Native American PR Pro discusses her success and challenges climbing the PR ladder

FINAL # 82 Native American PR

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now, here is your host, Peter Woolfolk. 

Peter Woolfolk       

0:22

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to all listeners all across America and around the world. Now, although improving diversity and inclusion in the public relations field is on the upswing, one group that does not get the attention it should on Native Americans. So I am very pleased to announce today that my guest is a Native American and she is Randy'L Teton the public affairs manager for the Shoshone bannock tribes, and she is the point of contact for all external media public relations and cultural tourism. Randy'L was born and raised in southeastern Idaho and is a member of just showing the backdrop of the fort Hall reservation. She has her degree in museum studies from the Institute of American Indian arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art history from the University of New Mexico. Now, she also interned at each of the national museums of the American Indian museums in New York City and Washington DC, the money Museum in Fort Collins, Colorado and the Buffalo Bill center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Randell joins us today from the fort Hall reservation in Fort Hall, Idaho. So Randy'L, welcome to the podcast.

Randy'L 

1:38

Thank you so much. It's good to be with you. Now that obviously my very first question is, your background, at least educational background is in the arts. So how did you make the transition from the art to the public relations and Public Affairs area? Well, you know, let's just step back here a little bit is nobody really thinks about what they're going to do when they become adults. But I was a little different. I actually grew up on the reservation. And nobody would know that, you know, just by the sound of my voice, but I was born and raised in the reservation on our district called Lincoln Crick on a road called Little Indian road. My grandparents owned over 100 acres. That's where I was raised with both of my parents around horses. My grandparents definitely instilled in a lot of our families to always work, be self sufficient, and independent. And so I actually joined a tribal youth education program in my first job was at our tribal museum here in Fort Hall. My mother was actually the manager of the museum. And nobody ever thinks about, oh, I'm going to work for my mother one day. But I actually just wanted the opportunity to see what my mom was doing every day. And one day, she was doing a conducting a tour group. And it was conflicted. And she actually had a group of trainees come in at the same time, during the German there was a German group tour, she felt that I was confident that I was able to take one of the buses. And so I did, I ended up taking the Chinese bus and I provided a tour, it was my first tour. I took them down through our historical lands, we got to see our buffalo. Also look at some historical markers. Look at our flora and fauna. And when we came back, I amazed myself that I was able to conduct a tour, and I was only 1415 years old. I knew then that this is what I wanted to do is share my tribal history with those that did not understand who we are as native people. I wanted it to come from a tribal perspective. I also noticed that in our bookstore that we lacked a lot of tribal authors, writing about us our tribal history. And so I wanted to be able to make a change. And so I ended up going to school. Right after high school, I applied for a art school that had a specialized museum program. And that's where I was able to attend and finish and really just start my career path, which was to ideally be a curator of my own Museum, whether that was returning back to my reservation to oversee our tribal Museum, or whether it was working at another Museum in throughout America. That was my goal. And when I actually went through a lot of my internships and completed my undergrad at University of New Mexico, I returned back home. And I, I felt that the museum's that they did offer me a job. But the job was not at the pay rate that I needed to be at. Because Mind you, I going away off the reservation leaving the state, I had to take some loans out. But majority of my schooling was paid by scholarships. But like any other, you know, young person trying to get their schooling done, you know, I had to take some loans out. And so I actually did not take the job of leading our museum at that time, because I needed to be paid a little bit more. So I ended up doing some contract work with smaller museums here in Idaho. And I ended up interestingly, I ended up working for a commercial real estate company, as an office manager, and actually learned more about commercial real estate and how important it is to be aware of the land cells around my reservation, and how it impacted. And so that really gave me a good opportunity to be more of an advocate for land cells, whether that was from large families that have owned large land parcels here in our area, it really sparked an interest in pursuing more, I guess, advocacy of tribal government. I ended up falling in love, got married, started a family and I needed to move closer to my reservation because of the health services that our tribal health offers to our women. And so we I ended up quitting my commercial real estate job and moving closer to home, and ended up getting involved with a nonprofit organization, which paid fairly well, and served about three years there as a community development specialists. And I got a taste for really community development work. And I was placed on as the tribal liaison to my reservation. And so I was able to see the needs of services that we needed to provide to tribal members living off the reservation, but close to the reservation. And so we were able to provide that. But along the way, the public affairs manager was a fairly new job title within the tribe, there was a need for a liaison to serve our leadership on the federal and the state level. And the lady who was hired, she was the first and she remained in that position for two years. But she ended up deciding to retire. And she asked me if I would be willing to be interim for the public affairs job. And at that time, I I really didn't understand really what she what her job description was. And interestingly, her job description was about four pages long, which was a variety of different tasks, ranging from public relations, legislative research, writing, overseeing the tribal government website, and I only was able to train with her for two days, and basically was given a thick binder of projects that were ongoing with leadership. And, and that's where my life changed, of really seeing the bigger picture of how our tribal government runs and how its structured and, and just the important matters that this office oversees in regards to communication between the tribal government and our federal agents in Washington DC. So in essence, you you had to hit the ground running us little basically learned on the job. Yes, literally, I I was told you need to be in all these meetings with the council to further understand what our perspective was. Yes, it was. It was definitely very busy, and it remains to be very busy to this day.  Well, Luckily, I'm a multitasker. 

Peter Woolfolk 

10:01

Well, I'm glad you had the chance to talk with us today. One of the other things if you would just sort of briefly give it a description, I'll help because you mentioned reservation certain several times. And one of the things that may be helpful to understand or get a perception is, when you talk about reservation, how large an area, particularly square acres are we talking about here? 

Randy'L 

10:24

So my reservation, we are the Shoshone bannock tribes located on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in South Eastern Idaho. And when people think about Idaho, they think about potatoes, which is accurate, because a lot of our landscape, our agricultural fields of potatoes, but the state is actually shaped like a boot. And we are actually located in the lower southeastern portion in in what we call the foot area. The sushi zone banet tribe was established in about the late 1860s, where the reservation was being formulated, and a lot of our different shoni and Bennett bands were already residing and camping throughout the Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming territories before there was boundary or state lines. So a lot of our people were being rounded up and forced, forcibly removed to southeastern Idaho, to the four Hall area. And so our reservation is comprised of a couple of bands, therefore, how how we received our name, this is Shawn dannic. Now, our reservation is the largest we have about 560,000 plus acres, a lot of reservations are smaller, some are larger, but we are the largest in the state of Idaho, there are a total of five tribes in the whole state. We dominate the southeastern area. And as you move north to Idaho, you'll find the Nez Perce the coralayne tribe, the sealless kutani, but down in our area is predominantly the show knees, we have the Shoshone piute, which are the western Shoshone and then we are considered the northern Shoshone. But again, our land bases is fairly large. I don't have a miles per mile. But I can tell you that it's a good drive to beautiful drive, we have about 6000 plus tribal members, not all of us reside on the reservation, a lot of us do live in the nearby cities. And that's just because of the lack of housing that we have on the reservation do we do own 98% of our land base, which is actually a really good high number. There are some reservations where a lot of their land base is not owned by the tribe, it might be privately owned by the families or tribal members. So a lot of interesting facts when you think about reservation, okay, well, I'll tell you now, let's really talk about the things that you do as the public relations or public affairs manager there. What are some of the activities, though, that encompass you most in terms of getting information out or activities being conducted for your reservation? You know what, in a nutshell, I do everything in anything related to communications, I, you know, my job is about two pages long my job description, I actually handle a lot of the fun stuff. You know, I do have some projects that I oversee in regards to community development, just because of my experience of working in the nonprofit sector before this job. I have a lot of connections off the reservation. So say, for example, there's a need for providing services to the tribal youth, I'm able to connect the dots with a lot of the off reservation public and private school. So that way, if they wanted to engage or collaborate or partner with the reservation, I'm able to make that happen. also able to help create the fliers I put them out I actually administer the tribes, social media sites, the tribes, government website, so a lot of the information and content that is about our reservation I oversee, if there's any changes, then I'm able to, to edit. Also any media requests coming through if there was a fire

There was a high speed chase on the reservation that involved off reservation law enforcement, the reporters, the local reporters that serve our region know to contact me for more information. So, my work cell phone is basically available 24 seven, this job is not a Monday through Friday eight to five. And that's the unique thing with me is that, you know, I am from this community. So it is very important for me to be available for anybody that is wanting some information about the reservation, maybe there's a big reporter coming in from international or anywhere, they're able to contact me, and I'm able to assist as needed. Also, I have a direct relationship with our tribal leadership, and our tribal department managers and directors. So if there's something that I don't know, it's very important for me to be able to pick up the phone and contact that appropriate department or director to get the correct information. So again, my job is about connecting and communication. So there's just a variety of different things that I oversee. And it's fun, but, but also, it could be stressful too, because I'm the only person that is the point of contact. So let me just mention, when you sit connected, I was just looking at some of your background. And you certainly are involved because of the southeast Idaho Business Journal named you 20 under the 20 under 40 Award persons the also the out of hometown hero Medal Award that you received not too long ago, you have been selected as a trailblazing women of Idaho, of which only 100 women I understand God that one 100 years 100 women projects, so forth and so on that annual member of the Pocatello Idaho Rotary Club, do liaison with the Idaho State Historical Society at Southeast Idaho, High Country tourism as a board member for the Museum of Idaho. So I can see that you certainly stay busy there. Now when you said some of the surrounding areas what cities are close to you, and how do you relate to the media in those cities. So we our reservation has a few cities that are outlining to our reservation and we're very lucky to have these cities The city is Pocatello, which actually is named after one of our official new chiefs. Chief Pocatello, also Blackfoot which has no relation to the tribe of the Blackfeet tribe. It has no relation whatsoever. So Blackfoot, American falls Pocatello. Those are the outlining cities that our reservation is sits next to so they are our neighbors. And it is very important for myself as the public affairs manager for the tribes to maintain a good solid relationship with those city officials. The County's county official, also the school boards, because a lot of our tribal youth do attend the public school system. I think that when people think about a reservation and the people that are members of that reservation, there's an automatic thought that that a lot of us work exclusively on the reservation, and that our children attend the tribal schools, but that is incorrect. We are very fortunate that our parents that we have options. So if we have a tribal family living in Pocatello, for instance, they have a choice of sending their children or child to our tribal High School, we do have a tribal high school or sending them to the local public school. So it just really depends on what they would like to do. Some schools are based solely on sports and athletics are banned. And so there's just a variety of different factors. But we are very fortunate because it also enables our people to have options with health care. We do not have a hospital on our reservation. But we do have two health clinics that do provide our health care, our basic health care, so dental I but anything needed for surgery, we do rely upon our local hospitals for that. So again, it's very important for our tribe to maintain a good solid relationship with the local cities. Now there might be some conflicting issues or historical issues that we might have. But overall, it is important for us to maintain relationships regardless. And that is part of my job. 

Peter Woolfolk

20:09

Well, let me just drop this in real quick. I just wanted to let our listeners know that this episode is sponsored by Buerrell's, the media relations planning, monitoring and measurement services, professionals, Buerrell's. So what are some of the other things that perhaps we have not talked about that are integral to you doing a great job out there? And things? Like I mean, you mentioned you oversee your social media, how about radio stations? Do you have a local radio station there or a closed circuit TV on the reservation? 

Randy'L

20:41

No, unfortunately, that's something that we wish we have a we had, but we do not, we actually do rely upon the local, there's a university Idaho State University, they do have a radio station is that we do and are invited frequently to the radio program. And if we have a read a radio PSA, we're able to buy certain spots on there. But yes, we do maintain relationships with radio stations, the local TV stations, I do have reporters that I have worked with, with for over 10 years. And it's and it's always good to have those relations, because they can just text me or call me at any time, and ask what the tribes are doing or what's really happening. And that makes a huge difference. Because a lot of our people do listen to the radio stations, they do watch the local TV stations. And so when the COVID hit, for example, because of my my expertise in the communication background, I was given the COVID p i o Public Information Officer hat. And so since the pandemic has started here, I have also been wearing that hat and a lot of our psats have been shown on TV radio spots, also shared with the other local regional health clinics and hospitals. And so I am able to add the cultural component that is needed when when communicating with both reservation and off reservation individuals. Another thing I wanted to add is that economic economic data is so important to understand and to also allow the off reservation economic offices understand that how tribes provide to the local economy. And we actually started gathering the data in 2010, we had our first economic info sheet that we prepared for our local legislators and the federal on what the tribes provide. And that just recently, in our last report, the fish own Bennett tribes contributed a total of $450 million to the regional regional economy, we actually were able to create about 2742 direct jobs in the regional economy. Well, let me ask you, right, quick, what drives that amount of money? In other words, you said 400 million. How is that generated? What happens there that allows that to happen? agriculture is agriculture based. That is our our number one revenue, a lot of people would guess the casino, but no, it's actually our agriculture for us. Secondary is our casino, we do have one large casino and then too many casinos that are located strategically throughout our reservation. So we don't just have one, we have two others smaller mini casinos. And so a lot of this, the numbers is driven by our enterprises, our tribal government, our Casino in our hotel. So we're able to hire, not just tribal people, but also non tribal for some of our bigger positions. And so we it's interesting, but the tribes contributes about 110,000 acres of irrigated agricultural lands, which we have tracked to bring in 150 million in revenues each year. And this is big, and I mentioned this earlier is that our reservation, you know, has some pristine soil that is ideal for potato harvesting. So we do lease our lands to local farmers that these farmers are actually third, fourth generation farmers, you know, for the Shoshone tribes, you know, it's all about agriculture. It's about having good relationships with the local government entities, and having them understand that we are just as influential in the economic data for the state of Idaho. 

Peter Woolfolk 

25:26

Now, as you mentioned that let me just ask you, is there one area of misperception that you think too many people have of Native Americans? And if so, what would that be? And how would you see that being corrected? 

Randy'L  

25:42

A constant misperception is, we live in teepees, we all speak the same language powwow that we all dress the same, and that the drum, it's all one song, and that we all understand it. Those are the misperceptions that I have seen. And I traveled to DC quite often, I also participate in a lot of offers or vacation meetings, where a lot of people assume that the reservation is is closed off to just reservation people that is inaccurate. We are very welcoming to those to come out to stay at our hotel, eat at our restaurants, get the gas, we have tobacco, we have our cultural bead work, we've got a lot of amenities that is very unique that you cannot find elsewhere. But yet a lot of people have this fear, it seems of going on to a reservation, and thinking that they're not welcome or they're going to be treated unfairly. So I would just like to say that that is a misconception. And a lot of reservations now, are very welcoming to people to the tourists to come out and learn more about the culture, and understand who they are as a thriving people. Because we're still here, the pictures or the books that a lot of people read about Native people. You see chiefs, and not every tribe has a chief. And we have different words for what we call our leaders. They're not called chiefs. And you don't want to go to a reservation and say, hey, I want to meet your chief, you cannot say that that is very disrespectful. So just be mindful of who they are. And a lot of us do have websites. And so I would recommend that if you would like to visit or know more about your local reservation. Google them, go to their official website, learn more about what their traditional name is, and who they are as, as a living culture right there in their state. 

Peter Woolfolk 

27:55

Well, you know, one of the other things that I think that a lot of people may have missed is that the new Secretary of the Interior, the United States Department of Interior, is a Native American. And I believe that's the first time that's happened. 

Randy'L 

28:08

Yes, it is. And she's a good friend of mine. Yes! 

Peter Woolfolk 

28:13

Congratulations. 

Randy'L

28:15

Yeah, we're so we're so we're so blessed to have her there. I've met her, you know, again, within my work and doing the things that we do here with the tribal government. And she's just an amazing lady. And we're just so proud of her. And I'm seeing a lot of changes. I mean, just recently, the National Park Service hired a first Native American Deputy Superintendent of a national park. That's huge. So we are starting to see changes. And we're starting to see the recognition of the fact that native peoples are just as smart as any anybody else. We go to school. Our schooling is not fully paid by the tribes. I think that's another misconception is that tribal people are given free education and free health. That is not entirely true. A lot of our people that have a lot of major health conditions, they are just like anybody else they have, they have to apply for Medicaid or, or some other form of health services just to help pay their bills. And so there's a lot of misconceptions out there that I just wish that people would, you know, understand that. You know, for us we have a treaty with the United States government. Ours is called the Fort Bridger treaty. And not all tribes have ra treaty tribe. That's also another misconception is that all the tribes are treaty tribes. And because we have that unique treaty, there are certain provisions that were promised by the federal government. And those are the things that we are constantly fighting for, with all these changes in presidents, and that's why a lot of tribes have to go and travel to DC and advocate for, hey, this is what was agreed in a treaty with us. So that's why you have a lot of Native Americans traveling to Washington, DC advocating and constantly lobbying, I understand. 

Peter Woolfolk 

30:27

Well, let me say, Randy, you have provided us with a wealth of information here. I'm so so happy you had a chance to come on our podcast. And by the way, the next time you speak to the Secretary of Interior, let her know that you are on the Public Relations Review Podcast. We will send you a copy of the completed show. So you can have that to your files. And and if you'd like you can also put that on your website or however you want to handle that. 

Randy'L 

30:55

Yes, certainly love to do that. And I really appreciate you reaching out. And I appreciate the time of sharing a perspective of a Native American in PR, I think that there's not a lot of us. And I would advocate for our younger generations to consider going into public relations, because it is definitely a very needed field. To me, it's about telling our story from a tribal perspective, and also being able to provide that cultural integrity when talking about tribal communications. So thank you so much. 

Peter Woolfolk 

31:37

Well, one of the things that I promised I will do is that once a podcast is completed, I will send a copy of it to the Diversity Committee for the public relations Society of America so they'll have a chance to listen to this. And if they need to, perhaps they'll follow up with you. 

Peter Woolfolk 

31:52

Wonderful. Well, once again, my guest today has been Randy'L Teton. SHe is the public affairs manager for the Shoshone bannock tribe. And she joins us today from Fort Hall reservation in Fort Hall, Idaho. So once again, thank you so much, Randy, for your for joining us. Let me thank our listeners again for being loyal and listening to us. If you've enjoyed it, give us a great review. And we look forward to you joining us for the very next edition of the public relations review podcast. Many thanks to our sponsor Burrell. So making this episode possible. Check out a special offer just for public relations review podcast fans at burrell's dot com forward slash public relations review podcast and thank you for listening.

Announcer

32:43

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