruled ineligible. Granted, she lived down the road during that September of '06. I went into the enrollment director back then and asked her if she could get on the roll, which I was informed she could. But my daughter just got on the roll and accepted on the roll. Now she's ineligible. One thing that's sad is that our niece, all her cousins, all my nieces and nephews are on your Comanche roll, and she's the only one that is not on the Comanche roll. And even myself will tease her. You know, I call her a -- but she's more Comanche than anybody else I know. She's Comanche. She's not just part Comanche, she's Comanche. She did not get on the roll between her 18th and 19th birthday. Is that -- I don't even know that requirement existed until I got a hold and listened to what tribal politics were about. When the open enrollment was started, I was never notified that there was an open enrollment, or that she had one year from the time she was 18 until she was 19 to get on the roll. You know, there's a lot of people that probably didn't know that existed, or one of them that didn't, you know. I mean, is that -- was that workable? She should have been notified she was not on the Comanche roll before then -- start of 18 that she had a year to get on the roll. Or was I voting on the TA, telling to vote for. So thank you. MR. BURGESS: One last statement, please. MS. AITSON: My name is Delores Aitson. I have something to say on the enrollment thing. My children met with the appeals -- with the tribal CBC members. And the appeal board is the same people that took them off, you know. And I don't understand that at all. But they did receive per capita payment and they were put on the roll. They were signed by the chairman of the tribe. So how fair is that when you take someone and put them on the roll, but then you got the past princess was taken off the roll the same time that the 10 that was first with my children. And then she was put back on the roll so that she could serve the tribe to be princess. Now, you tell me. How fair is that? MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Ms. Aitson. Mr. Asepermy, please? MR. ASEPERMY: Okay. Let me just mention this. I was part of the process, along with Eddie and Darrell, Clyde, and Robert, on this enrollment issue. And I'll tell you, it was a hard decision to make. Because some of those people on the roll were family members or my friends. Some of them were family members. Initially, when this came up, my thought was that a mistake was made by our enrollment office, not by the individuals. Through no fault of their own, they were put on roll. The problem wasn't the enrollment office. And I'm just going to tell you like it is. Why are they put on the roll? For political favors. I've had people come up to me and say: Can you get my sister, my daughter, or so and so on the roll? It's not end of discussion in my book. We have followed the rules. Donna just put there briefly. She put down all the things that we do to abide by the constitution. We are going to have to change the constitution. You saw what it would take to put these folks back on the roll. 14 of them were under the age of 18. They're eligible to go on the rolls when they're 18, and some of them have. Basically, if you're 19 years old and you're on another roll, you're blowed up. That's the tribe you're going to have to be with. And we're not saying that you're not Comanche. I'm as much Kiowa as I am Comanche. I am enrolled with the Comanches, but I'm still a Kiowa. You know what it takes. We're not saying that you're not a Comanche anymore. We're saying that we did abide by the constitution. You saw the appeal process. You saw what we have to do to put these folks back on the roll, and I think we did our job. This CBC, from 1998 to 2007, they're the ones who voted them off. They voted them on, they voted the information given by the enrollment director. So this, to me, is an unconstitutional motion. And, you know, I'm sorry. I feel bad for people that were taken off the roll, I honestly do. MS. ISAAC: I bring back what Donna has gone through, and she's brought forward, and I just have to say this, Donna: It didn't start with Donna. It started with the CBC. Lanny, you was part of that, so was Eddie, so was Clyde, and whoever you wanted to get them started. It did not start with the employees. They're afraid of that word insubordinate. If you don't follow the leaders' orders, then something -- you know, they want their job. They want their families to be provided for. Insubordination is what you guys put over everybody's head when y'all want something done. And this was done in the past. And, Lanny, you was the very one that was part of that. And I'm -- yes, yes you are. And you're the one that says (inaudible). I don't want to vote on anything. This should have been done a long time ago, before all this fiasco started there. There's too many things that's gone on in our tribe, and you guys have sat there and do the same old thing. Like the eagle project, like the princess project. There's more things that needed to be done without you starting the fiasco within the tribe. And it goes on and on and on. I'm getting really tired of it. I supported you. To the very end I supported you. But when you did this to our princess and ignore her continuously, that is very wrong. You listen to both sides of an issue before you start (inaudible) somebody. And I thought Nelson would publish the application in the newspaper. He should never have done that. It was being handled by the proper people. You guys had no business in there. Nelson had no business in there. And don't blame Nelson, Mike. Don't blame Nelson with all the blame. You blame Mike. I'm getting tired of this. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. MR. SOVO: Mr. Chairman, I've been asked to rise to a point of order by Comanche Nation by many of the elders because they can't come up here, or they would rather me speak. But it (inaudible) and we need to address the audience, this is a Comanche meeting and it's closed to only Comanches. It's been that way for many years. They asked me to -- MR. BURGESS: Okay. Thank you. Let's finish this, let's finish this discussion. MR. SOVO: It has been that way for many years, and they're -- MR. BURGESS: Hang on. All right. If there's no further discussion on this future topic, this past topic here, we're going to -- no, Ms. Eleanor, you've had your statement. Mr. Nauni, the chair will recognize you. Milton, will you hold on just one second? Mr. Nauni, after this, we're going to come to a conclusion on this topic. MR. NAUNI: Then I'll direct my comments to the business committee. I was sitting back there listening to different people's analogy of what happened. I'm very much in support of our constitution. Yeah, it needs to be changed. It needs to be updated. But when it says what it says currently, today, then that's what we need to go by. I have a daughter that is part Seneca and part Comanche. Her name is Marilyn Nauni. She's -- a lot of you know her. Well, she wished she could be on the Comanche roll, but earlier she chose to be on the Seneca roll. Now, I would like for her to be considered to be on Comanche roll, but that's not right. Because according to the constitution, she chose to be on the Seneca roll at the time, and she passed the time of eligibility. So she's going to accept that and she does, and she moves on. But she's still very proud of her Comanche heritage. What I want to see is the business committee work with Donna. Because I think when we start trying to change the constitution to fit in all situations, then we're going to go back to a situation that's to be for more chaos, more confusion. What I think Ms. Nauni needs to do, along with Donna Wahnee, is go to these other respective (inaudible) these people were taken off the roll, and negotiate and talk with them and ask if they can be put back on the tribal membership. I know I wouldn't want to not be without a member of a tribe either. Like you say, it's devastation. But I think in fairness, we, the committee, has made that error. And I think by recognizing that we made the error, try and negotiate with these different governments, with these people who have been taken off. And they said to the Comanche that that would be the responsible thing for us to do. I'll change our constitution, because if you do this, we're only opening more confusion. And if we vote and say another 10 or another enrollment clerk makes some more mistakes, do we need this again? I don't think it would be helpful for our organization. But it's unfortunate. I agree that these things can happen, but the remedy is to fix it, and to fix it where it will be permanent and still keep our structure. Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Ms. Eleanor, ask your question. Okay. MS. MCDANIEL: I've got one thing to say. MR. BURGESS: I would like to clarify, I want clarification. Thank you. Norman, you said you were wanting a fixed situation, but you don't want to do a constitutional revision to allow the people back on? MR. NAUNI: I don't think that that would really be a remedy, a proper remedy. But I do think that, in all fairness, this tribe needs to make sure that those people are back on the respective rolls that they were taken off of when they became an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation. MR. BURGESS: So what you're saying, then, is specific to these individuals? If they wish to come back to the roll or back -- stay on the tribe, they're on there? MR. NAUNI: Well, they cannot go back into the respective tribe, because they're taken off. You got to understand. They will say that they were enrolled in Cheyenne Tribe and then relinquish their Cheyenne membership and come on the tribal roll, because the Comanches said we accept you. See, we're responsible for that. So what I think needs to happen, they need the vote of the Cheyenne government. The business committee says this has happened, there's been a mistake, and we acknowledge the mistake, but we want to try to render it. And if they're willing to accept that individual back on membership, then I think that's what needs to be. Because if they're not truly eligible to become members of the Comanche Nation, and the people that was in the enrollment department done their job right, they would never have been on the membership anyway. MR. BURGESS: That is what happened during these hearings, those who wanted to come back. And people, we had a hearing, had to show their documentation. So they elected to stay out of the tribe. Some of them didn't show up. I mean, I don't know if you saw all of the communication earlier by Donna. MR. NAUNI: Yes. MR. BURGESS: The number of people who came back in, appealed and went through the process. There was a process in place. Some of who'd had their say. Some decided not to show up. But in order not to change the constitution, again, and fix it for these specific individuals, you have to go back and solicit the right people. So this is if we want them back, is what you're telling us, but you think this is the way to do it? MR. NAUNI: That is the only way I can see to remedy the situation. MR. ASEPERMY: Also, we did notify the other nations that they were enrolled with in writing and tell them that they were taken off our rolls. And the majority of the relinquishment letters from the other nations said that if you are denied enrollment to the Comanches, they would be put back on their original roll. That has been done. MR. MAHSEET: Let me ask you a question, just for clarification. And the reason why I'm asking this is because it does affect me and my family. I have two nephews who are enrolled as Comanches and were told to relinquish their enrollment from the Pottawatomies. They went to them, they told them this was done. After all these things started to begin to happen, they went to the Pottawatomies and found out they were never relinquished. Well, they're on Comanche roll. Okay. So, again, the law says you can't be on two different rolls. So they were taken off the Comanche roll just to be put back on the Pottawatomie roll, which they never relinquished them. And when they went back to the Pottawatomies, they told them that they were already relinquished, and now they're not with any tribe. They're neither with the Comanches or the Pottawatomies because of where we're at, you know, because we are following the constitution. And this is what the constitution says. And if we're going to change that, we have the two electees that are coming up. The two seats that we have here, are we going to tell them people that they do not have to abide by the constitution? MR. SOVO: That's why I say that after negotiations with the other tribal governments in that case setting. If the Pottawatomies won't accept those two individuals back, then we have no alternative but to put them on Comanche roll, because we were the ones responsible for getting them taken off. We said they could come and join us. And later on, we said we can't do it. That's not fair, that's not fair. So, yeah, I think it would be membership, tribal membership situation that you have to deal with, because they're a quarter to a -- Ms. Wahnee, I think she did say there are some people that was put back on the tribe, members of other tribes already. But which ones, I wouldn't know. But to me, if you really want to fix the deal and fix it keeping the constitution, you know, into proper perspective, then that's what you're going to have to do. And if we're at fault doing something, we need to take the blame and fix it. MS. MCDANIEL: Well, from all the statements that we've heard today, one of the things that is very obvious is that this was a mistake. And the CBC, whether it was this body sitting up here or a previous body, the CBC approved erroneous -- the CBC approved erroneous applications. Whether it was this body or another body, they approved erroneous applications. And that was a mistake. So the CBC must accept -- this business committee, whether it was a previous business committee or not, they have to accept the responsibility for erroneous enrollments. They did not questions the applications. They just approved it and it went on. Well, this is affecting a whole lot of people right or wrong. This was a mistake. Let's put these people back on here. And if Donna wants to do something, she really wants to contribute, she could draft up an ordinance that would provide us fair and equal treatment from this day on. But we need to put these people back on there. It was a mistake. Not theirs, but the CBC has the approving authority. They approved every one of those applications, so it was a mistake. Let's just put them back on, go by the ordinance and move on from there. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. The next statement will be from Mr. Burson. MS. ATTOCKNIE: Excuse me, Mr. Burson. The only thing that I've got to contribute to this discussion is the fact that everyone starts talking about the constitution, need to abide by the constitution. The constitution is our guiding document. Our constitution tells us who can be enrolled and the circumstances, what process they have to go through. Where in the constitution does it give anyone the right to take a person off? That is not a part of our tribal constitution. It tells us how you can become an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation. The constitution does not provide where anyone, CBC, enrollment, can take you off. Somebody finds that, I'll give them my grandson to raise. MS. MCDANIEL: Article V, Section 7. MS. ATTOCKNIE: Says what? MS. MCDANIEL: It says, the Comanche Tribal Constitution, "Only the tribal council has as an exclusive authority to change, modify, alter or revoke tribal membership, subject to the approval of the secretary of interior or his authorized representative." MS. ATTOCKNIE: It doesn't say that they can be removed. MS. MCDANIEL: It says, "revoked". But that's the only body that can do that. MS. ATTOCKNIE: But it has to be done. You have to be enrolled. That's once you're enrolled, that's it. MR. BURGESS: Legally enrolled. MS. ATTOCKNIE: Legally enrolled, that's it. And they're enrolled by the way the constitution reads now. My point is: There's nothing in that constitution that says anyone can remove someone once they are Comanche. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Tell them, Phyllis. MS. ATTOCKNIE: Am I right? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You're right. MS. ATTOCKNIE: You tell them I'm wrong, people, I'm going to hurt you. MR. NORMAN: She's wrong. If you'll look at the constitution, Article 3, Section 3(a), 3(c) and 3(d), the constitution itself talks about automatic, permanent withdrawal of membership if somebody is ineligible to be a member in the first place. That's what the CBC was wrestling with. And an audit of enrollment was done, information was presented to them because there were a number of people on the roll who were ineligible for enrollment. They have a constitutional responsibility to maintain the rolls. Knowing that there were individuals who were ineligible, they recognized, officially, what the constitution says. If you're ineligible, even though you may administerally get on the rolls, the constitution says you have a permanent effect of withdrawal. It's the constitutional limit that we have. And as Donna mentioned in her presentation, there are multiple ways to address it, but you have to change the constitution. The constitution can only be amended if three or four CBC members request that that be done so and submit a specific amendment to the department of interior. The department of interior has to approve the language of that amendment, and then you have to have a secretarial vote. Alternatively, 200 Comanches can petition the department of interior to amend the constitution. But under other scenarios, the constitutional language itself affects the permanent disenrollment of the individuals. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Mr. Norman. Ladies and gentlemen, we spent one hour and 10 minutes on this topic. We have many other items to go through. At this point in time, this motion requires a constitutional amendment to do it this way. You had a great suggestion from the floor from Mr. Nauni. So we'll follow through with that suggestion. This motion is out of order, but it has to go through a constitutional review. And at that time bring it forward. So thank you very much. Mr. Sovo? Milton Sovo, come forward, please, and speak clearly and loudly to the community. So we're going to call for a voice vote. MR. SOVO: Yes. They've asked me to mention that our general council meetings are closed only to Comanche members, and that the media and so forth be removed. They want our business here for Comanches and only for Comanches. And we'll put it in the paper, that's fine, but only after we conduct our business here. And that's their request. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, sir. I'm going to paraphrase your motion, Mr. Tippeconnie. The motion is to close our tribal council to Comanche members only. What this means is if you are of voting age, you're enrolled Comanche. The media and other non-Comanches are going to be excluded until we eat or until we open our doors for public comment. Is that understood? Can I get an "ah"? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I second that motion. MR. BURGESS: Second the motion. Discussion? DR. YEAGLEY: I'd like to make a comment about this. MR. BURGESS: Identify yourself, sir. DR. YEAGLEY: Pardon? MR. BURGESS: Your name for the record. DR. YEAGLEY: My name is David Yeagley. It is Nick Tahchawwickah and myself who are working on this project, and I share that concern. I want everybody to know that. Our first thought about this broadcast was how to keep it reserved for Comanches, Comanche members. This is for Comanches that are everywhere. That was our first thought. At this time, at our stage of financial support and our equipment and all those details, it's not possible to limit it to strictly Comanches. But when we reach a higher level, we will have that option. Just like you can't vote unless you have one of these armbands. Well, in a similar way, there's going to be a time where you cannot view the broadcast unless you are a Comanche member. We have considered that, we know that that is a concern. We're concerned about it, too. But in order to achieve that kind of control, we have to be at a higher level of technology and a higher level of financial backing. Right now, we're just not there. But I just want everybody to know that we are aware of that concern and we respect it completely. MR. BURGESS: All right. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a caveat. There's one thing here, our attorneys are not Comanche, we have non-Comanche employees who work with us who don't vote anyway, but many of them are positions of responsibility. So this motion is to exclude non-voting personnel who are not employed, not associated with the government. It doesn't mean someone who works for the tribe can't be in here, particularly to handle the budget or handle a program that the tribe is dealing with. So the motion includes those non-voting Indians, non-Comanche, and the media here, other than our own. Non-Indian media are to be excluded. So that's the motion and we're going to do this by voice vote. MR. ASEPERMY: Mike, can I add, also, what about the Comanches that are married to non-Comanches? You want them to leave, too? And what about the freedom of press? What about the freedom of speech? What if we have someone that comes in here who's not a Comanche that wants to present something to us? We have the attorneys, we have Finley & Cook. They're not Comanche. MR. BURGESS: Again, this excludes our non-Comanche employees and our attorneys, because they are working with us and -- MS. ATTOCKNIE: Okay. I heard several people stand up here and say they were full-blooded Comanche. But I also know that previously to this point, we have had non-Comanche people stand up in this general council to say what was on their mind because it reflected on their families. Laqueta Pratt, married to Henry Pratt, all her children are on the Comanche roll. Laqueta has passed on, but she felt so strongly about her children that she came to these meetings. What's wrong with that? What is wrong with that? Some of you have children that may be enrolled in another tribe. I've gone to some of those meetings because of my interest in them. What is this about the -- that motion, this motion is, to me, ridiculous. He said something about the elders wanting to say this. Well, I would rather not, but I speak with freedom of speech. That if you've got something to say, if you want to hear somebody else's opinion, then you got that right. Who's to say that you don't? That's ridiculous. MR. SOVO: Mr. Chairman, to clarify that motion, the issue was the newspaper, TV, and the Internet. Until we can get that where it is just the -- non-Comanche employees, which the attorneys and the other folks are. I didn't say anything about their family members that aren't Comanche that need to talk about their issues on their family issues. That's up to the Comanches. But what they're going to bring forward is about the news media and all that being in our meeting until we determine that. MR. BURGESS: All right. Then you want to -- okay. You're limiting your motion to specifically state that you want to ban the media. MR. SOVO: It's closed to the media. MR. BURGESS: Now, the other person who seconded it? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I'll second it. MR. BURGESS: Wait, hang on. She has to agree to amend it. We're trying to follow some parliamentary order. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I second the motion. MR. BURGESS: You second the amended motion? As he said, the motion is to exclude media and non-Indian media. Is there something else, Milton? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: May I ask for clarification from the attorneys? Is that legal? MS. ATTOCKNIE: No. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Sovo, please come forward. I think the attorneys are going to tell us it's our tribal, we're on trust lands. MR. SOVO: This is a tribal general council meeting that was constituted, and that if that's what they want, that's what they're asking for. It's not what the United States says or what the secretary of interior says, it's what the Comanches want. MS. MCDANIEL: We live in the United States of America. We do not live in Iraq. We do not live in a communist country. This is a free country. It's all right to stand up and speak. And if the news media is going to get the truth right, then they need to be here and they need to write the truth, not some past story out there. So this is an open meeting, an open meeting, free to anybody to come in. MR. BURGESS: I'm going to -- Ms. Sovo? We're going to hear from one of our elders. MS. SOVO: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, our Comanche does not exclude people that are (inaudible) tribal members. I'm talking about our Comanche people being able to come in here, discuss what they need to discuss about every Tom, Dick and Harry, digging into our private business. At least we could have this tribal meeting, our tribe, Numunuu. It is ours. If we want to do what we want, our constitution says that we still are the governing body. That don't mean we can't talk. This is the United States. We live in it. Numunuu, we are a nation within the United States, Numunuu. We have a right to be recognized as a speaking tribe of what we feel right here. And I've been sitting at meetings, everybody knows how old I am. And they always had the presence of the people to be able to get up and say what they want. And when they walk out that door, no he said this and she said this. If you're interested in our tribal government, be here. Close the doors, this is ours. At least this is all we got left. But the whites has just about took even your own. But people, I'm talking about our rights for you to speak. This is ours. You are Comanche. When you marry into the tribe, you're Comanche. In fact, talk over with your wife, then you represent your mate. That's his meeting. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about taking anyone's rights away. I'm talking about this Comanche. You need to stand up and not be ashamed to stand up and say what you feel and be able to express yourself. Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Mason, give your name, please. MR. MASON: Mason. May I speak? I would like to just kind of expand on what Ms. Sovo there said. I think we've had a prime example of what can occur when we don't stay with the existing constitution as written at the moment. Now, too many times I think some of our members, for whatever reasons, don't understand that as time passes, under all committees -- I'm not going to sit here, stand here, and have any kind of blame, if there's any blame to be had at all on this committee. Because we all know that when we first put the first constitution into play, that many, many tribal governing people, just like yourself, sitting right there in the very same place. I wanted to come here and tell you and let the membership themselves recognize the fact that when we don't adhere to the existing constitution as written at this moment, how it can change at all many directions. Every direction brings its own issue. So, therefore, like our council is saying, there is a process to change that constitution. Don't get me wrong, because I am a member who stands here and believes in, at the moment, a supreme governing body right out there. I believe that. But I do not believe that we truly understand the sequential steps that we, the governing body, must take in order to amend, or I'll say it the other way, change our constitution. I understand the council, and I'm not trying to belittle anybody that don't recognize those steps. And if I understand the chairman, I think there is an effort under way with the president to make some amendments to the existing constitution. I think probably you have submitted some of them. And hopefully, before that process really gets rolling and starts to divide, that all this body here is included. From the very day that you say, okay, let's form up the committee who will make a plan and submit it so we can bring those changes forward in a controlled manner. Even though I support what I heard about this being a closed session, I support that. I'll tell you why. Somebody with the media in here? That's the last people I want. We're Comanche. This is our business. These are the people we hired here. None of them Comanche, intelligent. Now, the media, I would say, close it. I'm going to give you a very simple explanation as to why I believe that. If you can watch the news every evening, you can see the very same issue on ABC, CBS, CNN, on and on. That anchor person or that group of news media, their particular quorum will slant the news. We call that a slant. They'll slant in any direction they choose. So, therefore, why should we have somebody come in here and listen to us debate our issues, and then he takes it and puts it in his paper or on the news or on TV so he can derive capital from that? It's like hanging our laundry out on the fence line and say, "Hey, come here." Let's not do that. This is Comanche business. So I think -- this is just my opinion. Because I've observed the administration, and once again, I really do feel like Ms. Attocknie was right on when she said if you've got an opinion and it troubles you, come right up here, express it; and, we, the general council, the supreme governing body, will be polite and respectful enough to you to hear that. That doesn't mean that we have to agree, but we, as Comanches, are going to prove to this great nation that we live in that we, too, can build it ourselves properly. MR. ASEPERMY: Mr. Mason, this gentleman standing over here to my right, Mr. Bigbee, he has an Internet site called Camp Crier, and part of that site is Comanche Nation news. He makes the statement that the press isn't allowed, (inaudible) and can you name the number? Would you have an objection -- and I guess I'm asking everyone. We have a news media product over here, Camp Crier, that is accessible to anyone who has the Internet. And they show clips of our CBC meetings, they show clips of our tribal council. Is there a problem in your mind or if we're going to have a motion to make it only a Comanche-only meeting, is there a problem with Mr. Bigbee? MR. MASON: And you're asking that question of me personally, right? MR. ASEPERMY: Yes. MR. MASON: So I'm going to give you my personal answer. Yes, I would not even accept that gentleman, even though I give him all the respect in the world, because I'm going to tell you why. This is my opinion, realize. We, you guys right there, are elected officials. Us, the governing body, you know how we receive our news? We have a public information officer. We have a lady sitting right here. Anybody in here who wants to know verbatim how this meeting took place simply goes to that office, asks her for a copy of what's being transcribed at this very moment. Now, back to this individual over here. How many of us in here have Internet access? I don't. Now, take a look out there. How many others don't? And there's nothing wrong with having that. But the big obstacle is, if you're not computer literate, even if you make big lease. You make a big oil lease, man, you ain't got time for a computer, you're not even computer literate. So, therefore, that act alone eliminates 1/10. All I'm going to say, 80 percent of the people that you see right here, people like you who access it daily, that's a fine tool, it's a wonderful tool. But I'm going to say that, in my opinion, I'm depending on her, I'm depending on our public information officer and -- MR. ASEPERMY: This? MR. MASON: And the newsletter, yes. And some people may say that's old fashioned, but you know what? That's our government. That's our government. MR. ASEPERMY: This newsletter goes out to approximately 4100 individual Comanche addresses, plus you can find them throughout Apache, Elgin, Porter Hill, Lawton, at different places. MR. MASON: I know you can pick them up at the Comanche Hospital. And if you get on the mailing list, they'll be mailed to you. So if you've got any interest at all -- and I do think more and more -- and I'm very proud of that. I will say that to the committeemen, too. When you look out there and see faces out there, that same faces, that many people, that tells you there is a high interest growing in our self-governance. Thank you, sir. MR. ASEPERMY: Thank you. Call for the question. MR. BURGESS: We're going to call for the question. To clear it up, the question is to not allow any other media, other than Comanche Nation media, in our meeting here, tribal council meeting. We're going to call for a voice vote on this, so please stand by. Dr. Yeagley and then Mr. Bigbee. DR. YEAGLEY: I'm very concerned that people have a misconception of what we're doing. And if I believed what I was reading, I'd believe that misconception and I'd vote against it, too. This is -- I'm not media in the sense that you have a commentator. This is my screen, this is the building, everybody here. There's no commenting, there's no discussion. All that is seen from our broadcast is what happens here. It's not like we're on ABC including a news commentator. That's something else entirely. We're not doing that. This is simply a live broadcast of our meeting for Comanche people. That's the idea. The other thing I'm going to say is, if we don't have anything to hide, why would anybody object? And I will tell you that one of our elders, I attended the -- I used to attend the elders' meetings. It was one of the elders who said to me -- this was years ago. She said our home is public exposure. Our only hope of improvement, our only hope of correcting any wrongs within the tribe, that you're willing to complain about it, is public exposure. I believed that back then and I believe it now. But the point is, is it's done in a simple way. And I'm not embarrassed about anything that happens here. Is there anybody that's of -- that happens in congress. What's the difference? I don't think there was any problem with -- MR. BURGESS: David, we want to get started on this. Mr. Dan Bigbee, come forward. Roland, we are going to call for a vote. Thank you. This is the last statement. MS. BIGBEE: Good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to be here at the Comanche General Council. I'd like to make a few comments on this issue. First of all, I've done the Camp Crier for almost five years. So my first question is: Well, what's changed? We've been doing this for five years. And the reason we started doing this was because there was a need by the absentee voter for information. They wanted to know what was going on, and that's why we started this. And before I came down here, the e-mails I received over the last week, there are absentee voters out there waiting for our report so they can know what's going on. That's why we do this. The final point I wanted to make was we felt like you could come in and report on what was happening, whoever was elected. Because in the constitution, there's a press clause. Now, I will submit to you all today that the rest of this meeting would require changing that law policy in the constitution. Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Dan. Mr. Bigbee is correct. The constitution talks about freedom of the press. However, Mr. Mason, I hear a good point. We have our Comanche Nation news over there, and I have not -- I have not edited it, watered it down, or told anyone not to bring something that was illegal. And over here, you can get a copy of these minutes. It costs us a lot of money, let me remind you. Costs us a lot of money to print out all of the transcripts here. And any time there's a question of legalities, a lot of you get your own phone call, call our attorneys and ask them for interpretation. So we are not, in any way, infringing on the freedom of the press. And we have a lot of standing traditions. I'm told this happened back before I started on this council that it was Comanches only of voting age. Just remind y'all of that, we've been told this. Mr. Mason, do you want to add something? MR. MASON: Yes, a few statements. MR. BURGESS: The chair will recognize you from the floor, please. We're going to call for a vote after this, ladies and gentlemen. MR. MASON: You tell me the question is going to be called for. I think that there's already been some wording changed in the resolution that Eleanor was bringing forward. Is that what we're going to -- MR. BURGESS: That's moot. That's out of order -- MR. MASON: This is exactly what would we be voting for here, then? Because I think if we don't truly understand the vote with those word changes, we're going to have some confusion out here. So I think you can put together now, somebody ought to be reading through it, the supreme governing body. Thank you. MR. TIPPECONNIE: A motion on the floor is to close the meeting. Close the meeting to non-Comanche members, media, non-Comanche media members. That's newspaper and other media. MR. ASEPERMY: Robert, would you say that as the motion is made, stricken through, the motion is -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't understand what y'all are talking about. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Milton, do you want to qualify that? MR. ASEPERMY: And I like whoever said that. I don't understand the motion fully. MR. SOVO: It was to close the media, TV, news, and Internet, and the Internet until it can be secured where Comanches are the only ones seeing it. When you leave it on the Internet, the media can see it there and pull it off the Internet. They don't have to be here. So if it's secure to Comanche members, then they're getting -- you know, they might be sitting in New Mexico, but they can't watch the meeting. But until we get that element in place, then close that meeting. But that's what I'm talking about. That's what I want to do, is this meeting was closed to media, the news, for years, and they've done it two or three times in the past. But, committee, it was a closed meeting only for Comanche business, Comanche Indian. It's not to kick everybody that's non-Comanche or married to a non-Comanche. It's only seeking the news media. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Not Comanche media, because we have media here, tribal media. MR. SOVO: No, it's only non-Comanche. MR. ASEPERMY: Non-Comanche tribal media. So you're not including in your motion non-Comanches, like people that are -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, this meeting. MS. AITSON: Okay. So what's the difference in keeping it away from the media? I missed all this myself. I appreciate Mr. Bigbee's site and I visit it all the time. But what's the difference in keeping the media out and publishing a whole beautiful budget in the newspaper where everybody sees it and thinks we're rich? We're not. You guys might be rich, but I'm not. So I really don't mind the media being here. But, Michael, you had stated one time where you said you would like to see nothing but Comanches here. I feel the same way, nothing but Comanche. And I do understand that Mr. Bigbee's wife is not Comanche, but she helps him, so things like that. We need nothing but Comanches. I've been trying to do it. What's the matter with you guys? Y'all always make a big issue about a little thing that can be stopped like that. MR. BURGESS: Ms. Sovo, last comment. We have that question and I'm going to recognize my elder, but this is it. MS. SOVO: I'm sorry for taking your time. I'm thinking, for example, (inaudible) even when there's enough people to put it in the newspaper, and it's not safe to walk downtown if you get a check from the government, our government. It's just that (inaudible) nothing to do with anybody. If you're married to it, it don't matter. We're just talking about local Comanche Tribal Nation media, and keep our business to ourselves. MR. BURGESS: So the motion's been made, seconded. The motion has been called for. Brother, we got business here. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: One minute, sir. You know, ladies and gentlemen, we have a constitution to go by, and it tells us what we're supposed to do in our meetings, and how we're supposed to run it, and who is supposed to be here and what time it's supposed to be. So why don't the business committee and the chairman go by the constitution and quit debating all this bull crap? MR. BURGESS: Thank you, sir. I'll buy you lunch, all the meat he wants. I wanted to go to sleep by 2 o'clock. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to ask y'all to raise your hand -- or, excuse me, we're just going to do this by voice vote. By voice vote. First, all those in favor of the motion to close our meeting to the non-Comanche media, say "aye." (Aye). MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, say "nay." (Nay). MR. BURGESS: All right. It sounds like we have a lot of progressive minds. The nays said no, not to close it to the non-Comanche media; however, over here on the screen, do you have a three or five-second delay? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. MR. BURGESS: All right. Just in case there's a few choice words we don't want to air. Thank you. So ladies and gentlemen, the tribal council has spoken. The media over here, we're going to continue. Make sure you get everybody's good side. Thank you. Mr. Whitewolf, Roderick Whitewolf. Mr. Whitewolf, do you have a resolution, sir? MR. WHITEWOLF: Yes, sir. MR. BURGESS: This resolution, ladies and gentlemen, is about the Revenue Allocation Plan. MR. WHITEWOLF: I'll give you this after I read it. The resolution is to amend the Comanche Nation Revenue Allocation Plan. We're going to add: "Whereas, the Comanche Nation is a federally recognized Indian tribe with a constitution approved by the Secretary of Interior on January 9th, 1967, to safeguard tribal rights, power and privileges, to improve the economic morale of people and health status of its members; and "Whereas, General Council adopted the Revenue Allocation Plan in a Special Council Meeting in 2006; and "Whereas, the allocation plan states the net revenue to be divided by 25 percent per community education, 25 percent economic development, 10 percent to the tribal programs, and 40 percent (inaudible); and "Whereas, the General Council assembled (inaudible) Revenue Allocation Plan, with appropriate resolutions to the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and "Therefore be it resolved, that the General Council assembled and the Revenue Allocation Plan is as follows: Communities and education, 20 percent; economic development, 10 percent; tribal government, 10 percent; and per cap distribution, 60 percent. "Therefore be it further resolved, that the Comanche Business Committee, by this resolution and amend it in this meeting to the appropriate officials and the Bureau of Indian affairs." Did everyone understand that? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No. MR. WHITEWOLF: This resolution is to increase our Revenue Allocation Plan, our per capita distribution from 40 percent to 60 percent. MR. BURGESS: Ladies and gentlemen, I repeat, for those of you who did not hear Mr. Whitewolf, this is a presented resolution to amend your Revenue Allocation Plan, which brings forward the per cap. They wish to amend it to state that the Revenue Allocation Plan, community education to receive 20 percent, which used to receive 25; economic development to continue with 10 percent; tribal government to receive 10 percent, where it used to be 20. They want to increase the per cap distribution to 60 percent instead of 40 percent. You understand that? Okay. MR. WHITEWOLF: Mr. Chairman, it wouldn't pay me to ask you to reduce that economic development down 5 percent and put 5 percent into education funds. I believe that's earned for. MR. ASEPERMY: Roderick, your resolution says -- it says, the way you got it broke down, 20 for economic development, 10 for the tribal government, and 10 for community -- okay, 20 for communities and education. And you did this up. You say 20 right here, 20 for education -- community and education, 10 to economic development, 10 for tribal government, and as a per cap distribution, 60 percent. Is this how you -- this is how you want it? It stays the same. The tribal government stays the same. MR. WHITEWOLF: (Inaudible.) MR. ASEPERMY: This is how you got it down. I want to make a comment about devising our gaming contribution, our per cap allocation, okay. Just say, just say, if you folks agree to increase it from 40 to 60 percent, just say, that means that we would have to take -- based on last year, we would have to take $7 million away from the other programs that we had. We would have to take it away from communities, education, from economic development and tribal government, $7 million. Now, based on last year's number, we received a per cap payment of $1,014 and some change. If we were at 60 percent, based on last year's numbers, our per cap payment would have been about $1,568. That's what it would have been, about that number, and I would say $10 either way. But we take $7 million away from each program -- I don't know. But that kind of gives you an idea. You vote to go to 60 percent on per cap, then last year, instead of just $1,014, you would have gotten about 1568. The elders' payment would have remained the same, $1,000. So that's just for your information. MR. WHITEWOLF: Here's my thoughts on the whole situation, Lanny. We got a -- we got a sink hole in the economic development part of our tribe. They've never made any money. We're insulting our intelligence by throwing more money into that. So any money (inaudible.) We need to get rid of this college. With your own statement, that college has existed for seven years, eight months, and you threw $9 million down -- in your opinions. Now, it's my contention that if we start voting smart and start doing things smart, you get rid of the college and this economic development and also the enterprise, you know, so that should stop. You know, they're taking big money and they're not returning any money. That's my thought. MR. ASEPERMY: I want to add one more comment. And, you know, I didn't really know how I felt about it. But I read this letter on the last page of the newspaper of the tribal administrator. He said statistics show that the majority of the Comanche Nation population does not utilize any services provided by our tribal government. You know, we have about -- a little bit more than half our population lives outside of Comanche Country. They live in Chicago, Wichita, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Sacramento. Six -- about 35 or a little over half our people live outside the seven counties that we live in. They are not able to use our services here. So about half of our people probably benefit from some of our programs, you know, like the youth program, the youth shelter, the food program, prescription assistance, New Pathway. So it's open to everybody, like higher education. And every Comanche is entitled to burial services. But there's some programs that only benefit the local people. So when you make this decision, do we make this decision, we are going to have to take away $7 million worth of benefits, roughly, that we use locally. But it would increase the benefit to our people that live outside of Comanche Country as well as the people that live within. In other words, you probably get about a $554 more per cap than you did last year, before taxes. MR. BURGESS: Yes? MS. MCDANIEL: What we're asking is that we eliminate the waste. We spent $5 million for the last five years in economic development, in Comanche Enterprises. Economic development, right now on the budget, is 800 or so. Comanche Nation Enterprise is a million-and-a-half. Then you got land acquisition. Who are we buying land for? What are we doing with it? We don't know. But that's 5 million that we have given away for the last five years. So that's that 25 million, that's a lot of money to waste. And we haven't seen one dollar in return on that money. So all we're trying to do is eliminate the waste. Eliminate money that you wasted on Comanche Nation College. 12 million in the past, since 2002, and we don't have one graduate from there. We don't -- we're not even close to becoming accredited. They just filed for a letter of intent for that college just last month. And so all we're asking is to eliminate the waste and put it in your pocket and everybody, all over to this -- all Comanches, wherever they live. They need to put some money in their pocket and eliminate this waste. The only thing that you ever seen a dime on is our nursing program, and that's it. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. I might add, ladies and gentlemen, to do this -- now, remember, you can't bank on this economy. You can't bank on everybody (inaudible) for the next five, 10 years. So revenues will fall. As revenues fall, income to the nation will fall. As well, when you reduce income to the nation on the services side, you reduce income for jobs. Just take the numbers here, we were going to -- they're going to need to be (inaudible) perhaps 40 people who are working here at the tribe. Now, we'll do our best to put them in grants and contracts, but those only survive maybe 12 to 36 months at a time. You constantly have to research tools. That means more administrative staff to develop in grant writing areas, something that we're (inaudible). And those other jobs will be affected by it. So think about that before you decide this. Ms. Nelson? MS. NELSON: Delphine Nelson, Comanche Enterprises. As far as a return on your dollar, or the money that's been put into Comanche Enterprises, it's been about 4,800,000 over the last four years. We now have six viable businesses who employee about 110 people. 80 percent of those people are Comanche. Those businesses provide economic opportunities to people who are just out of school. You can look at these signs right here. These were done by Comanche Signs. That's one of the new companies. They now have eight employees. We have an annual payroll of 1.2 million. No, the money does not come back to the tribe. Any profits received go back into those businesses so we can create more jobs, more opportunities for Comanche Tribal members. Your return on those dollars is averaging about $20,000 a year. That's what the average pay for our employees are. So the reason we turn on the dollar, it may not be what you see as far as going into to the per cap payment, but one thing that people need to realize about a per cap payment, our enrollment, on the average, we'll only enroll 30 new people a month. Our enrollment is going up 10 percent. Gaming revenues have been flat, are very flat right now. And if they go and do an audit, it will be 5 percent. So you're not going to get any more money. That's the reality of the situation. No matter what you do, if you eliminate every program on the budget -- if you eliminate every program on the budget, you will never receive any more than $1,000 per year for your per cap payment, because our enrollment constantly increases. And our gaming revenues do not match what our enrollment is going up. But I'd just like to say as far as the Comanche Enterprises -- the reason we turn on a dollar is they help you monitor the return to the tribe. What it is as far as economic, as far as providing businesses that are different than gaming. Comanche Signs, Clean Sweep, the water park, Nations of Fun, are all involved in part of this, but they do provide economic opportunities for our tribal members as well as the jobs. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Gene Pekah, Dr. Lopez, Comanche Nation College. MS. LOPEZ: I can only speak on behalf of the amount of funds that I have accessed from the tribe since August of 2008. I cannot speak for any funds that were prior to that, but only the amount of money that we have received for $2 million. The announcements that come to the institution has educated over 2300 students, as well as it had -- if we're looking to see where we could cut some funding, we need to have a look at our scholarships that we had provided to the nursing program. We are at $300,000. 325,000 in the next fiscal year. So that the students, 10 students who graduate -- unfortunately, our students have not been able to pass the boards or even to go take the boards. I can only talk to you about the success that the institution has had, and the impact that you will have, not on me for my generation, but my people. Because you know, as they said, I'm not Comanche. But I tell you what, I am Comanche by captivity. I am at the college. MR. BURGESS: We heard you all. Let her speak. She's representing your Indian students, as well. MS. LOPEZ: I feel it appropriate that we keep Comanche Nation College, at least this point in time, where we can get funds in and we won't have to be touching any tribal funds. MR. PEKAH: When I went to Comanche Nation College, I made a commitment. A commitment that we will get accredited and we will continue to serve our students. In the future, we won't have to come up here and speak about the college. Our students will be the voice of the college. To me, this is the single most important thing right now for our nation, is the college. Get it accredited, get our students a firm foundation so they can continue their education. We need them here in the area. We need them here in accounting so that we can run our own tribal government. Until we've got infrastructure set and run our own business, we haven't decided that we are going to govern ourselves. We have to get our infrastructure in place. When I was your tribal administrator, I made changes. If we didn't make these changes, we would be blowing up the Johnson grass over our building. It's very important that we keep the college. How many of you out here have benefited from the college? We have students out here that have went to the college and are benefiting now. Again, within the future, the voice of our college is our students. And since Dr. Lopez has been there -- I was there about a month before her -- she has made tremendous strives to put the college infrastructure in place to make sure that our students are getting a qualified education, which will triple the size of our student body, and we'll continue that again. This is the single most important thing for our nation right now, is our college. MR. BURGESS: Introduce yourself. MS. JONES: I'm Francine Jones. And I want to say that with that, a lot of it, we get it, and you have to, if you're on SSI or something like that -- I'm paying from 2005 back. Every penny I get. Every penny back that I get. And why does -- why do I have to pay it back? I got to earn some money, but here in Oklahoma you're not allowed to draw any kind of money extra besides SSI. And I know that's hurt a lot of people, not just only me. And why -- MR. BURGESS: Thank you. That was another question Ms. Isaac brings. Normally, the constitution tells us to announce our budget. It says in the constitution to publish it. So we're following the constitution, that we have an area or two to publish it in, three books and three sources. In order not to publish it, we need to make a constitutional revision to say not publish it, but to just process it for public members we have. We have to change the constitution for that. So, Beverly, again, following the constitution, we'll get in trouble. MS. JONES: I'm not going to -- MR. BURGESS: We wanted to distribute it because it is our newspaper, but still telling the public. What Ms. Francine here is talking about is to you elders who receive the per cap and then received the elders' assistance, and then you have to give up your SSI or Social Security because you're on lower income. Now they're hurting you at the beginning of November all the way until the end of January, because it's taken them that long to help our elders who were supposed to be receiving it. So we're going to start hurting more elders who have earned a lot of retirement if we do this. Is that right? All right. Mr. Orme -- these two gentleman here will be the last of the day, Tommy and Darrell, because the meal is ready for us. MR. ASEPERMY: Mr. Chairman, I know Mr. Orme's going to speak about Comanche corporations. Would you please comment on the progress in the college? MR. BURGESS: Just to let y'all know on the progress of our Comanche Nation College, they have really come in line, restricted some of their expenses. They've completed 40 out of 44 steps to accreditation. They've already submitted their letter for an issue of accreditation. That letter will be sent and accepted and opens the door for $4 million in funding to the tribal college. They -- are -- have already done their preliminary initial form, have a site visit set up, and the agency that's coming in will visit, talk about it, look at all of their paperwork. Their booklet's about four inches thick that they have to respond to on these 44 items, and now there's only four left. They have done this in a little over 18 months. And as you talk about what happened in the past, that is in the past. But in the last 18 months, since Dr. Lopez has come on board, they've gone from 17 steps to 40 steps for the accreditation, for that $4 million. We're going to receive that $4 million. All they handed to us was the charter that started it. And they've already received over $2.1 million in federal grants to do programs and classes at the college to benefit our community and our students. They're also having another visit from the Oklahoma Board of Nursing who's giving them some preliminary approvals for accreditation for the nursing program. So they are well under way to accreditation. So think about that. Mr. Orme? MR. ORME: My name is David Orme. I'm chairman of the board of Comanche Nation Enterprises, Inc. That's different than Delphine's office. Would you flip to the next slide, please? I'm just going to talk on the big three things here. Next one. Okay. This corporation was formed to provide -- diversify the income for the tribe away from gaming and other type businesses, because you can't put all your eggs in one basket. It was an opportunity that Kansas State (inaudible) around Texas (inaudible). And we all know the number of gaming institutions in Oklahoma continues to grow. So big (inaudible) revenues, our revenues are now (inaudible). We continue to (inaudible) diversify into other businesses. We've done two purchases. So what that means, we had to do a purchase. One is to start a business. The other is to grow or buy businesses that are (inaudible). So we've done two things, then. We started the business. We started Comanche Nation Construction, which is a tribal setting. That business is (inaudible). We have been certified as an 8(a) corporation, a tribally-owned native corporation. That's a very important step. That was accomplished in seven months, where it normally takes two years. That allows this tribal corporation to (inaudible) contract single-source contracts from the federal government. So we don't even have to be (inaudible). That's the reason we established the construction company. It is a really broad-length construction company. It operates at the top level of these contracts, so it generates a little competition and generates more revenue. Beyond that, we're going to acquire or buy businesses that are on market requisition today. (Inaudible) also, because (inaudible.) These may be diversified businesses. They will not be just construction. They will be (inaudible) energy and health care and technology- type businesses. That is (inaudible) to make money for the tribe (inaudible) source of revenue for the tribe. We have a second opinion, obviously, is to provide additional employment. This will be (inaudible) construction company. He's been real involved today or this past week working with us on (inaudible) that he had doing Comanche Nation Construction for them. It takes time to step through to accumulate enough funds to buy a significant business. Can you go to the next -- so this is for the (inaudible) here. We've got the Comanche Nation Construction certified as 8(a). It's got $200,000 of contracts. The other thing we'd like, (inaudible) that lays out the terms of the acquisition over purchase of another construction company. That construction company has $300 million in past performance over the last 10 years, and has $6 million that come to us with this purchase. It's not a guarantee. (Inaudible). This thing could fall through. But it's a real opportunity for us. It's a good fit. The owners are willing to sell (inaudible). So we're chasing that business. MR. ASEPERMY: Mr. Orme? That contract, you just said you could go back and apply. I think people need to know that you have been awarded three government contracts for $200,000. I think they need to know. And also when you covered the Indian contract, tell them what the nation profits. We don't profit $200,000, and I'm not saying this is good or bad. I just want him to tell you what the profit is and our profit is. MR. ORME: The profits about any incentives (inaudible). The reason we structured this business to operate as construction management at the lop level, is we'll get 10 percent of the total contract. If you operate at the bottom level using carpenters or concrete guys or whatever, you get 10 percent roughly that roll away. So operating the top levels, (inaudible) these contracts are worth 200,000. We're going to get about 40,000 of it (inaudible). We're bidding on contracts. There's two or three similar contracts. (Inaudible.) MR. ASEPERMY: Does that -- this is what we actually did. They did a contract for $200,000. What the nation got out of that contract is approximately $20,000. You do a contract for 300 million, the nation will realize our share, our return of 3 million. And then we have another contract for 30 million. Our share will be 300,000. So these numbers look big up here -- and I don't want you to misunderstand that this is what we're going to get. We are going to realize a profit of approximately 10 to 40 percent of what you see up there if this happens. MR. ORME: The other thing I want to make sure you understand, to buy a business is such a lot of money. This business is generating around $30 million a year, you can't buy it for $2 million, $3 million. So we had accumulated in the last two-and-a-half years, we had two-and-a-half million dollars in the bank. 80 percent of all the money has been given to us from the tribe, we still have. That money is earning interest, and you can ask Lanny, we're trying to save that money so we can buy one of those businesses. The same thing is the guy selling the business is going to have to finance part of it and he understands that. And we made another profit out of the first five years. So I'll show you a profit chart in a second. Our profits are down in the first five years because of paying off the company we're going to buy. Well, we (inaudible). The only way we're going to grow faster, guys, we're all seeing the losses in gaming, is to buy businesses. We cannot create them by startup only. MR. ASEPERMY: Okay. MR. ORME: This is what we're projecting. These are revenue -- this is the value of the contracts that we expect or project. There's a lot of risk to these projections. There are no guarantees. This is real life, real marketing problem. With -- if we become a (inaudible) and we can't pay our bills, (inaudible.) But we're projecting by the end of this year we'll have roughly $20 million under contract, not completed, but under contract at the end of this year. We have an acquisition of a company we're buying right now. We're 85 percent there. We may not make it (inaudible.) That is not the net, that is not what we put in our pocket, but that's the total revenue to be associated with the contracts. And then we could go from there up. Y'all did a nice job. Go to the next slide. To Lanny's point, that was $20 million, and we expect to get out of that it will be about 2 million -- or $2 million of that. 2 million, about 10 percent of the 20 million. So we can see here that the net profits are much lower. And just so I'm not misleading anybody, those revenues are down. It takes us down to the first door right here because we're paying off that first -- we're still making money out of it. A significant amount of money out there. 4 or $5 million, but this is net for us. We're paying on (inaudible.) And we're recommending we do that same thing as we buy additional businesses. We're talking to other businesses about buying their networks and a lot of different mechanisms to do that. But this is an opportunity. And I hate to see us pass this opportunity up. But to diversify the sources of revenue to protect the profits and the funds of all the tribal functions and activities, we would be committed. There's no guarantees, but we certainly have the things mitigated that most businesses fail (inaudible). A lot of it is because the tribe has the sources to back us. So it is an opportunity. I really think it's the right thing for us to do. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Mr. Orme. Thomas, come forward, please. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: My name is Tom Narcomey. I'm not sure, I think we're going to go line item by line item to discuss a lot of these items. Like if you don't want economic development, you show whatever the amount is, vote it zero or half or anything. I think that's how it works. I think. Okay. Clarify the comment or whatever. But we'll get to it again. And as far as economic development goes, it's a big joke. I think it's pretty commonly the known. We've generated 39 jobs for 5 million. Well, it has here 160 jobs, but when you take out the water park, (inaudible) they existed before the economic development existed. So we've got the 160 should be 39. Anyway, we talk about ways -- it looks like we've got an advertisement manager here, (inaudible). I mean, that's a waste. An extra person here. We need office space or something, you know. Well, anyway, what I'm saying is, we need -- the people on the board need to resign the economic development, the CBC. Or if not, then the people can vote zero when we get to their items. Enterprise, see how there's a slide up there? I'm not making fun of them, because there's a Mexican guy that has his sister and he does marketing, you know, like he's an 8(a) and -- yeah, it's there. I guess, he's going to admit it. But anyway, it's like Ten Bears where they did the thing they did. Well, anyway, he got (inaudible) and that's what they're doing. It will work. It may work. And also, I think, February 2009, I told him to do an 8(a) construction company. And I guess there's (inaudible). But, anyway, they spent the money, they had enough money to hire a consultant, but they didn't know how to do it. (Inaudible.) What I'm saying, they could have done that for the 51 percent and do the 100 percent construction company at the same time. Also, there was free government surplus money, at least (inaudible) construction company. The college, I guess (inaudible) 2002 to 2008, I don't know what they spent 7, 8 million. Maybe 2 or 3 million is okay, but we spent about 5 or 6 million. We had a non-functioning board. I dare say that they were over staffed and they're done. If I was on there, I'd resign. I mean, resign, get out of there. Let somebody do that that knows what they're doing. All that money was spent (inaudible) forensic audit, but the people that's in there now, they don't have nothing to do with all that stuff. You know, running offices and fine stuff in there. That's a lot of money. There's something there. But (inaudible) proposal he submitted for a million-and-a-half. If he had done that maybe a year later, well, we wouldn't have all this nursing. Anyway, just thought I'd -- MR. BURGESS: Mr. Bread, one of our former CBC members. MR. BREAD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Darrell Bread, former vice-chairman. I can't run for re-election or anything. I'm here to talk about the 60 percent. Okay. If you want more money, you're going to have to make more money. The people that are running our gaming are killing it. I'm not sure what (inaudible) in the real world, the CEO of a casino (inaudible) revenue in just a little amount of time, he's out. Managers are out. Any loss of revenue is not tolerated. With our 60 percent money, we get something out of it. Instead of losing it, at least we'll have something. But our main problem, like you said, I pay his high salary. Did this create any positions? (Inaudible). Why do we need them now? We got some people drawing $100,000. We didn't need it before. We didn't have it before. Per capita, three years now, it's steadily going down. I'm going to blame the board of directors and Sharrod, because they're the ones that's running our casinos. We'll have to cut some money from the budget. But we got two main programs that we don't need. Most of those things that we have, nobody ever uses. We need to keep Social Services, HIP, our prescription and eye glasses. We need things (inaudible), anything that affects everybody, not just a few. Pay them 60 percent, from 40 percent, cut most of them programs. The economic development (inaudible) money wasted. Mr. Orme, how much money did you make last year? 20,000? How many mill -- but we invested how many million? Now, that ain't the way you do business. All of these construction companies that you're talking about buying, you know why they're trying to sell? They can't make money. It's a dead business. And we're going to be stupid enough to buy this, just like this place over at Cyril. They're a private-owned company. A little gas station. Why do they sell it? They couldn't make any money. If a white person can't make money, how are we going to make money? We don't have anything exciting like that, do we? But I know if I had expectations, I know what I would do. I'd sell it and try to get my money back. We're making no money. And our Finley & Cook, they was off -- I can't remember the name. But they couldn't make no money out of them, and we bought their equipment. A lot of money going to waste. On our budget for land acquisition, 3 million? Let's just spend $500,000 -- put 2 1/2 million, say, social services, all of the services that I mentioned, at 40 percent. 60 percent per cap, I never heard that. Let's put all the money into the services that we all get. We should never waste money. Anybody that knows me knows that I've seen it. (Inaudible). These guys will be stingy with their money. But I'm for the 60 percent only because our gaming, we don't get all that we should be getting. Like I said, it's the people that run it. They don't know what to do. We all need to get a little bit more of it. I almost forgot what I was going to say. This budget, it's based on projected revenue. Okay. I think last year the report come out that all -- almost all gaming tribes in Oklahoma made a profit. Pretty good percentage. Comanche went down. It was in the Oklahoma City paper. The only reason I say that now is because what I'm mentioning may be a problem. To have a loss, tell all the people and let them know. We've got hourly people, salaried people that we didn't have before, and we got along real good. Our gaming budget, why is it a secret? Don't get to vote on it. We don't even get to see it. MR. BURGESS: Hang on, Darrell. MR. BREAD: Last year you gave them a $6 million gaming budget. I don't know if all you knew that. That was separate. We should be voting on anything over $3 million. Gaming money, that's our money. The constitution says this group here (inaudible). They don't tell us, we tell them. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Darrell. Thank you. MR. BREAD: Think about it. When you vote on it, this is their money. Keep it. MR. BURGESS: Let me give a few comments here. Thank you very much. The budget of the gaming board of directors is $1.2 million; employs approximately 25 people. The budget for the gaming commission is $4.2 million; employs 75 people, plus the operations for cameras and surveillance, plus the equipment to manage that, plus the space to put the people in. And the overhead for that is for their health benefits, their vacation, and their leave time. All that has to be in place in order to protect your own assets at this time. The casinos wouldn't be here. Protect the casinos from hiding checks, hot checks, from people who are palming chips and taking them elsewhere and cashing them in. That's what surveillance is securing, right there, and that's the gaming board of directors. The board of directors, as we have total acquisition, they eliminated roughly five positions they wanted to do. The same with the commission. We told them to keep their costs down. They have omitted another 10 positions that we recommended they do not staff because their budget's getting high. We are taking measures (inaudible) but we also have to do things that allows us to manage the business according to the federal rules and guidelines. The same as Revenue Allocation Plan. This RAP that you're going to vote for or against goes on the ballot, and everybody's going to vote for or against it. Then the BIA has to approve any amendment we do to it, and that our people need a per cap. Right now we've heard from one elder, and I've heard from five others, that the RAP and the elder -- the RAP (inaudible) it hurts their retirement income. Thought they would just leave it alone because they'd rather receive the Social Security and their SSI or retirement so that they don't have to pay taxes on it. That affects quite a few people, quite a few taxes now. So consider that before you think about giving them more, when in fact, they lose it in 90 days and don't get to keep it. Yes, Mr. Whitewolf? MR. WHITEWOLF: Mr. Chairman, I'm aware there are people that maybe feel like SSI (inaudible). A week ago there are some (inaudible) you know, that's really not in (inaudible) that the general council of anything. I think you are. But I want to talk about this Orme. Is that his name, Orme? MR. BURGESS: David Orme. You know, he's been a big part up there. And all that was was projection, projection, promises, promises. I know you got this and that. And he was at the business committee not too long ago. Asked him what he made, and (inaudible) and he's only made $20,000. And what he says is that 80 percent is (inaudible). Well, why do we have to pay them anymore if he's making 80 percent of what we paid him last year? Then there's Delphine. You know, sure she's probably worth her salary. She doesn't understand that economic development is -- they've got to make some money. He's got a job program. That's all it is. We haven't (inaudible). And we got the college. The three top people in the school make more than a half a million dollars. MR. BURGESS: That's wrong. MR. WHITEWOLF: You have to have heart. You talk about heart. Students spend over a year of their lives trying to better themselves. That's not heart. And -- but all that said, all it is is just blowing smoke. Promises, promises, promises. (Inaudible). MR. ASEPERMY: Oscar, before you come up here, I'd like to have -- MR. WHITEWOLF: And here's the biggest problem of all coming up here right now. MR. ASEPERMY: In 2004, after all the smoke cleared, the Comanche Nation made $22 million in 2004. Last year, 46.5 million. We have doubled our income in the last six years. Now, we peaked out in 2008. The casinos brought in $49.6 million from 19 -- or from 2008, for $49.6 million, we brought it down to $46.5 million. We had a loss of about 7 percent from the year before. The Creek Nation, in the same time period, lost 50 percent of their income. It dropped from 87 million to a little over 44 million. Every casino nation in Oklahoma lost money last year. Right now, if things stay the way they are, our net profit from gaming, projected, will be about the same as last year, despite a bad economy, despite a gaming saturation. So I think our casinos are doing a pretty dern good job. When someone gets up here and says they aren't doing a good job, in the last six years they've made us $230,000,000. We have benefited individually over $5700 apiece. And then you elders, you've received over $10,000 in the last six years. So, you know, what would we do if we didn't have casinos? What would we have if they weren't managed correctly? Doubled our income in five years. So take that into consideration. MR. BURGESS: Oscar, before coming forward -- MR. CODOPONY: My name is Oscar Codopony. I'm chairman of the gaming commission, the regulatory body. But I'm here to speak on behalf of myself as a tribal member. And the question or the resolution that was proposed is whether we increase the per capita payment from 40 percent to 60 percent. I think that's not a good, valid proposition at this point. But let me speak to a couple of things that Mr. Whitewolf mentioned. He talked about promises. With this per capita proposed, if you remember, Mr. Yackeyonny got up and made that resolution and made that proposition. And those of you who were here when I was here that day sitting up on that day as a member of the CBC recall one of his promises. He said if we ever need this money somewhere else, if our gaming revenues ever fall flat and we need to build another casino, we can suspend this per capita payment and reinvest in ourselves. Now, there's a lot of discussion by Mr. Bread about -- he said we're not making profit. And actually, the profit -- we are making a profit, but we wouldn't have got a per cap, we wouldn't have tribal government, we'd have (inaudible). At this point, yes, there are some valid points brought up by Mr. Whitewolf and Mr. Bread both that our gaming is suffering from competition. How do you face competition? You meet it head on. You build new facilities, you upgrade by putting hotels and conference centers in. So let's go back to the promise that was made originally when this per cap was passed, was that you can suspend this and plow this revenue back into us building our own hotels, rather than staying across the street in Holiday Inn or whatever else they built across the road from our casino. We can build our own convention center rather than hearing our people complaining about the tent that keeps blowing down when we have boxing matches and when we have concerts. We can build a facility on the scale of this, or much larger and much grander, that will house those events that bring people back to the casino to spend money to regenerate and increase that per capita payment. So, again, I think now's the time not to increase the per capita payment, but to take a really hard look at suspending it so we can reinvest in ourselves so we can grow that money. But I would urge you to vote no on this resolution. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. MS. JONES: Can you hear me? I'm Francine again. And, yeah, we made money off the casino, but not as much as we had when we had our bingo hall there. We built three bingo halls. First one was the Indian school here. They moved us. They moved us down to that bingo hall and then they changed it into a casino. You know, they built us another bingo hall, plus then a bingo hall, then they moved us in an outhouse. You know what an outhouse is? That's how small our bingo was. They said they're not making any money. And I found a thing that said the general council resolution is to keep the bingo open -- general council resolution is law of the tribe. So why did they take the bingo off? Because a lot of people are coming from out of town. We had bus loads and everything coming from towns. They would have made money, and they played the slots during, before, and after. You had somebody in that bingo -- I mean, in the casino at all times. Now I stay there day and night sometimes and it's empty. It's the only time that somebody's there is when there's something going on. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Orme had said this to me earlier. Twenty years ago, $20,000 was the profit we made on the bingo that we had. Now we're making $20 million, and in seven years' time we've earned 229 million on the casinos. Just think about that before you go into this. We're going to turn to Mr. Tippeconnie here. The meal is ready and I've got elders who are needing to eat. And we're looking for help from our young ladies to go over and pull plates and get plates together and start helping our elders who can't get over there. So at this time, Mr. Tippeconnie. MS. JONES: How can you make any money when the bingo hall is no bigger than this? MR. BURGESS: I understand. MS. JONES: As I say, it's an outhouse. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Tippeconnie, would you pray for our meal? MR. TIPPECONNIE: (Prayer.) (Lunch break held.) MR. BURGESS: All right. I guess we'll go ahead. We've got machines over here. Show your wristband. We'll go ahead and do a ballot vote. Charlotte McCurtain? Charlotte McCurtain is not going to be here. Aurilla, did you have a statement? Go ahead. MS. CRAIG: Mr. Chairman, I'm Aurilla Craig. I'm coming on behalf of the American Indian Exposition Director and the princess for a problem that we have. I want to read a statement that I've written. I make a motion to rescind a resolution that was presented at the general council on April the 17th, 2010, by Mr. Sovo, in which he states that there was no election of the Comanche director nor a tribal princess in 2010. Mr. Sovo stated he wants to defer the Comanche director who was legally voted in by the Comanche people in August 2008. Her duties begin in January of 2009, as well as the princess (inaudible) immediately, and that the Comanche director repay tribal funds which amount to $1,100 to be refunded to the Comanche Nation. Mr. Sovo's resolution was out of order and does not apply because he does not have the authority to speak for Comanche Nation Tribal Council. There are no bylaws for Comanche Nation Fair to have a Comanche director, nor a Comanche princess, nor Comanche dues to be elected at our Comanche Nation Fair. Therefore, Mr. Sovo cannot take it upon himself to ask that this resolution to change, while it has been the process for the last 79 years. The elected commission director for the American Indian Exposition and princess have always represented Comanche Nation throughout the years. Therefore be it resolved that this resolution Mr. Sovo presented (inaudible) at the general council on April 17th, 2010, be rescinded immediately. The CBC has no authority over the American Indian Exposition of which the Comanche Nation has been a respected member for the past 79 years. Now therefore be it resolved that the Comanche Nation Tribal Council use its sovereign authority and refuse to accept (inaudible) resolution pertaining to the American Indian Exposition Comanche Nation's director and princess elections. This is -- I'd like to bring before the CBC. I'd like for you to act upon it, because our business here was with the general council. And when I returned, I found this was all in the process, voted upon, and it is not legal. If you want to separate yourself from the American Indian Exposition and have something for the Comanche Nation Fair, that's well and good. The Comanche Nation Fair is separate from the American Indian Exposition. If you want to vote for a princess for your nation fair, I see no problem in that. You can have a Comanche Nation Fair princess every year that could be elected here by the people that are here. But the American Indian Exposition have their election. The princess that represents the nation, that's a separate entity. And why the CBC got involved is beyond me. You should have better sense. Use your common sense and do what's right for the people. That's all I've got to say right now. Thank you. MR. ASEPERMY: Aurilla, the CBC did present that resolution. We got out of the princess business. So what you're asking the people for today is, as I understand it, you're asking them to rescind the resolution that was voted on at the last tribal council, correct? MS. CRAIG: Yes. MR. ASEPERMY: To change the Comanche princess process? MS. CRAIG: Yes, the process that they use. The resolution here, I understand, is they want the -- the Comanche director and the Comanche princess to be elected -- voted here at the Comanche Nation Fair. And as I stated before, that's fine if you want a Comanche Nation Fair princess. That's fine, but have it separate. Do not involve the exposition, because that's already been taken care of. The exposition has a (inaudible,) and apparently the nation fair doesn't. If they have, I've never seen them. I'm a past director. I know what I'm talking about. So I don't want anybody to come up and say, "Well, she just don't know what she's talking about." When I was the director, we never -- I never took it by myself to go and do things outside the exposition rules and bylaws. I went by the rules, I did what I thought was fair, and it was my prerogative to pick my princess to represent the nation. And as director, whenever they meet from year to year, they have bylaws. They don't have to have elections. That runs them money. And I'm sure that some of them are going to come up here and ask you for money. And that's not right, because as long as they know that theirs money, they're going to ask for it here. When I was the director, I didn't ask for a thing. We didn't have any money. I did it on my own. And I'm sure if anybody else comes along, they'll ask for it, too. But please take this into consideration and do what's best for the people. Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Comments? MS. CRAIG: I asked for a motion when I first came to speak. MR. BURGESS: We need a copy of your words. MS. CRAIG: I'll let you copy it, but I won't let you keep it. MR. BURGESS: Nicole will take it. MRS. BURGESS: My name is Tanisha Burgess. I just want to let everyone know, the CBC did not get involved. If you read the newsletter, it clearly states in the newsletter, 167 people voted yes for this resolution, 44 voted no. It's all in the newsletter. That was the resolution that was passed by the people, not the CBC. There's a newsletter back there. It says it in there. MS. ISAAC: I second her motion. But before that, the princess fiasco, that was started by somebody putting the information in the Comanche Nation Newsletter that shouldn't have even started. That's what started this whole thing. Y'all were told that Beth had her princesses chosen. Why it went beyond and took up all kinds of time the last general council is that person's fault, and it should never happen. This has been going on for 79 years, the American Indian Exposition, and y'all want to change it right now. Are you going to pay a Comanche director? (Inaudible.) How have y'all decided to do this? We're all -- I mean, who was here that last general council? They voted for this. I don't think everybody understood the situation that was happening. The director has every right to choose her princess. That's all there is to it. MR. ASEPERMY: According to American Indian Expo bylaws, the director can either hold the election or select, and it's in black and white, according to the expo rules. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to say one thing. This whole mess started because the one lady was ousted out of the Indian fair because she never attended meetings, so they put her out. And these people have been running our tribe for 15 years, our powwows and everything else like that. They don't like somebody else coming in new and taking over. So now they're fighting this family because they don't want them in there because they don't like what they're doing. Okay. They have a meeting last time, and they got up there and said, well, my daughter is the princess, and my daughter's this and my daughter's this. And the girl gets up there and shows you a paper that Beth Giles should have had. And instead of giving it to Beth Giles to let her know what she's supposed to be doing, she kept the paper for nine months. Nine months later she comes before you CBC members and our chairman and told him, "Here's the papers that she's supposed to be going by." Well, this young lady went to our tribe and told them, "Do you have papers that I'm supposed to go by, the guidelines?" And everybody told her no. She's been there six or seven different times asking you people for these papers, and this young lady walks up there and says, "Here's the papers you should be going by." She should have gave her the papers. Why did she keep it from you? Because of all the jealousy of our tribe. Our tribe should be getting along with each other instead of going against each other; one family ousting the other family, going against each other. Why can't they get along? What is wrong with our people? The jealousy is overwhelming. It needs to stop. And hopefully you guys are going to do that. I have a lot of faith in you guys. Don't prove me wrong. MS. MONENERKIT: I just have a question. Where are we on the agenda? MR. BURGESS: On the old list it's Item I and J. I don't see that (inaudible). Kayla. MS. MONENERKIT: So we're done talking about the princess, then? MR. BURGESS: Mrs. McCurtain is not here. We're back into the original items, which was Comanche Nation princess Expo Director. MS. MONENERKIT: But didn't we already vote on that? MR. BURGESS: Yes, a vote was taken. MS. MONENERKIT: I just make the comment that the princess is very important to us, but the thing that is really important to me are all the budget items, and I wish you could just move on and take care of business. (Inaudible.) Why spend so much time on the princess? MS. ISAAC: I agree with Mia. We're spending too much time on the princess issue. You guys spent a lot of time at the last general council and messed the whole thing up. One of the (inaudible) Comanche tribe have a fair anymore, because this always happens. When Keith was first elected chairman, we had had a (inaudible.) Keith was very busy being chairman, and he didn't want to mess with the fair, so it was going to be null and void until the family, Aurilla Craig, Yonevea Terry, me, my sisters and Fran all got together. (Inaudible). Lanny knows this. (Inaudible). We had that fair with virtually no money, no money. What if this happens again? A chairman gets in there and they don't want to mess with the fair, and y'all have pulled away from the American Indian Exposition? You have no right to pull away from the American Indian Exposition without everybody really knowing what is -- what has happened. Milton Sovo brought that resolution up here, talked, everybody wanted to vote, so they voted and it was done. Is it a done deal? I'm asking why. Michael, I'm asking you why is it back on the floor? Everything was closed. The 22nd was the closing date of anybody to be on the agenda. As I understood it, he had a meeting with y'all, the CBC, a meeting about two or three weeks after that. (Inaudible) and Eleanor said you have to have this in by Monday, and it's the following week or so that they came before you with this problem. MR. BURGESS: Hang on. MS. CRAIG: Mr. Chairman, I know you're tired. There is more important business. There is important business, but this also is very important. I would like to have one of you men make a motion to rescind this letter that I have read to you. Thank you. MR. NARCOMEY: You want one of us to make a motion? MS. CRAIG: Yes. MR. NARCOMEY: I make the motion. MR. BURGESS: I want to respond to the comments that, for one, Ms. Craig does have a very valid point. There's no bylaws for the Comanche Nation Fair. As long as I've known about it, the fair, the Comanche Nation Fair has been managed and supported by staff here, and led by the direction of the chairman, if they so choose. If not, the chairman turns it over to the staff and appoints someone to coordinate the Comanche Nation Fair. And, two, we have not pulled from the Indian Expo. In March, early March, the beginning of March, the Indian Expo president and one of the other officers came. We asked that question: What if we elected our own fair director and princess here? They said that's up to you all. Even though you're members of the fair, it wouldn't affect how the fair recognizes our princesses. But they asked us: If you were to pull away from the fair board, it would really damage the Indian fair. So we have not made that decision either, since the Comanche Nation is one of the founding bodies of the Indian Expo. So we haven't done it. Two, going back to Mr. Sovo, he was at our March meeting. And the time to get on the agenda was the last -- I believe it was the last Wednesday of March, prior to this meeting, prior to the 17th of April. That's why he was on the agenda. He met the timeline. Go ahead, Mrs. Coosewoon. MS. COOSEWOON: I have something to say, and I'm not very happy about having to say it. I have been trying to stay out of this and stay back in the background. But you know something? Every one of us in here in one way or another are related. And like my sister here, Judy Kay, got up there and said, you know, the situation is just all jealousy and bias, and it should not be happening. (Spoken in native language.) And some of you out there that speak Comanche know what I'm saying, because I can only express what I feel better in Comanche. I'm saying that a few of our people that live among us that are very jealous-hearted and always causing dissension to make everybody else feel bad, or cause problems between us and keeping us all at each other, and that's not the way we're supposed to be. (Spoken in native language.) When I was a little girl, nobody speaks badly. You went to your neighbor's house and stayed two or three days or a week at a time. Everybody shared what they had and loved one another. And I don't see that anymore, and it bothers me very seriously, and it's all so uncalled for. Because there is no person in here that I would have bad feelings for. It doesn't matter whether you like me or not. I don't care about that, because in my heart I like you for one thing. (Spoken in native language.) He made us that way. We're supposed to care for one another and think about one another with good thoughts. We have people in here that aren't feeling good, but they're sitting here because they want to know what's going on. (Spoken in native language.) They didn't have much, but they did good. They were happy for one another. If someone got something or someone didn't have something (spoken in native language) go see them when they're having a hard time. Who are we? What's going on that our people aren't like that anymore? That hurts me because we're not close anymore as a people. Everybody trying to get in somebody's way to do better or outdo somebody. That's not the way our people wanted this tribe to be as people. (Spoken in native language.) That's what they wanted for us. (Spoken in native language.) Everybody being jealous and hurtful, or if someone's looking nice or doing better than you, instead of being jealous, they would be happy for you. That's the way our people were before. We're losing ourselves. We're losing our identity as a Numunuu. And I'm sorry to say that, but that's the way it looks to me today, and it shouldn't be that way. We all came in here with good feelings, and we want something good to happen. It's not all about money, it's all about caring for one another and being happy together, and that's the way it should be. And you know what? My granddaughter has been a Comanche princess since she was three years old. My grandma (inaudible) in a little dress for the first time. She's represented this tribe a lot of years before she come to this point. All of you see her riding that horse in the parade. She didn't ride it for herself, she rode it for all of you. She wanted to be up there looking good for all of us. And I don't think it's fair that someone (inaudible) is going to say she's not good enough to be a princess. She has been appointed to that position and we should all be proud to be behind her, just like I have supported all the other princesses before her. It didn't matter what family they came from. We were all proud to (inaudible) because they were representing us as a people, and that's the way we should do with these young girls sitting here in front of me. Sure, she's my granddaughter, but she's also a Comanche, she's also one of you. And instead of fussing at her and saying that she's not the princess, I think we should all back up and look at the big picture here, because we all come together as one. And I'm going to tell you what else: You do not need to say you never ever -- you told me that y'all were going to -- y'all at one time, a meeting, you said y'all -- on y'all's -- restated her position as princess. You (inaudible) Comanche Nation Newsletter, Mr. Chairman. You would not let me put her picture in there, you wouldn't let (inaudible). My daughter and I went to the Constitution when she was 12 to have her picture. We had a nice, pretty picture, and put it in the paper. Someone went behind us and they put a little bitty face of her in the paper, along with the junior princess that we had nothing to do with. They have not let us put her picture in the newsletter or the Comanche News. Is that right? Now y'all tell me, is that right or wrong? I'm telling you, as a people, that's how we have been treated everywhere we go. Even when she was running for princess before, they went around behind us pulling posters off. She (inaudible) just like everybody else. If we're all going to get treated equal, let's do it fairly. And she's never done anything to misrepresent anybody here. Right now, she has been accepted by the American Indian Expo board of directors and the president as our Comanche Nation princess representative, along with the Comanche director of Indian Expo board by the American Indian Expo (inaudible). So why is all this stuff going on? We should all be proud to have someone representing us that wants to, and doesn't have to come to the tribe to borrow money or ask for money to buy a new dress. That's shameful. If you cannot do it, if you can't be -- can't afford to have your family or your daughter up there and represent you and your family -- it should be the family buying the clothes and dressing them up. This little girl has two or three buckskins. She's had one since she was three years old, and she's got two now. That's all I got to say. Y'all think about that. (Spoken in native language.) MRS. BURGESS: I just wanted to let everybody know that the resolution that was brought before the people on April 17th was not because of jealousy, it was not trying to disrespect anyone or any family. That resolution was brought to the people because there were three initial candidates, including Beth Giles' daughter, that were running for princess. It was posted in the November newsletter asking for candidates to do what they -- to turn in applications to Beth Giles. There was no contact information, no address, nothing. My niece was one of those candidates. We didn't find out until three weeks after the fact that she decided not to have an election. What they're failing to let everyone know is that Beth Giles chose her own daughter to represent as Comanche Nation princess. My family and I, we had raised -- I'm sure a lot of people are aware, we raised, had different benefits and raised the money to buy the buckskin dress for my niece. All we're asking is that these girls get a fair chance at running for princess. This is a title that should be earned and not given to you. It's not about family, it's not about who's better known. It has nothing to do with that. As of today, there are three candidates that are running for Comanche Nation princess. In our -- in my opinion, if her daughter really wanted that title and wanted to run for princess, she needs to run with these girls. Christa Hubbard and her family announced that she's running for Comanche Nation princess; Nina Burgess, she's another candidate; And Penelope Cable. These are all candidates. Now, if her daughter wants to run, she needs to get in there and earn it like these other girls. MS. COOSEWOON: I have something to add to that. Y'all haven't heard the whole truth about this. And I'm going to tell y'all, because my daughter wouldn't do this. I will. Because when she got those applications, so to speak, it was after Mr. Nelson put that in the paper without consulting the director. He took it on himself to announce candidate applications, after Beth had already told him she had a few girls in mind. And because her daughter had run for two years, she had already stepped (inaudible) went off to school. But she said, okay, I'm going to ask her one more time if she thought she might want to run, because she's been wanting to be princess. All her life, she's worked for it. But she did that. She said, okay, give me a couple of weeks to think about it, because the last time I ran, there were some people really mean out there, and I don't know about this. So Christa Hubbard's dad talked to Beth about her running. Beth had one good application given to her. She told Mr. Hubbard, "If my daughter decides she doesn't want to be the princess -- I'm giving her a chance. If she doesn't want to take it, I'm having Christa Hubbard." There were two. There were two other girls that sent letters, letters, without forwarding, without addresses, without phone numbers. One came from the chairman's office via Nikki to give to me to give to my daughter. It was in an envelope. It was a letter from Mr. Burgess. And he didn't have the phone number or address, it was just a letter. A complete application needs to be a picture, a resume, and a letter of why you want to be, to be a princess candidate. And you need to wait and see if your application is accepted before you go out and campaign. Just like any other candidate, you don't go and start doing a job before you're accepted to run it. And the other one, Ms. Kreger sent -- Ms. Kreger sent a letter to my daughter's house, a letter for her daughter Nicole -- I mean Penelope. Okay? She sent a letter, and she didn't have no address or a phone number, not a picture or nothing. Beth didn't even know what she looked like. So those are incomplete; and, therefore, those two applications were incomplete and they were not acceptable applications at the time. These ladies took it upon their selves to run (inaudible) accepted them. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Ms. Coosewoon. Ladies and gentlemen, just for the record here, for the record here, we have 211, so we still have a quorum. One of the issues with the resolution is that (inaudible) immediately done reimbursement of funds. On a consensus here, the CBC doesn't feel anybody should have to reimburse anything, and (inaudible,) and it affects a lot of (inaudible) here. And we are not going to create a board for the Comanche Nation Fair. We've been doing pretty good, I believe, the last five years with the fair being run the way it is, the Comanche Fair. A suggestion was made by Ms. Craig, and other people have a voice, about having a Comanche Fair princess and then having a Comanche expo princess. Those are new thoughts, new ideas. We haven't made a decision on anything. This whole issue of how the princess is selected or elected does rest with the Indian expo. And because the CBC made a vote last July that we did not want to take that issue and change the history of it; therefore, it was back in the hands of the process that the Indian expo does. Then we heard from the Indian expo, hearing a rumor that we were going to pull out because of the election process or what we wanted to have. I should say what was being voiced about selecting the princess, the way we wanted it done. And it is true, the Indian exposition fair bylaws state that the director has the choice of an election or a selection. This body here has no call on that. When we were approached by the communities again last July for a decision to be done, the CBC said the decision is to be with the Indian expo and their bylaws. And while we're not trying to hurt anybody, no family forward, the recognition of princess is purely by the people. And that process was followed for how many years? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Seventy-nine years. MR. BURGESS: Seventy-nine years. And it's not our choice that you bring this to the floor. This is a community thing. It has always been a community process, and people have lived with that process for 79 years or more. And so while you want us to say that we have a decision- making power, what you bring to us now and say that tribal council wants this enacted, then that is a tribal council business. And Mr. Yackeyonny, my question to you, sir: Who is tribal council? According to this constitution, it's all voting members 18 years and older. We've heard from both sides. Regardless of how much progress we've made, some disagree. It will hurt their idea and their way. It's not what we're trying to do. There are things in here, this resolution, with the attachments. And I talked to Mr. Sovo about this after the vote, that these are real restrictive on the CBC. You can't have these two bosses, the business committee and the tribal council. If we're going to do this, then do the resolution that elect or select at the Comanche Fair. But this issue over funding and then the restriction on some areas -- someone questioned the age range of the princess being 17 to 25 years of age. Others thought it was -- that was too old an age, I guess. And then others say that our princesses are generally sometimes 12 to 15 to 20, 21 years old. Those are some things that, if you're going to do this, let us have a better consensus from the people. Maybe y'all need to sit down and talk this out before you bring it here and take it to everybody. Because whatever decision you make, someone's not going to like. We chose not to make a decision (inaudible) because someone wouldn't like it. We tried to leave it where it (inaudible) was. I'm going through this because, to remind you all, this is not something that we brought forward. This is something tribal council members wanted to do. And now there are some -- with every law -- a resolution is a law. There's always someone who's not going to be able to abide by that law. So before we make this law, it should be better coordinated, better written, and then put out there for everybody to understand this law. But we can only do one of two things here. Because we went through this, put this on the referendum ballot and explained things, and allow us to write this resolution that befits, is more, more in line with the understanding of the people, and let tribal council vote on it. Because that's what you're asking us to do, put it before the people. MS. GILES: May I say something? MR. BURGESS: Ms. Giles, yes. MS. GILES: I don't know if Ida Laura was here. Is she here? Ida came up to me. She said there has -- this hasn't been an issue, there has been no junior princess. I'm caught in the middle of this. When she came to me, she said, "We haven't had an issue before. We had never had to have resolutions in there. Leave it alone." We came to you, with Ida Laura, with that first resolution Donna Gail put in there, and it was rescinded, it was done with. It went back to the way it was. The way it was is the way it should stay. Leave it alone. The resolution, from now on, shouldn't be put in place when they're not needed. Prior directors would be there. They did what they wanted to do, they did the way that they were supposed to do. They abided by the Indian exposition. I am doing the same thing. I'm not hiding behind a ballot box. I straight up asked my daughter, because she ran two years. She's still without children, she's still without being married, and she wanted to be a princess. And she has that right, just like any of those other girls out here that want to be princess. They can all be princesses. There should not be an issue. Wait your turn. Wait your turn. That's all this is. There should be no resolution, there should be no fighting, there should be no ugliness. But all I see is ugliness. That's all there is to it, folks. If you want your family in there as princess, you be a director. That's what I was told. And the previous families that have been in there for the past 15 -- 10, 15 years -- MR. BURGESS: Let her speak. MS GILES: Excuse me. But it was pointed out to me -- it was pointed out to me -- MR. BURGESS: Order. MS. GILES: -- when we were running for princess, look at your past wall, look at your past directors, look at your past princesses. They have all done the same thing. They put their families in there. I'm doing the same thing, but I'm not hiding behind no ballot box, where one of my family members or the princess' family members are sitting at the ballot box. I witnessed that. So here I am. I went through the process. I am the director. I asked my daughter. She took three months before she said, yes, mom, okay, I will. And she was proud, and she is proud today. She was proud of that two years ago running for princess. Y'all leave us alone. Y'all's families can be next. Those girls can be next also. Stop being ugly. MRS. BURGESS: I've got one more thing to say. MR. BURGESS: Calm down. Calm down. Come on. MRS. BURGESS: Y'all don't want to hear, but I'm going to let everyone know. You got your chance, let everybody speak. This resolution was passed last weekend -- or April 17th. Again, the people voted on it. I'm ready to move on the agenda just like everyone else is. This princess thing is dragging out. What we asked on that resolution was to elect a new director and to let the girls run fairly by getting an election and having everyone come in and vote just like we vote for CBC. All we want is a fair election. So now I'm asking you that, to move onto the agenda. The resolution was passed on April 17th. If you weren't here to vote, it was announced everywhere. April 17th, that resolution was passed to elect a new director and to let the girls run fairly. I'm asking now that we go ahead with the past resolution and begin nominations for a new tribal director. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. Point of order. There's a motion on the floor. Is there a second? MS. ISAAC: I second. MR. BURGESS: Beverly seconded it already. MS. GILES: Will you guys not show the princess sorority that has been in effect for 79 years, will you not show them that respect? Ida Laura was here and she was asking for y'all's respect. Show it to her. There's all these past princesses. Do you not want that respect? MR. BURGESS: Thank you. William, Mr. Norman? MS. SIMMONS: I'm the treasurer of the princess sorority. And we did talk to Beth, she came to one of our meetings, and we told her that she, as a director, can elect or select. We didn't have anything to do with this. The sorority doesn't have nothing to do with the princess. All we do is act on that princess when they come up to our organization. We are not playing favorites. We only know that, because whatever they decide -- whatever she decides is her decision. We want the people to know that we are in a position just like the CBC is. They -- we are not going to be for any side. That's our sorority and we have a great time being in the sorority. So we just want all the people to know that whatever she decides is her decision. And we are not involved with -- we are -- (inaudible.) MR. BURGESS: All right. Thank you. Discussion closed. Election board, call for the question. We're going to vote, please. Get your ballots ready over there. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a motion on the floor to rescind this resolution. Only you all can approve it. We can't do anything about it. This is your business. There was a motion made, there was a second, there was a call for a question -- I mean a call for the vote. So we're asking them to get the ballots together over there, and then y'all have to vote on it, to rescind this. You're asking to rescind this. We can't suggest a vote. A resolution was passed. We got a motion, we got a second, we got a call for the question. That means a vote. Yes, last one. MR. YACKEYONNY: So we vote yes means to rescind, no is not to rescind? MR. BURGESS: Right. MR. ASEPERMY: Will the ballot say for or against or yes or no? MR. BURGESS: For or against. MR. ASEPERMY: So if you say for, that means you are voting to rescind this resolution. If you vote against, that means that the resolution that was passed on April 17th, that was put on the ballot. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What's the vote on per cap? MR. BURGESS: 125 to 91. MS. ISAAC: You did the voting here for Milton. What we want is for it to stay here, not go on the ballot. MR. BURGESS: You have to vote to rescind it. You still got to vote, so let's vote to rescind it, if that's what you want to do. There's people leaving here, so let's do a paper vote to rescind. That's what you're asking. You did a motion to rescind, you took a vote. You've got to take a vote to rescind. MR. ASEPERMY: That was your motion, to rescind it. And the only way we can rescind it is by vote. MS. CRAIG: What I wanted was the CBC to present this motion to rescind the resolution that was presented to you April the 17th. MR. BURGESS: I believe (inaudible) may be the eldest Comanche here (inaudible). Juanita Clark, we went to introduce and give a hearty welcome. She is 97 years old. This is her son Mark, and she has a brother here, a daughter here, and she said Mark is still her baby. She wants to say a few words. Please listen up. MS. CLARK: (Inaudible.) MR. BURGESS: Thank you. For those of you who are asking about the vote for the per cap: The vote on the per cap - 125 for, 91 against. So it will go on the referendum ballot. Excuse me, I'm going to go vote. 125 to 91. MR. TIPPECONNIE: The next item on the agenda. I believe she had a spokesperson representing her. Please come forward. Is Gloria Pocowatchit here? Gloria Pocowatchit? Go ahead. The spokesperson for her? Go ahead. MS. FIGUEROA: I'm Marilyn Figueroa, and I'm (inaudible.) MR. TIPPECONNIE: Would you identify yourself and tell us who you're speaking for? MS. SANFORD: My name is Stacey Weryackwe Sanford. I am an enrolled Comanche member, and recent graduate of the practical nursing program at Comanche Nation College. The reason I stand before you today is, number one, I'm in support of the practical nursing program. But I would also like to present a resolution that would separate the nursing program from the college and establish oversight by the Comanche Nation Tribal Administrator. I make a motion to accept the following resolution: Now therefore be it resolved, that the Comanche General Council hereby approves this resolution, reaffirming the Comanche Nation Practical Nursing program as a separate component of tribal government, whose nurse administrator, acting as the chief finance officer, is directly responsible for the administration and management of the program, with oversight by the Comanche Nation Tribal Administrator. Now therefore be it further resolved that on the lease, revenue and property intended for the nursing program be returned by the Comanche Nation College effective immediately. The reasons I believe this resolution should be adopted is to promote Comanche nurses, oversight, accountability to safeguard tribal rights, powers and privileges. And the last one, to me, is the most important, is to have this program established by the Comanche for the Comanche people. To promote Comanche nurses, graduate nurses are encouraged to embrace the Comanche community and be an asset to the Comanche Nation CHRs, diabetes, and other health care-related programs. The Comanche community is in desperate need of culturally-competent Comanche nurses, yet Comanche Nation College has severed ties with the Indian Health Services and the Indian Hospital as a clinical site for current nursing students. The nursing program, with oversight by the TA, will be guaranteed to promote culturally-competent Comanche nurses. If the Comanche Nation can allocate over $300,000 to the nursing program, then the program should be promoting and graduating Comanche nurses. Oversight: Comanche Nation tribe does not posses the authority to inventory property within Comanche Nation College. The college is not required to be audited on the annual budget, resulting in mismanagement of nursing funds. Current oversight is provided by the college council; however, the majority of the council reside out of state, resulting in no recourse. Accountability: Current nursing faculty displays total disregard for Comanche tradition and disrespects our Comanche prayer. This has happened to the students who were in class number one. Comanche Nation College placed the nursing program in jeopardy by allowing faculty to operate as director of nursing and clinical instructor with a lapsed license. Due to violations and major incompetencies, the Comanche Nation College was placed on conditional approval status by the Oklahoma Board of Nursing. Comanche Nation College is not allowed to accept future nursing applicants for the next class until this condition is lifted by the Oklahoma Board of Nursing. Comanche Nation College is also being visited by the Oklahoma Board of Nursing every two to three months, which indicates that the program may be in jeopardy. Safeguard tribal rights, powers and privileges: Comanche enrolled members, decorated military war veterans, and Comanche nursing students have been banned and threatened with banishment from Comanche Nation College by the college president. Comanche people are encouraged to vote to pass this resolution to end the abuse of authority in our own tribal facility and to safeguard our future educational opportunities for Comanche members. The college president, who is non-Indian, was quoted by a student as saying, "Just because you're a Comanche doesn't mean you shouldn't have to pay like everybody else." This statement displays disinterest in preserving Comanche culture and health. Lastly, but most importantly, Comanches for Comanches. The nursing program cannot accept future applicants due to conditional approval status, yet the college has requested an increase of budget to $325,000 for a nonexistent nursing class. This money, instead, should be spent for the betterment of our Comanche people in the community. The nursing program is a dying program because of incompetent management and blatant misspending of nursing budget. If what's left of the program can be salvaged, it should be established with oversight by Comanches for the Comanche people. Once again, I move to make a motion to accept the following resolution. Thank you. MS. WERYACKWE: I second the motion. My name is Leslie Weryackwe, and I am a Comanche member. I also am one of the LPN students that graduated. I just recently, Friday, got my transcript and my diploma. It has been almost two years that they have not released any of my paperwork. Then they wanted me to take a Comanche language class. I CLEPed out of that class. That's what they wanted me to do. I did it, and I wanted my paperwork so I could move on to be a Comanche nurse. They have come to our classroom, disrupted us. They lock us out, they -- it's unbelievable on what they did to us. You Comanche people need to know exactly what they did, and that's why we want you guys to vote on this, so that we can move this resolution to get the LPN or nursing out from the college. Because we do need more Comanche nurses for all of you people out there, and that's why we need the paperwork, because that's what we need to be Comanche nurses. MS. HARJO: My name is Regina Harjo. I am Comanche by birth. I hold a CDIB. I am not Comanche by activity. Thank you. (Inaudible.) I just want you to know (inaudible) earlier, that she has 4 million coming, 2 million from the tribe, and she wants more. We say no, and our people are even saying no. And I'll tell you why. We have (inaudible) show up at the hospital with a (inaudible) who was called on by Lizette, who was nursing upstairs, supervisor, so she had to leave. Before the nursing was notified, because they're not going to notify her, Marsha (inaudible) presented herself with invalid license. And the board of nursing was notified of that, because she didn't notify her. And what happens? They've got all these sanctions against them. And they are not allowed by Gail McNish, who is the regulatory officer of Oklahoma Board of Nursing. Thursday we contacted and relayed this to us: Until that ban is lifted, they're not going to take a third class or a fourth class or any class. So why is she still asking for $350,000 for a class that you're not going to have? That's my question. And my people stand by their students. That college was put in place for the students, Comanche students, not Lopez. And they stand behind their students. We're not going to allow our students to be mistreated, which is what she has done ever since she took office. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't have anything to say. MR. BURGESS: Introduce yourself. MS. WAHKINNY: My name is Maxine Wahkinny, and I have two nieces that were in this last class. They haven't got their license or anything yet. They're still waiting. They've had their jobs, and they've been waiting to get their license. It's been prolonged and prolonged and prolonged. And they're not -- they don't have any money. They're just poor little Comanche girls. It's wrong what they did to them. But I want to talk to the CBC board. I want to ask them some questions. Mr. Tippeconnie, do you have a council or a board out there for the Comanche College? Do you have a board? That meets how many times a month or a month? MR. TIPPECONNIE: The college has a council, yes. MS. WAHKINNY: Can you tell me who they are? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Here's one of them right here. MS. WAHKINNY: Well, sit down till I get through. Who's on the board? MR. TIPPECONNIE: If you don't mind, I'd like to yield to the chairman, because he's sitting on that council. MS. WAHKINNY: Well, I have another question for you when he gets through. MR. BURGESS: This is Katherine Harris Tijerina. MS. WAHKINNY: And this here? MR. BURGESS: This is Lotsie Patterson. MS. WAHKINNY: Lotsie Patterson. MR. BURGESS: Mr. John Tippeconnie. MS. WAHKINNY: Who? MR. BURGESS: Mr. John Tippeconnie. MS. WAHKINNY: John Tippeconnie. Is that his son, brother? MR. BURGESS: It's a relative. MS. WAHKINNY: Relative? He's on the board? MR. BURGESS: MaryJo Fox. MS. WAHKINNY: MaryJo who? MR. BURGESS: Fox. MS. WAHKINNY: She represents the college, too? MR. BURGESS: Yes. MS. WAHKINNY: Okay, who else? MR. BURGESS: Linda Sue Warner. She's from the Tahdooahnippah family. Barbara Dobson. MS. WAHKINNY: Where she's from? MR. BURGESS: She's Comanche. She's from Norman. And then myself and Mr. Ed Mahseet here. MS. WAHKINNY: Okay. Okay. How many -- these people that live out of state or aren't from this area, are they flown in? MR. BURGESS: They now fly in on their own money. MS. WAHKINNY: Do they get a per diem when they get here? MR. BURGESS: They get a per diem per meeting. That's just one meeting. MS. WAHKINNY: How much do they get paid at this time? MR. BURGESS: 250. MS. WAHKINNY: For a meeting? MR. BURGESS: The same as the CBC. MS. WAHKINNY: Okay. All right. How much money -- what's the salary for Ms. Lopez? What's her salary. MR. BURGESS: I don't know that. I'm not at liberty to discuss that. That's private information. MS. WAHKINNY: Do you know, Mr. Tippeconnie? Do you know her salary, somebody? MR. BURGESS: It's not what you're being told it is, I can tell you that. MS. WAHKINNY: $225,000? Is that it (inaudible)? MR. BURGESS: She does not get $225,000. MS. WAHKINNY: So how many on that council is from this area? I know Lotsie is. The only one from this area? MR. BURGESS: Only three people live out of state, the rest are in state. MS. WAHKINNY: In state. And they get 250 per meeting? MR. BURGESS: Per meeting. Four times or three times a year. MS. WAHKINNY: Okay. But we're not allowed to know what Ms. Lopez earns? MR. BURGESS: No. MR. ASEPERMY: Maxine, they meet four times a year. If they meet for two days, they are paid a stipend of 500 for each -- 250 for one day -- MS. WAHKINNY: I don't understand why you can't tell us that. Why is it such a big secret what Ms. Lopez -- MR. BURGESS: Because by federal law, I can't (inaudible). I don't even know it, so I can't tell you. MS. WAHKINNY: Mr. Tippeconnie doesn't know? You don't know either? MR. TIPPECONNIE: No. MS. WAHKINNY: Who pays her? MR. BURGESS: The college council decides on that. MS. WAHKINNY: So there's a college council. Does she know? MR. BURGESS: She can't tell you either, by federal law. That's private information. Is there a federal employee in here? Are you allowed to disclose someone else's salary as a federal employee? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. MR. BURGESS: Based on what? Yes, okay, yes, you can, because you know what they pay. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Ours is posted on the Website. MR. BURGESS: That's right. You're on the GSA scale yourself. Ours is not. You're posted on that scale for a census taker, right? And you're short term. And it's posted to recruit people, and these other positions are not. (Inaudible). MS. WAHKINNY: Okay, the answer is yes, okay. The next question -- the next question -- I'm not going to carry this on and on. Who is Mr. Pekah? MR. BURGESS: The gentleman standing right here. MS. WAHKINNY: Okay. You work for the college. I have two nieces and I know what these people said about jumping all over your kids. It hurts. That's what happened to me and my sister when the two girls were nurses and they weren't getting any help. And when they'd go to the college, they were treated very rudely. One was treated specifically rudely by this man. I don't know who he thinks he is, but I'm here to tell him that he's no better than me or our kids. And I'll tell you what, because one of our little girls, the girl that stood up here with the red blouse, was trying to take her test. They said she had to have a Comanche class. She studied. He and Wahnee Mithlo came to harass her while she was taking a test. And needless to say, she didn't pass that. She had to take another test. But he stood up there and got her all shook up, and they knew what they were doing. She was so nervous after she had to fuss with them. That's not right. You got tribal employees. You should be for your tribal kids, your students (inaudible) and he harassed her. (Inaudible). That's right. I'm glad you know him, because I don't. I know who he is now. He harassed them out there. I don't like it. They're our children. I don't like it. And it shouldn't happen within our tribe. When -- I couldn't ask him what his salary is and who all these people that are working how much their salary, but they're not going to tell me. MR. PEKAH: I'll tell you. I'll tell you. MS. WAHKINNY: When I get through, you may. But I don't like our kids getting harassed out there. That's not right. The employees shouldn't treat the students like that. They have as much right on that campus. They've been locked out, they've been talked to downright dirty. That's not right. They've been told -- they've been told, "You don't have to know. We don't have to answer your questions. You don't know. You don't have to know." Well, they're students there. This is what's going on at the college that you don't know nothing about. That's not right. And if we're going to vote on something here at this college, we need to know what's going on. Who's out there getting all these minutes that's going to the college? They have their nurses' money transferred to another funding. They didn't get all the money that they were supposed to and things like that. They might be little bitty things to y'all, but these kids were living on that money that was allocated to the nurses' program. They didn't get it. In fact, they told us they were getting all kind of brand new furniture. They said them offices at the college look like suites out there. And their salaries are humongous. You know, that's not right when these kids aren't working. They're trying to go to school. They don't have any money. They have to quit their jobs to go to school, and then took them months and months and months. Some of these -- I didn't pay any attention to that college until we got girls in there. How many of your kids want to go there? They say there's no students. Nobody has graduated yet. These girls have been held down for months. MR. BURGESS: Okay, Maxine, thank you. MS. WAHKINNY: So, anyway, somebody, before you vote, you better find out what's going on. Roderick, if you can survey that (inaudible), many people would look into those things like that. MR. BURGESS: Ms. Wahkinny, thank you very much. Let's have a response from Ms. Patterson, Lotsie Patterson, please. MS. PATTERSON: Members of the CBC, Comanche Nation, I'm very happy that this has come out before you, because I hear so many untruths. In fact, when I followed you around, and this is what you were telling people today, a lot of misinformation, untruths. I'm going to speak to two things. One is the council. You have every right to know who we are and to call us into the manifold. When this college was started -- 2003, is that right? MR. BURGESS: 2002. MS. PATTERSON: A group of us were named and they looked at people. And this is an institution of higher education, so you need people who have experience in higher education. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: They're not accredited. MS. PATTERSON: I know that. We're getting there. MR. BURGESS: Let her speak, please. MS. PATTERSON: I have been (inaudible) all the council members are PhDs, with the exception of Katherine, who has a JD. So that gives us some accountability. (Inaudible) has been a factor for years. We were in New Mexico, in Oklahoma, and been involved with this for a long time, so we come with a lot of expertise. And I do agree with the person that introduced the resolution. I agree with you. There's been problems or incompetence. I agree with you. And that falls directly on the previous director of the nursing program. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, it doesn't. MS. PATTERSON: We have had Dr. Lopez for one year. She's only been there -- it will be a year July 1 as president, right? I can't tell you what she has done for that college in the one year she's been there. Don't get up here, I'll come beat you up. I can't tell you what she has done. Many problems we're having have to do with previous administration. But I do want us to go back to the council itself. We meet four times a year, we try to. We don't always make that, but we have conference calls in between. And we have a lot of e-mails (inaudible). Now, things you need to know about Dr. Lopez. I sat in on her interview, along with other applicants. She was heads and shoulders above the others. She has a very broad knowledge of higher education. You should be grateful to have her. And as far as the nursing program goes (inaudible) Dr. Lopez, she knows -- I don't know the details. The college council hires the president of the college. We do not hire anyone else, we do not get involved with personnel stuff. We sat in her forum about issues that had come up. I'm really happy that you have a chance to clear some things up, I hope. Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Security, get up here. Security. MR. PEKAH: Thank you. I'd like to say that the practical nursing program is the result of probably years of just not putting a program together that should be. A quality program was never put together where grades were turned in in the proper manner, and these were all issues with the Oklahoma Board of Nursing. Since then, we have turned the program around and it's in a very positive stage. Our students are doing really well right now. Now, this resolution was brought up by the former director and the tribal administrator way back when and it was turned down by the CBC. Same resolution. Okay. This resolution to take the nursing program and put it under the tribe cannot be. The Oklahoma Board of Nursing will not accept this program within the tribal government. Its only place is with the Comanche Nation College. The United States Code 25 will only have this nursing program at the college. So the best place for the nursing program and the future of the nursing program is at Comanche Nation College. And we will produce nurses that will be able to work with our elders, who will be able to be successful no matter where they go. And in the future again, these students will be very successful. I would like to ask Dr. Lopez to come up and talk a little bit more about the state of the nursing program and a little bit more about this issue. Thank you. By the way, I make $57,000 a year. I don't care who knows that. And that's probably a lot less than a lot of your other administrators within the nation. DR. LOPEZ: I'm not even sure where to begin, other than I can only stand up here and give you facts, facts that you as Comanche people can make valid decisions based on, not something that I go around and rumor to you, but what you will find in any of our files, the documents, from the budget, to the policies and procedures, to any of the documents that you would want to see, or that the CBC would want to see. We have our budget under Finley & Cook. Every single penny, I can tell you, is accounted for. I know when you talk about accountability and oversight, that is what the former director did not want. I want to know where the money was going. I wanted and needed for the checks and balances of the Comanche Nation to know where your dollars were being spent. I'm not sure I can answer every single question or respond to every item that we have. But I want to cite, when you talk about being damaged or being threatened, I was not in the position as being at the college two weeks when the nursing students called me in for a meeting and proceeded to call me Mexican, you leave, you're doing this and that to us, and I'd only been there for two weeks. Even a few months ago, via the web, I was threatened. Someone wrote to kill that Mexican. That is what I'm dealing with, folks. Those are facts. I have them written if you'd like to see them. Did you have something to say? MRS. HENDRIX: When you get through, I'll say. DR. LOPEZ: You know, you talked about the Indian Hospital (inaudible) but because the board of director was hired there, there was (inaudible) so it's critical that we not put the students there, but we will reopen that partnership again (inaudible). In response to OBN, we are on a probationary format because the initial information that was provided to them via report was not completed. We have many documents from a procedure and practical handbook that need to be put in place, as well as procedures to help guide the testing, the selection, and the whole processes for that nursing program. Even if OBN had not stepped in and said (inaudible) that we had, we would not be admitted over (inaudible) at the time we were assured that all the program was in tact. We are not there, folks. We have moved the school to a (inaudible) program. They will be finished in about one year. (Inaudible) October 23rd, for your information, they did not complete the program. I have one student that as of last week finally finished one of the programs. Of all the students at this time who have completed programming prerequisites, no student has tested at the board. That's as of October 23rd when they had (inaudible) finished the program and they had not. Oversight as well as the oversight that I receive from the CBC. Through our audit procedures and based on the fact that (inaudible) this year, we will have a third special audit of everything we've done at Comanche Nation College. There have been no wrongdoings at the college. You know, when you talk about safeguarding tribal rights, it was interesting that some of the facts get left out. At the current time, when colleges are being shot at by people who come in and threaten to shoot us, we have people coming in, not signing in, and going to the students' classroom. Not only that, but they proceeded to go to another classroom, and the person who is not even an employee of the college took these students to the nursing classroom to sign a petition that was firing me. So they were doing this in classroom time and disrupting the learning environment, as well as having us step up the safeguards of students, because you gave me that responsibility when your students come to college. All I can say is that at different times when (inaudible) to the general council, it was separated purposely. Because at any previous time in our budget, the budget was approved, meaning everybody said, yes, we want that. But at the time of appropriation, it was never done, so the money never went to them. We continued to use the Comanche Nation College operating budget to fund the nursing program. That's all I have to say. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Dr. Lopez. She's referring to what Yackeyonny said earlier, that a lot of bills weren't being paid because we weren't receiving funds. In the course of that activity, some of the nursing funds did not make it to the college, because the bills weren't being paid. MR. ASEPERMY: Eleanor, can I answer back these questions here real quickly? Maxine, Kathleen Harris Tijerina is from Santa Fe, New Mexico; Walter Hopkins is from Norman, Oklahoma; MaryJo Tippeconnie Fox is from Phoenix, Arizona; John Tippeconnie, Tucson -- John Tippeconnie is from College Station, Pennsylvania; Linda Sue Warner currently lives in Miami, Oklahoma. So those are where the people live, Maxine. Hello, Maxine? That's where they live. They do pay their own airfare now. You asked where they live. This is where they live. They do pay their own airfare. MS. MCDANIEL: I want to support this, to leave this nursing program underneath the tribal government so it can be better. I don't think it necessary -- it doesn't have to be at the college. It was a standalone program before the college came along. And Carlotta, whom you're talking about, created this program by herself. A one-man crew created this program. And she sent all of the students to the board and got 100 percent first-time success. And that's been five years that Carlotta solely created this program. The college continued to cut her budget and cut her budget, but she successfully continued to operate under one-quarter of what she was allocated. Because the college chose to spend that money some other way rather than spending it on the nursing program. So that's why we're looking at grouping that under the direct oversight of the TA. If there are concerns, if these nurses have concerns, they can go to him. But they went to the college council. The college council said we don't handle employee and we don't handle student problems, so they were turned away. They kept going back to Lopez and she kept telling them that they couldn't do anything. She denied them their maintenance allowances, which that is all they had to go to school on. They got $65 to spend on uniforms and a stethoscope. Okay. I can tell you some facts. We do have a lot of doctors on that college council. One is Linda Sue Warner who got removed from Haskell. Another one is Katherine Harris Tijerina. She got removed from the American Indian Art Institute in Santa Fe. So this is the kind of leadership that we have at our college. And then there was an initiative through the Oklahoma University. It was called a fast track program. And what it would have done for our LPNs, it would have helped them to become RNs, which would have meant their opportunities would have doubled, maybe tripled. But, no, these college faculty kicked it to the curb. And then the other thing, I went to the college to help these young nurses graduate. I wanted to see these (inaudible) before their graduation program. Lopez heard I was in the building. Guess what? She sends Gene down there to ask me to leave. And he said, "You're disrupting the class." I said, "Gene, there is no class." So he went out, brought in nine law enforcement people to surround me, and kicked me out of that building. And I asked the police officer, I said, "Why?" And he said, "Simply because that woman that runs this place doesn't want you here." I'm a full-blood Comanche. There was no sign on the door that said Eleanor McDaniel is not allowed here. The door was wide open. And besides that, I went to the front desk. That's how she knew I was there. So I'm a full-blood Comanche. I am one of those that she kicked out of that school. That's a tribal facility. I have every right to be there. So all we want to do -- quiet please. All we want to do is make sure that this program is taken care of, and that we continue to produce nurses (inaudible), because one of these days they're going to stand by you and hold your hand. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Eleanor. MS. MCDANIEL: Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. If I might add, ladies and gentlemen, that Eleanor went back to that program because the college council asked me, the chairman, if it would be all right. They wanted to have prayers. I went ahead and gave clearance so Eleanor could be there to sing those hymns, on behalf of what I was understanding, for her granddaughter. The request came for her to sing. She didn't do it on her own accord, it was a request. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I also want to talk about what Dr. Lopez is saying, that we were the ones interrupting. It was always her. I was one of the students that was there. Come and ask me questions, because the time we have here is not going to cover everything that we went through for a whole year at this time. She came in and disrupted. She even came in and told us face to face, "The buck stops here," meaning her. That's not right. That's not her money, that's our money. Carlotta Nowell, she was there for us. She was the best director we ever had. Like Eleanor said, she would have 100 percent passing to be a nurse. And the reason why it took us so long to get our transcript and diploma is because Gene Pekah, director of student services, couldn't even supply a correct transcript. Not one, not two, not three, but nine transcripts, people. How can you be a director of student services and not give us the right, correct paperwork? I have every one of them. I have copies. And not only that, the OBN could not believe they couldn't be smart enough to get a transcript. Incompetency. MR. PEKAH: I'd like to respond to that. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Inaudible). I'm talking. I'm through with school. Leave me alone. MR. PEKAH: I understand. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So, therefore, if you want facts, you talk to nursing students, because everybody at that college, they're false, they're liars, and we need to move this resolution. MR. ASEPERMY: The OBN, for your information, is the Oklahoma Board of Nursing. MR. BURGESS: Norman, could you step back, please? I want to recognize Mr. Pekah. MR. NAUNI: No, I'm next. MR. BURGESS: He has a direct accusation. He's with the college, he's with the administration. Mr. Nauni, you will have your chance, because Mr. Pekah has also just been retained here, so why not? MR. NAUNI: What I want to say is to the general council. When I was on the business committee in '98 and Keith was chairman, we had a very good working committee. And it was through the knowledge of Carlotta Nowells, who at the time was an LPN instructor. Well, she approached Keith and gave us this idea that the Comanche Nation could have their own LPN program, and it was researched and it went forward. Since '98, the Comanche Nation has enjoyed their own LPN program. Now, let's go over the facts. The facts are, since '98, Carlotta Nowells has had the opportunity to see 48 LPN nurses graduate. LPN, not just the boards, they are LPNs. Now, what I envision on this, Ms. Lopez took over the program a year, year- and-a-half, with nothing but payoffs. The problem occurred when the college started having problems with Ms. Lopez trying to micro manage her program and get her funds. There's no reason why she should have interfered, because if Ms. Lopez was concerned about the college, you would have thought she would have started working against accreditation. And Gene as well. But, no, for some reason, they wanted to mess with the LPN program that was already successful and on its way. So consequently, right now you have the LPN program that's probably going to lose their accreditation, unless this tribe goes ahead and removes that from the college and restructures and hires certified nurse LPN teachers. Because right now, the ones that she has are not certified. That's by letter from the board of nurses. I've seen it myself. So we need to take this situation and give it back to the TA where it was first started, and let's get this thing on the road and get good programs, a good nursing program back under our tribe. Because I know back when I was working with Southern Plains Intertribal Center, we had two to three file cabinets full of applicants of women that was interested in going into nursing. So there's a lot of interest in this area for that. So I say let's move. I'm in support of this resolution. MR. BURGESS: All right. Thank you, Mr. Nauni. Thank you very much. Gene? MR. PEKAH: Again, the best place for our nursing program is at Comanche Nation College. Legally, under U.S.C. Code 25, that's the only place it can be. Under the OBN, that's the only place that they're going to accept it. But as far as the transcripts, those should have been in place. We had one whole group that should have started before this group. That wasn't done because the program wasn't set up yet. These transcripts should have been taken care of long before I started working at the college. There has not been one graduate finish under Comanche Nation College under their former director. That was done under (inaudible) under their tutelage. So the best place for this program is at the college. We will produce a lot of good nurses, nurses that will go out there and treat our people well. And we have a nursing home and assisted living that we are planning. We need health professionals, and that's the place to produce them. We're looking at doing a certified nurse assistant program, and that's another one that will feed into this. Therefore, the best place, again, for the nursing program is at the college. MR. BURGESS: Point of order. Mr. Yackeyonny, wait a minute. Point of order. Information for y'all: When the nursing program was out here, did they not receive their diplomas from Great Plains Vo-Tech? You can house the program anywhere, but the licensing has to come from an accredited institution. The tribal government right now, we are not an accreditation institution. We are not a school. Hang on, Mr. Yackeyonny. This resolution attempts to put the nursing administrator (inaudible) also as the chief financial officer. There is no checks and balances on the checks that would be written for the program, who, what, where and why. This is an administrative function that will have to be defined before you even get the program accredited. We've gone round and round about this. We've had four or five meetings at the CBC about this, and now you want to bring it before the entire tribal council; when, in fact, an accredited institution is the place you'd want to have the nursing program. And, again, you attempt to undermine the college when they're so close to go live. Now, your team members want to turn around and pick up the ball carrier, getting to their own goal line. But this is not (inaudible) the nursing administrator should not, shall not, will not be the chief financial officer. You said put it under the TA. Mr. Tribal Administrator, Mr. Nelson, how many days -- how many hours a day do you spend approving payment requests? MR. NELSON: About an hour a day. MR. BURGESS: About an hour a day, (inaudible) but that hour stacks up to be about 8 to 10 inches a day, and to review all the payment requests. It takes an hour to sign them, make sure they're correct, make sure they're valid. Then he goes to the next person, the next person. There's time and payroll, (inaudible) attendance, seeing that all the students get to their practicums. It's more than just putting it on paper. Because in 2002, it was just one sheet of paper that started the Comanche College. But my question is: How much is this going to cost us? How are we going to administer? Where are we going to get the money? What are our students going to learn. Now, here we are today, and you're upset that we started with one sheet of paper. I see this as the same thing, one sheet of paper. There's no administrative plan. You need one to start a nursing school. You know, I don't mind that you want to help our students. And right here we have a gentleman that's done this before. We have all these colleges around us, we should give our money to them, continue to feed the white man's school, not our Indian schools. Continue with white teachers, not Indian teachers. If we're going to educate our Indians, why can't we educate them to teach Indians? If we don't do it in our college, it's not going to be done for us. We're the only Numunuu here, and we're not going away. So the future will change on us and we have to change to that future. I regret that we didn't think this through. That's what happened to a lot of our resolutions. (Inaudible) here a long time. I said before, we should have two meetings: One to discuss these things and iron them out; and another meeting to discuss the budget and approve the candidates, as our constitution states. That's why you wonder why we're here so long, because you want to put it all in one day. We can't do that. We've outgrown our constitution. This gentleman here before me said earlier that one of the reasons we have per cap (inaudible) is to have a more efficient and effective government. This is not efficient. This is not effective. I'm going to ask you to think about that, because Mr. Yackeyonny thinks that we need to go ahead with this vote. But this doesn't belong underneath the CBC. We are a government, not a school institution. MR. YACKEYONNY: He asked the question how would we fund this. Comanche people, we funded it and we didn't have gaming dollars. We used our federal programs, and those students that went through that first program under the Comanche Nation were well (inaudible). And I can say this because my nephew went through the nursing program, graduated, passed his first test. But he had a very hard time financially because the tribal government and the tribal college, they're two separate entities, and they forget their Comanche people. But when it was administered under the Comanche Nation, we had every program that could help our students, help them. And it was all allowable costs. If they were in the LPN program, we had WIA. What WIA did (inaudible) we had a job placement which was in vocational training. We had a job fair (inaudible) to take care of our kids and children. So we had the program, and then they were well taken care of. And we used the old conference room, and then we did it, and it was amazing. And now some of the very first students that graduated back there in 1998 are heads of some of our programs. They're head of diabetes, they're head of optometry. And I was (inaudible) to see the new CHR director, Carla Simmons, and she was one of those first students. (Inaudible) do it ourselves. (Inaudible) maybe there's some logistical problems with this resolution. (Inaudible). you know, that's all we want, is for -- this is one thing that has lasted for all these years. (Inaudible) Dr. Lopez says about Carlotta Nowells. I will stand by Carlotta Nowells, because I know what kind of teacher she is. It matters to our business committee who listens to a (inaudible). And Dr. Lopez, let me tell you, I've been threatened, I've been called every name in the book, but it does not stop me from working for Comanche people. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. MR. YACKEYONNY: Call for the question. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I just want to let you know that if you have questions, you can call the board of nursing, and they will tell you themselves that the program has been placed on this conditional status. And I encourage everybody to call the board of nursing and get the facts. And you'll find out for yourself, you know, that this program is in jeopardy. We need it for our Comanche people. And I'm here to support those nurses that are in class right now who are scared, who think they're not going to be able to graduate. Because they quit their jobs, they did everything they had to to go into the program to be a nurse. So I'm here to support them. So, you know, I'm going to be taking my test on May 15th. I'm asking for your prayers. It's been a long rocky road, but I know that we're going to be successful. I know, in the name of Jesus, we're going to be successful. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. Maxine, when you came up, did you second? Did you put a second on this? I think Mr. Yackeyonny said a call for the question. I'll remind you again: This is a conflict. (Inaudible) this is a conflict. (Inaudible) there's no checks and balances (inaudible). MS. JONES: You know, we did have -- over at the Indian Hospital, we had training for the nurses and things like that, and I believe that you could build at the Indian school (inaudible) thought about that. MR. BURGESS: Again, that happened before we got here. (Inaudible) thought of that, but no one wanted to do it. (Inaudible). MS. MCDANIEL: One of the reasons that we're asking that I-Care be put on the budget for $300,000 is a lot of our people are facing problems with drugs and alcohol. And even if they apply for a job at a casino, they can't get a job because they have a problem with drugs and alcohol. And this I-Care is one way of helping treat our people who have problems with drugs and alcohol. So I make a motion that this I-Care program be put on the budget in the amount of $300,000. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. We'll have to see what we get. Now, remember, we're trying to pass a resolution that affects our budget. (Inaudible) if we put something on there. If we put something on the budget, we have to reduce something else. MR. NELSON: Mr. Chairman, I talked to Mr. Yellowfish at 10 o'clock this morning. He wanted me to share with the tribal council what he was talking about. Mr. Yellowfish created a nonprofit organization called I-Care. What it involves, is he has a board that is filled with different tribal members. Their whole premise is (inaudible) for prevention of alcoholism, primarily. Keep in mind, Comanche Nation, we have two programs. We have substance prevention, that's for all the drugs: crank, marijuana, all this other stuff. We also have Carron Yellowfish that's in charge of our federally-funded program called New Pathways, and it is legitimately a halfway house. And that's the two items that we have on our budget today. As the tribal administrator, I need to make you aware of that. This is a brand new line item that the chairman was talking about. So in the absence of Elton Yellowfish, I wanted to tell you the specific issues of that. And I would hope tonight that you would pray for Elton. He's been diagnosed with a pretty severe condition. He's now in Phoenix, Arizona. With that said, it does come with a board of Native Americans. MS. MCDANIEL: It's a one time. MR. NELSON: Yes, one-time line item. What Eleanor is saying about that, it will be just this year to vote on. MR. WHITEWOLF: Willie, who's going to run it? MR. NELSON: From what I understand, it will be a board, a board that gets direction from the CBC. MR. BURGESS: Roderick, was your question on who's going to run it? You want to come forward and ask that? I guess a year ago or two years ago, Mr. Yellowfish made a presentation. Go ahead and ask your question, Roderick. MR. WHITEWOLF: I didn't hear exactly how it was going to be run. I think Willie said a board. Are you going to have an operation of consensus direction, or -- MR. ASEPERMY: Elton currently has a board in place that consists of five members. I can remember some of them. One is Carla Wildcat, Kim Saupitty. And to be honest with you, I can't remember the other three. They would run the I-Care program. The I-Care program, to the best of my recollection, would be the board would have an executive director and the necessary employees. That's the best I can remember. Eleanor, do you have any kind of documentation on this I-Care program? MR. WHITEWOLF: Under accountability, how is this going to be accounted for? Who is going to be responsible? MR. BURGESS: Well, I can tell you what Elton told us, that the board would not -- after we give them the money, they would not have to account how they spend it. That's exactly as I remember it. We give them the money, they spend it for services, and they have it broke down for this, this, this and that. And we don't receive any expenditure report. MR. WHITEWOLF: You take their word for it, in other words? You take their word for it? Are you guys comfortable with that? MR. BURGESS: The last time that -- MR. ASEPERMY: We voted against it. MR. BURGESS: When he came to us, it was going to be better to have a contractual relationship. Mr. Yellowfish has confirmed that for a one-year term, that I-Care would be funded from the Comanche Nation budget. Is there any questions while Mr. Yellowfish is on the phone? MR. ASEPERMY: This is basically what he said: He said that they needed $300,000 startup, that this is a nonprofit organization, that it will take care of our people that have a problem with drugs and alcohol with intake, treatment, one-on-one counseling, referral, sweat lodge, traditional, and for professionals like a psychiatrist, the colleges, law enforcement, to make them aware, and that the contract would be between the board and the CBC. Do you have any other questions that we can ask Mr. Yellowfish? MS. ATTOCKNIE: Is there a staff already for this I-Care program? Is there already a staff? MR. BURGESS: Yes, there would be a staff (inaudible) one or two counselors on a contract basis. They would have staff. MR. ATTOCKNIE: Is it an already established staff? Would it go through the same processes as advertising? MR. BURGESS: There are staff available. They're not hired right now, but they're ready to go with approval of the contract. Mr. Yellowfish is going to stay on the line if there's any more comments or questions or concerns about this. But he's agreed that it will be a one-year contract with a company called I-Care, a non-profit organization, to provide adult alcohol and drug abuse treatment and counseling on more than a 30-day basis. Any more comments, any more questions? MS. MCDANIEL: I just want to say that everyone that's here that's in this room, everyone has someone with that problem. And I appreciate that Elton, while he's still sick, is still trying to do something for his people. If we didn't have a drug problem, if this substance abuse was (inaudible), but I feel that it is not enough. We are not doing enough because we still have this problem. And we want to bring on professionals that can deal with this. And all we're asking is that this be put on the ballot for a one-time allocation so we can try to serve our people that have this drug and alcohol and other problems. Thank you. MR. ATTOCKNIE: My name is Richard Attocknie, and I come here to second the motion. And that there is a need for a media upgrade for people who can't make it (inaudible). This is a fine example right here of what we need for people that are out of state, Comanches that are out of state, but still are concerned about this government, concerned about the budget, and things that concern our everyday happenings. We need it. We need to set up a media center so we can interact with our general council. But I'm here just to second it. This is a need. I'm like anybody else. I have my own family in need of such a facility and would go to such facility, but there's no place close by, there's no place (inaudible) to help my own family. MR. RAMOS: My name is Don Ramos. I know some of y'all know who I am and where I'm employed. I'm not speaking for where my employment is today. I speak as a recovering addict that has been involved with the drug and alcohol recovery community around this area for 12 years. I care about our Comanche people. Not just our Comanche people, but all natives in this area. Our tribe has a program, has two (inaudible) programs. I know people from the recovery community that have benefited from both these programs. Yes, I wish they could do more. You know, by invoking another program doesn't fix the problem. Education and tradition is where it needs to be. You know, support the programs you have. Support the Comanches that are here. (Inaudible). I'm the last one to want to see anybody die because of the disease of addiction. It isn't just the alcohol and drugs, it's the problem gambling. It's any addiction out there, you know. And we do have programs in place within our tribal government already. MS. YELLOWFISH: Hello, Comanche people. My name is Carron Yellowfish. I have been the director at New Pathways, which is the tribe's halfway house, for 10 years. And we have been basically running under the Indian Health Services contract. I have just received gaming moneys for -- this will be the third year, and basically that's just to keep the halfway house manned 24 hours a day. I Believe our tribe is growing so much, and the disease of alcoholism and chemical addictions is growing so much that the tribe really needs to think about getting a treatment center soon. Also, another item that you might want to wish to think about is the EAD program, something for the employees where they can get help and get assistance for their problems. I believe Donny has come a long way since they started working with adults. I'm like Donny. I believe all the money you could put into substance abuse prevention is needed. We're in our infancy stages, but we still need more help. (Inaudible) vote (inaudible) still try to help our people. If I could be of any assistance to you all, please let me know. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Asepermy's got a statement. MR. ASEPERMY: Okay. Mr. Robles, just for your information, we have a New Pathways program at Fort Sill that we can house some of our substance abuse folks. The budget for that is $60,000. We also budget a substance abuse program, and the nation pays $180,000 for that. They also get federal funds in the amount of $275,000. So our substance abuse and federal program that Mr. Robles is part of -- Ramos, I'm sorry. Mr. Ramos, I know who you are. I just didn't know what your name was. But anyway, Mr. Ramos, we have $450,000 set aside for substance and alcohol abuse. Now, Mr. Ramos, I'm going to ask you these questions that we asked Elton. Do you provide intake? MR. RAMOS: Yes. MR. ASEPERMY: Do you provide treatment? MS. RAMOS: Yes. MR. ASEPERMY: Do you provide one-on- one counseling? MR. RAMOS: Yes. MR. ASEPERMY: Do you provide referrals? MR. RAMOS: Yes. MR. ASEPERMY: Do you provide traditional cures like the sweat lodge? MR. RAMOS: No, but we do refer. MR. ASEPERMY: And do you provide, like New Pathways, do you provide the professional assistance like law enforcement, psychiatrists, psychologists and things of that nature? MR. RAMOS: Our program was initially set up for (inaudible). As far as the adult program, I think it only came into existence in 2006 or 2007. The funds that we receive from IHS -- IHS is not geared for the adult program. For all the adult program, moneys come from gaming dollars. And we moved the ASSI, which is a state- regulated substance team, ASSI, (inaudible) multi- traditional (inaudible). All these things (inaudible) were recognized by the state. As far as accreditation, the director is a CABC under supervision of a licensed alcohol and drug counselor. Me, myself, am a traditional counselor with problem gambling. I'm recognized with the International Council on Problem Gambling. I counsel and help tribal people with problem gambling. I'm only one of three Native Americans in the State of Oklahoma that carries that position (inaudible) problem gambling. All this stuff is funded through the gaming dollars. Tradition is funded by IHS. And all the courts, Comanche County Court, Caddo County Courts, Cotton County Courts, do recognize our assessment pools and our interpretational (inaudible) pools. And we also have a relationship with probation and parole in district court. We meet with the probation and parole board every month on what to do. We talk about our -- not just our Comanche clients that are on probation and parole, but also they are referring other Native Americans to us because of our structured program that we do have. And we do provide meetings every night of the week except for Saturdays and Sundays. MR. ASEPERMY: Okay. Does anyone have any questions on our current programs of Mr. Ramos while he's up here? Tell them where your address is, where your office is. And thank you. MR. RAMOS: We do have a new facility with an AV room. We are located at 927 D Avenue. So we do have a very beautiful place, you know, that we've been blessed with to carry on the recovery process. I'm speaking of the recovery person, as a person in recovery. I remember getting in recovery 12 years ago when I'd go to AA meetings and NA meetings around town and there would be no Native Americans. Pathways, even with our facility and what we do now, we can go to some of these 12-step fellowships and see Native Americans and Comanche people fighting recovery from this disease of alcoholism and drug abuse. Can we stamp it all out? No, but we have a good start. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. KENNETH: My name is Kenneth (inaudible). I ran an alcohol treatment center for 14 years here in Lawton. I don't know if anybody -- probably the old ones remember, but I don't know if any of y'all was here when I run it. I don't think so. I ran an alcohol treatment center for 14 years. I worked for Indian Health Service two years as a counselor. And at that time, they talked me into taking the place that they lost their contract at Apache. It was a drug treatment center. So I took it over. And I think the most money I ever made in there was about -- let's see, I made 10,000 at that time when I got it started. So we moved to Lawton. And I had it built up to 95,000. That's 10,000 from the state IHS, and I took it up to 95,000. I ran it for 14 years. And I had AA in there, and a church, and a sweat lodge, and they stayed there as long as they could. We fed them. And what we really need is a treatment center. That's where they can stay there day and night and get together and talk and have classes. But the most I ever got was 95,000. I ran it for four years. And I never did ask the tribe for any money. They never did give me a dime. We had 35 clients. Right now I could go all over -- anyplace I go, I could go by the vet, I see guys that are sober today that come through our program working for the tribe. We have a unique program. It can be done. Right now I'm talking about alcohol. I went in AA in 1964. I've got over 35 years of sobriety. I still go today, and I go to sweat lodge and I go to church, and I use it all, do it all together. (Inaudible). But you got a bunch of Comanches out there. If you can get somebody to -- and that's all we run on, was grants that we got. And at that time, the tribe never gave us a dime, and we had 35 people. In '96, I remember, because they said I had too many beds and had to cut it down. But I couldn't turn anybody down (inaudible). I got it to 95,000. The Comanche Tribe wanted to take it over. So I said I wasn't going to politic, and I turned it over to them and they lost it. And it turned into nothing now. But what I'm saying is, we sure need a treatment program. I went up to the Cherokee and started working for the Cherokee. The Comanches wouldn't look at me down here for a job. I'm a certified alcohol and drug counselor. There was just two of us there, me and Rita. We both got certified in the state of Oklahoma for drug and alcohol. I put in an application for the tribe, and they didn't want to give me a -- what do you call it? To come in for a -- my qualifications, I guess. They didn't even give me a letter, so I went to work with the Cherokees. I had a call from the Cherokees. Now I'm working at San Marcos Treatment Center in Texas. (Inaudible). It's a treatment for (inaudible) and I have a sweat lodge and everything else there. But the Comanches would never give me a chance to work. I don't know why, if they don't like me or what. I had to go off and get a job. So that's -- MR. BURGESS: Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a count of 160. There's been a motion on the floor by Eleanor, a second by Richard Attocknie. Was that Richard? Where is he? MS. ATTOCKNIE: Over here. MR. BURGESS: Okay. You're a second on this motion? MR. ATTOCKNIE: Yes, sir. MR. BURGESS: All right. This will go on the referendum ballot. All right, folks, we're going to call for the question. Go over and vote. Remember, now, if you want it, you checkmark for. Fill in the line that says for. Thomas Narcomey, you have a resolution to present? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Do we have a quorum? You said we had 160. (Inaudible). I've been working with my mother on this, Gladys Narcomey. Well, my name is Tom Narcomey. And this is her -- this resolution will be done for the Mission Cemetery council resolution. They put an introduction here. I'm not going to read the whole thing. The tradition of sovereignty, the Comanche Tribal Council is the Supreme Governing Body. But then here, whereas, the Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery, located at the Henry Post Airfield at Fort sill, Oklahoma, where over 200 Comanches are buried who died during the smallpox epidemic in the winter of 1898-99, after they were issued disease-infested blankets by the U.S. Army, which killed over one-half of the Comanche Tribe, based on commonly and well known oral history. It is the desire of the Tribal Council that the designated Federal Preservation Officer nominate the Mission Cemetery to the National Register of Historic Places. Anyway, there's a four-page handout. The first is a copy of the resolution, and the second is an explanation of line items there, but there's not one. The third is a cover letter to the preservation officer, federal preservation officer. And if you have time, you probably want to read through it. But what I want to point out, that there is a large ditch or ravine east of the Mission Cemetery where Comanches were buried in a mass grave. And I don't know (inaudible) but what happened, they dug up a whole lot of graves out there when they were building those apartments and they covered it back up. But, anyway, they violated NAGPRA. (Inaudible) Fort Sill Cemetery was maintained and recognized as Mission Cemetery and has Comanche ancestors. The CBC has -- well, this was approved, if you notice on the second page, was approved in the 2007 annual meeting, and -- but something spilled on the machine and malfunctioned, so we didn't get to finish our resolution. (Inaudible) so that's why we're doing it again. Also, it had been approved by the CBC. If you notice the last handout there, Resolution to Nominate "Indian Cemetery" to the National Register of Historic Places. It also refers to NAGPRA on this and (inaudible) cemetery committee. My mother's worked on this for about 40 years, maybe, or more. But she knows a lot more about it, so I'm going to let her present it. MS. NARCOMEY: To the Comanche General Council, May 8, 2010, from Comanche Indian Cemetery Association with State Charter of May 5th, 1993. We are here again to talk about the Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery first known as Comanche Indian Graveyard, located at Fort Sill. On April 21st, '07, during an annual council meeting, due to hot coffee spilling on the dictation machine, tapes were ruined. The following year we tried again but a quorum was not present. Chairman Coffey made a statement at the annual council meeting in '08 that since a quorum was present and passed the resolution in '07, the CBC would take action to pass the resolution. This action did not take place. The Dutch Reformed Church of New York came to the Comanches in 1895. The missionaries worked with the Comanches and the Fort Sill Apaches. Churches were established for both tribes in 1907. The Comanche Cemetery was in use until 1917 when World War I began. The Army annexed the Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery for use as an airfield. The monuments were pushed over, covered with dirt, and named the Henry Post Airfield. During this time Reverend Richard H. Harper was the minister. He had compiled a list of the names and burials. There were 109 names. Harper was at the church from 1914 to '23. William Saupitty, a Comanche elder, gave a statement to Fort Sill officials that "many died of smallpox in the winter of 1898 to '99." The story told by our people is that two soldiers on horses came to Comanche camps in the winter of 1889 to '99 to announce that blankets would be issued the next day. But a few of those present did not trust the soldiers and did not accept the blankets. This group survived. Very soon afterward, great numbers of the people began dying. The Comanches had a word for this great tragedy "peah-tasi-quoi" meaning "big smallpox death." So many died, hundreds were very sick that there was no one able to dig graves, so about 100 bodies were buried with the existing 109 already buried in the Mission Cemetery. Many stories were told about this tragedy. Comanches were buried in many places in this area; west of Cache, south entrance of the refuge, Little Washita Cemetery, some recently reburied in Deyo Mission Cemetery from the Permansu land near Walters, east of Lawton near Lost Bridge on erst Cache Creek. We know there are other sites. In 1955 when Gillet Griswold became the museum director, the museum was in charge of all Fort Sill cemeteries, our people informed him of our Comanche Cemetery on the airfield, Griswold was very interested and had it surveyed. He also gave copies of official papers from files about the cemetery. Also he was interested in the other Comanche Indian Cemetery also known as Otipoby. He identified names and burials here using BIA allotment book with names of families. This was in 1965. The U.S. Army has helped in the past, especially during the tenure years of Gillet Griswold, Fort Sill museum director. At a meeting April 19, '84, Sergeant Jesse L. Lucas, Fort Sill superintendent of post cemeteries, explained that the Comanche "Otipoby and the three Apache cemeteries were supposed to close on September 30, '81, according to Army officials' letters." But the final decision was for them to remain open. Sergeant Jesse L. Lucas was very interested in the Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery and was aware of the situation. He said he had gone through the files and said something should be done about it, such as marking it and putting a sign there. He said 1874 was the earliest date mentioned of the cemetery. Also the cutoff date of it was 1917 when it was annexed to the Henry Post Airfield. In 1874 was the first Comanche to separate from the Army. They had surrendered to the 10th Calvary, which was (inaudible). Sergeant Jesse L. Lucas uncovered the airfield cemetery which had a few men, including Phillip Narcomey, a civil service employee. He said it was clear that some bodies were older than the smallpox victims. The earlier bodies were on the east front row, while some on the west, which were smallpox victims, had monuments. Comanche elders gave stories that there were so many dying there was no one to dig for burials so the victims were buried on top of those who died earlier. Sergeant Lucas said the Comanches were right when he was told there was about 200 buried in the Comanche Mission Cemetery. Reverend Harpers count of 109 plus about 100 of smallpox victims. Sergeant Lucas compiled 109 names, 42 unknown, 27 names are identified, 40 have names but are identified as unknown. Sergeant Lucas worked tirelessly with members of the Comanche Indian Cemetery Association members. He also attended their cemetery meetings at a Comanche church, Petarsy Methodist Mission. Gillet Griswold, Fort Sill Museum director, Colonel E.J. Hahney, Fort Sill Chief of Staff, and Phillip Narcomey, civil service employee. Narcomey acting coordinator between Fort Sill and the families of the Comanche Cemetery requested that a project of marking and identifying unmarked graves be started. Gillet Griswold laid the foundation whereby work was done for the Comanche Cemetery mainly in identifying unmarked graves, statement by Great Plains Museum. (Both Gillet Griswold, Fort Sill Museum Director, and Sergeant Jesse L. Lucas surveyed Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery. Lucas, Fort Sill Superintendent of Post Cemeteries.) In the paper it said Ruth Tohty and Martina Minthorn discovered some graves. The Army wanted some oral stories from the Comanches, so I went through my minutes from the secretary of our organization. And I gave her 10 statements of Comanches about the smallpox time. Number 1: It must have been such a large number of deaths that shocked and numbed our people; of such proportion that they did not discuss it but it was a well known fact. Arthur R. Lawrence, who spoke Comanche language; son of a early-day trader and businessman. Number 2: "A lot died of smallpox about 1898 to '99 and buried there." (In Fort Sill files.) William Saupitty - Comanche, age 82 (1959). Number 3: "Comanches had a name for the smallpox tragedy. It was known as 'peah tah-se-ah quou-oi', translated 'big smallpox death.'" Cable family - Comanche (told to 100th anniversary group, 1995). Number 4: "So many bodies that they dug a slit trench." Kate Karty - Comanche (told to grandson Kenneth). Number 5: "It was told that wagons came through the camps to load the dead. The Comanches cried until they could cry no more." Annie Perconnic Otipoby - Comanche (told to daughter Gladys Narcomey). Number 6: "My grandfather Penetakah told me of camping at sight of Lake Lawtonka and others during the winter of smallpox epidemic. Many were buried in a nearby cave by Mt. Scott. Then he also told of a mass burial of victims in a large long ditch east of the Comanche Indian Mission Cemetery." Reverend John Pahdocony - Comanche. Number 7: The Smallpox Epidemic (As told to me by Oliver Pahdopony) "Our people (Comanches) were camped along both sides of Cache Creek from Key Gate South, passed Lost Bridge. All were looking forward to the allotment they had been informed of. This way, they would have part of their beloved land. For it was known, all living Indians would be allotted 160 acres according to the Jerome Agreement of October 6, 1892, which was before Congress made it law. Word went through the camp that the Army was to issue Army blankets and soon thereafter illness came. Our people, men, women, and children were dying right and left, It was later learned it was smallpox. So many died, families wrapped the deceased and a wagon coming through the camp would load the bodies up like cord wood and haul them to a cave at the foot of Mt. Scott. They let two men down into the cave and then the bodies, and the men stacked the bodies up. After so many of our people had died. Then came the allotment around July 1901, and the balance of the land was opened to settlers." Reverend John Pahdocony - Comanche. Number 8: "For years when family passed by the airfield on the highway, Hugh Otipoby would point to the nearby cemetery; and say in Comanche language, over there lies our people who died of smallpox." Gladys Narcomey - Comanche (told to daughter and family). Number 9: "In the early days, I saw a white horse which seemed to belong to no one, that was continually in the pasture at the vicinity of the cemetery at the site of a certain grave. Maybe his owner was buried there." Schley Tahkofper - Comanche. Number 10: "I was called to doctor the people with smallpox, near Fort Sill. When I got there many were dying and sick. I started at one end of the camp, but before I was finished with one camp I would hear the people in the next tent screaming and crying for their loved ones. They brought wagons to load the bodies to take off to bury. It was a terrible day for the Comanche people." Frank Chekovah - Comanche (told to the grandson Raymond Nauni). MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Okay. That's the end of the presentation for the Comanche Cemetery resolution. A little note here, made about 1990. Well, recently, with Rogers Lane expansion project, of (inaudible) construction the man said the he done dug up a skull and bones close to the intersection of (inaudible) Fort Sill. Nothing was done. Nothing was done. So there was no evidence. But I wanted to get this resolution passed and recognize our oral history, and it's not (inaudible) we lived it. I mean, we're here because some of our ancestors survived. I don't know if there's any -- we lost a quorum. We're going to count? MR. BURGESS: We're counting for a quorum right now, ladies and gentlemen. Fifteen minutes ago we had 148, I believe, so we'll double check. People were coming in and out. But just for information, we'll announce the motion to rescind the princess resolution. Against the motion was 97, for the motion was 58. However, we need to sit down with both sides of this issue. We need to sit down with both sides of this issue and discuss this process and timing and finances. There are things on the resolution we didn't get to because we spent two hours on it the first day. But there are things in the resolution that are not smooth. We want to sit down with both sides of the issue and discuss that. So come Monday we'll talk amongst ourselves and look for a day and (inaudible). On the college issues, this is the nursing program. For the program, 105; against it, 61. Your resolution was to put it under the CBC, basically. All right. More bureaucracy, I guess. Per cap issue: For the increase in per cap to go on the referendum, 125; against the increase is 91. For the I-Care Program: I don't know if you have Mr. Yellowfish on the Internet. For the I-Care program, 53; against the I-Care program, 71. So it will go on the ballot. But that's what Mr. Yellowfish wanted. He wanted the people to vote for it, so he spoke to that issue. I want to come back to this cemetery issue here. We wanted our elders to speak, because Fort Sill has already made application in the National Historic Registry for the cemetery. They did that because it's under Fort Sill's control. So if Fort Sill came back to the tribe and they said fail, and we brought out to them that you put it into a designation that is not correct, that we're going to reapply, and here's why we want to reapply. So now Fort Sill says, okay, come back to us and answer these statements or these questions, so we can put that in a new application back to the National Historic Registry. And at the same time, we've been told by -- this is her belief, the assistant director, if I'm right, Wahnee. She is saying that the improvements that are being requested and supported would not hurt the designation as a national historic site. So we're trying to work this on two fronts at the same time. Neither one would endanger or stop the other from being recognized, we think. But we're trying to meet with the SHPO, and we're also going to put this in to the national office in Washington, D.C., to make them aware of the push by our nation and our members to go forward with the preservation site, as well as go forward with what Fort Sill is willing to do. To put them together, to direct, I should say, to fence in a side gate that makes it accessible to our people so that relatives there from here could go into the cemetery and have access to it on the reservation. Those are the improvements that the KCA wanted, the tribal members wanted, and that the other side was supportive of. So we're trying to do both these things at the same time. It's a little like eating dinner and a breakfast at the same time, and you only get brunch. You don't get full with either one. So we're going to move forward with that. Even though we may have lost a quorum here -- we did? 153. We are good. No more talking. Do you want to vote on this? We're already doing it. Just to let you know, we're already doing it. We're going forward. MR. YACKEYONNY: It will make our case stronger, right, if we get the tribal council to vote for it? MR. BURGESS: Yes. Mr. Clark? Voting for this will really reinforce our push for both the National Historic Registry here for visitation and to bring about the improvements on the reservation cemetery site. Fort Sill is the one that has to make application. We're helping Fort Sill. With this testimony that Auntie gave, this is for our position through Fort Sill, through the SHPO, to the preservation officers to Washington, D.C. to give a designation as a national historic site. MR. WAHNEE: My name is Wahnee Clark. I was born in the Kiowa Indian Hospital 72 years ago. I am the grandson of Waumaconie, Mrs. Edward L. Clark. The cemetery, commonly known as the Comanche Mission Cemetery, is in reality the Indian Agency Cemetery. I have family buried in this cemetery; an aunt and uncle, my paternal great grandparents, and other distant relatives. By Resolution Number 70-08 dated April 2007, as designated representative to work with Fort Sill from the Kiowa, Comanche & Apache Intertribal Land Use Committee, I worked for a little over three-and-a-half years on the restoration and preservation of this cemetery. I worked on only the cemetery itself. Everything I have done for the restoration and preservation of the Indian Agency Cemetery has been done at my own expense. I am not involved with the tribal lawyers in any effort thus far. I have made numerous presentations to the KCA, to the CBC, to the Elders Council, to the Southwest Oklahoma Genealogical Society, and have written an article published in the Comanche newsletter. Mention of this project has appeared in numerous local newspapers and the Lawton Constitution. I have met with and worked through four major generals of the Army, seven colonels, and countless Army civilian personnel. I have traveled at my own expense to Washington, D.C.; Fort Worth, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Canyon, Texas; West Branch, Ohio, and locally to Oklahoma City and Norman for meetings and to conduct research into the history of the cemetery. I visited nearly every Indian cemetery within the immediate vicinity. All these efforts are about to pay off in major concessions and agreements with the Army. At this crucial time, I need your help to ensure that I have the support and cooperation of the Comanche Nation and the Comanche Business Committee. I tell you this not to receive a pat on the back, but to illustrate the passion and commitment I have to see this cemetery given respect and dignity that has escaped it for over 95 years; all as a result of the Army's lack of caring for those where buried in that hallowed ground. I want to knowledge the efforts of Gladys Narcomey and others who have gone before me, starting back as early as 1984. I provided you a picture of the cemetery here just a few minutes ago. At least 114 Comanches lie buried in this long-abandoned cemetery. Records of its existence go back to 1985, Ms. Gladys suspected, but there is evidence it was in existence from sometime after the Indian agency was established in 1869. That expansion, south to what we now know as Rogers Lane, included the cemetery site. From 1915, the cemetery has been a part of the Henry Post Army Airfield. Its existence has been ignored and disrespected by the Army since that time. Being an airfield, it has been virtually off limits to the Comanche People. The cemetery was all but forgotten except in the memories of the elders. Like many others have said, I have family buried in the cemetery. The efforts I've made to have the cemetery recognized and given the dignified treatment it rightfully deserves go back to 1984, and, perhaps, even before that time. All those efforts, for one reason or another, have failed. Nothing has been accomplished until I had been working on this project. In a concerted effort to change this situation, I have worked unpaid on this project since the winter of 2006. In fact, I've not asked for any financial help from the KCA or the Comanche Nation. Meeting with Fort Sill Post officials, I have fought to have this "abandoned" cemetery made into a "real" cemetery. Those efforts are on the verge of being met to the point that agreements have finally been reached which will require the Army to provide fencing, grave markers, access, and finally recognition. And when I talk of access, I mean unfettered access. Access that you can go at normal daylight hours to and from that cemetery. The resolution you're being asked to adopt will stand in the way of the progress that I have made on the cemetery restoration and preservation. Let me repeat: The resolution you're being asked to adopt will stand in the way of the progress that we've made thus far. I ask you to vote against the resolution. Send a message to the Comanche Business Committee you feel it is important to have the restoration effort go forward now rather than later or, perhaps, not at all. Once the restoration is completed, there will be ample time to ask the State Historic Preservation Office to have the cemetery nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. Let me get the restoration underway now. When the time is right, I will then assist in preparing the nomination. The idea of having the cemetery recognized as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places is a good idea. However, it is not timely and to do so now will serve to impede, delay, and perhaps overturn the restoration effort. You can prevent that from happening; vote against the resolution. For over 95 years, the Army has treated these graves with disrespect. Help me end this ugly period in the history of the cemetery. Do this for the sake of 114 Comanche persons, our relatives. MR. BURGESS: Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas, I know you wish to say something, but can we go ahead and start voting? You're welcome to go over and cast your ballot now for or against. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: He wants the CBC to repeal this resolution. They never done it. Okay. Well, the important thing of this resolution is adopting our oral history. We have a lot of oral history there. We really need this. (Inaudible) will prevent it from being on the federal register. (Inaudible). MR. BURGESS: Even if we vote, ladies and gentlemen, the vote won't count because we lost our quorum. We need 150. I want to let everybody know, let everybody know, even if I'm repeating myself, we are doing exactly what this resolution is calling for, and we needed the testimony of Ms. Narcomey here to be a part of the legal record. That's my question of general council, to consider her testimony (inaudible). We got the testimony in so that Fort Sill cannot tell us, what the SHPO said, that the criteria we use has no bearing, no documentation. Because non-Indians have been quoted in testimony, by other Indians as well. We only have 135, ladies and gentlemen, so sadly I have to tell you we are adjourned. (Meeting adjourned at 5:33 p.m.) * * * * * * R E P O R T E R 'S C E R T I F I C A T E STATE OF OKLAHOMA ) ) COUNTY OF OKLAHOMA ) I, Kelly Stoabs, Certified Shorthand Reporter for the State of Oklahoma, certify that the above and foregoing meeting transcribed by me is a true and correct transcript of the meeting; that the meeting was held on May 8, 2010, in the State of Oklahoma; that I am not an attorney for nor a relative of any said parties, or otherwise interested in the event of said action. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set hereunto set my hand and seal of office on this the 14th day of June, 2010. __________________________ Kelly Stoabs Certified Shorthand Reporter for the State of Oklahoma S E C R E T A R Y ' S C E R T I F I C A T E I, Robert Tippeconnie, Secretary- Treasurer of Comanche Nation Business Committee, certify that the above is a true and correct transcript of a meeting of Comanche General Council held at 10:10 a.m. on May 8, 2010, and that the meeting was duly called and held in all respects in accordance with the charters and bylaws of the Comanche Nation and that a quorum was present. I further certify that the votes and resolutions of the Comanche General Council at the meeting are operative and in full force and effect and have not been annulled or modified by any vote or resolution passed or adopted since that meeting. Signed:_________________________ Date:____________ Robert Tippeconnie Secretary-Treasurer 108