I highly recommend to everyone checking out the latest posts on the Spirit Lake Forum, Ethical Questions section, Joe the Tribal Member. For those of you who live on reservations, it will prove amusing and I am sure you can add your own "Joe" stories. For those who have never lived on reservations, you will find the stories educational.
As Dr. Longie states in his introduction,
"Joe appears to have super natural powers. He seems to be working at several jobs at the same time, and I know I met him at each reservation I visited."
Like Santa Claus, he seems to be able to be on several reservations all at the same time. Of course, Joe is a composite, made up of pieces from many different stories we have heard from reservations around the country.
Why do we need Joe? The sad fact is that many people are afraid to speak out. They are afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of the retribution they will face in a small community if they object to the person using tribal funds to travel on what is no more than an expensive vacation for themselves and their family members. They fear defending a co-worker in a meeting because then the abusive manager may turn on them. They don't want to point out that unqualified relatives of tribal council members are being hired, not doing their jobs or not coming to work at all, because, in some communities, they have a very real concern that the result will be the complaining employee is fired, not the incompetent one.
It is our hope that by hosting this forum where tribal members can speak up anonymously, eventually, enough people will see that they are not alone and feel it is safe and acceptable to post their opinions under their own name. For now, if you would like to be anonymous, feel free to LOGIN using the username anonymous and the password tribaljoe .
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we kept receiving posting by spambots on our forum, some of it graphic pornography, and we eventually were forced to go to registration-only for posting.
Anyone can still read the forum without registering.
As Dr. Longie states in his introduction,
"Joe appears to have super natural powers. He seems to be working at several jobs at the same time, and I know I met him at each reservation I visited."
Like Santa Claus, he seems to be able to be on several reservations all at the same time. Of course, Joe is a composite, made up of pieces from many different stories we have heard from reservations around the country.
Why do we need Joe? The sad fact is that many people are afraid to speak out. They are afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of the retribution they will face in a small community if they object to the person using tribal funds to travel on what is no more than an expensive vacation for themselves and their family members. They fear defending a co-worker in a meeting because then the abusive manager may turn on them. They don't want to point out that unqualified relatives of tribal council members are being hired, not doing their jobs or not coming to work at all, because, in some communities, they have a very real concern that the result will be the complaining employee is fired, not the incompetent one.
It is our hope that by hosting this forum where tribal members can speak up anonymously, eventually, enough people will see that they are not alone and feel it is safe and acceptable to post their opinions under their own name. For now, if you would like to be anonymous, feel free to LOGIN using the username anonymous and the password tribaljoe .
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we kept receiving posting by spambots on our forum, some of it graphic pornography, and we eventually were forced to go to registration-only for posting.
Anyone can still read the forum without registering.
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