Flathead Reservation flourishes

Greg DuMontier is one of many tribal leaders who have helped
the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes prosper

Story by Laurie Schroeder
Photographs by Gabriella Brown

A soot-covered wood stove sits under a cloudless blue sky on the Flathead Reservation as

Greg DuMontier sifts through ashes that cover the land where his home once stood. Hecarefully steps over bedsprings, enveloped in rust from the winter’s snow cover, as hesearches for salvageable belongings.

DuMontier and his wife, Myrna, pause over a pile of melted beads and recall the loss of abeaded vest and belt he wore the day they married. He squats to make out a partial wing froma nighthawk in what’s left of the beadwork, but quickly stands and moves on.

Parked on the hill next to the home’s skeleton are two of DuMontier’s most valuedpossessions: a 1972 Chevy dump truck and a banged up 1973 Ford flatbed.

In no time DuMontier lifts the hood to inspect the health of his 28-year-old Ford relic.

Satisfied, he slams the hood, challenging the duct tape covering the corner of the crackedwindshield. He opens the door, jumps in and fires it up. After a few wheezes, the engine,which hasn’t run since before the January fire, roars to life and DuMontier yells triumphantlyfrom behind the wheel. With a new light in his eye he hurries to his dump truck. It starts as well.

“Both of my trucks started,” he says. “It’s a good day.”

Not all of DuMontier’s days over the past three years have been as good, though you wouldnever know it by his attitude.

It’s the second home he and his wife have lost to fire. The latest happened in January when apropane leak caused an explosion that leveled the wall tent they had erected while theywaited for a new home to be built. Now their temporary home is a St. Ignatius hotel room.

DuMontier acknowledges their run of bad luck, but says with characteristic understatement,

“it is what it is.”

“We lost a lot that we can’t get back and gained a lot that we can’t lose,” he says, referringto their renewed outlook on how the spiritual, not the material things, matter most in life.

It’s that attitude that gives him the strength to look forward, to find ways as a tribal business leader to help guide the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes to economic prosperity.

By all accounts, among the state’s seven reservations, Flathead is the most prosperous. Its stunning locale abutting the Mission Mountains and extending to the south half of Flathead

Lake helps attract tourists. Plus, an educated workforce and a forward-looking, stable tribal government have helped the Flathead tribes prosper.

Its latest success is in information technology, an enterprise DuMontier directs as president of S&K Technologies, the newest of several thriving tribal businesses. S&K Technologies joins two other tribally owned corporations: S&K Holdings and S&K Electronics.

In the two-and-one-half years since S&K Technologies’ birth, this company specializing in information systems and technology has earned numerous technical contracts, including providing technical aid to the United Space Alliance and NASA. In just two years the company has opened five other divisions off the reservation. DuMontier oversees operations in Pablo, along with Bremerton, Wash., Portland, Ore., Dayton, Ohio, Warner Robins, Ga., and Houston, Texas.

“We have to go out to where the information systems and technical markets are,” says Dermot O’Halloran, vice president of business development for the company. “It was always our intent to go out and bring jobs back. But we had to go out and secure contracts first.”

The Pablo corporate headquarters employs 100 people across the country. Only 11 of those people work in Pablo, six of whom, including DuMontier, are enrolled members of the

Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes or non-enrolled descendents of tribal members.

DuMontier jokes with O’Halloran, his Irish cohort, that the company has the best of two worlds, “the luck of the Irish and the charm of the Salish.”

S&K Technologies hires frequently—numbers are expected to increase again by early summer—and since it is a tribally owned business, qualified tribal members have preference.

The tribes are also building a well-trained workforce. Salish Kootenai College is developing a computer program geared toward training tribal members in this technical field, according to SKC President Joe McDonald.

“We are hoping to develop a bachelor’s degree in a computer technical program because there is a real demand,” he says.

While the tribe cannot yet meet the job demands of all its members, an array of employment opportunities exist at non-tribally owned businesses prevalent on this reservation where tribal members make up 25 percent of the population.

Flathead has the lowest unemployment rate among the seven reservations in Montana, at approximately 20 percent. Rates at other reservations often reach as high as 70 percent.

The first profitable tribal business was S&K Electronics, a manufacturing company started in

1984. It manufactured mechanical parts for government agencies, including tank heaters for the military and various circuit cards that run an array of electronic devices.

Two years ago S&K Electronics graduated from a government business program called 8A, which was created to give minority-owned companies a chance to compete with large corporations for contracts. Since then S&K Electronics not only made a successful transition from government manufacturing into commercial manufacturing but also built the sister company, S&K Technologies.

The tribe also formed S&K Holdings, which works with the Tribal Business Information Center to help tribal members establish new companies or expand current businesses. S&K Holdings generates plans for economic growth and development and has contributed significantly to the economic growth on the reservation. It helped the tribe establish the Best Western KwaTaqNuk Resort, a hotel, marina and casino nestled on the shore of Flathead Lake in Polson.

Both S&K Holdings and the business information center are lending institutions and also educate private business owners on all aspects of owning and running a business.

The success of this newest tribal entity, S&K Technologies, is not surprising. DuMontier has a track record of accomplishments and is accustomed to providing the tools necessary for other people’s success.

Almost 25 years ago he was working in education on the reservation when the tribe decided to establish a health department. A pressing issue was the need for health care education so DuMontier moved to the health department and became an administrator. That experience helped prepare him for his present administrative position.

His role in the hospital was to make sure the doctors had all the tools they needed.

“I didn’t take the patients’ blood pressure, I just made sure they had a comfortable stay,” he says.

Now he makes sure that companies have the technology and resources they need to succeed in a competitive commercial market.

DuMontier is proud of his track record but he and others are quick to point first to those who years ago made wise business decisions.

“I credit our business people that served on the council in the past,” college president McDonald says. “They set the stage for growth.”

McDonald says tribal leaders made thoughtful choices, starting in the 1940s. He says smart businessmen like Walter McDonald and Walter Morgeau paved the way. He says those men and other leaders regulated logging practices to preserve timber. Once reservation land was allotted in the early 1900s, these men also encouraged ranchers to share their small allotted plots of grazing land with neighboring ranchers so they could all own enough land to raise enough cattle to make a profit. The council also administered a revolving credit program. In addition, these tribal council members worked to lease the Kerr Dam to the Montana Power Co.

That lease and timber sales are the two largest profit-making operations on the reservation, providing much of the capital to start other tribal businesses and programs.

Tribal council member Carole Lankford agrees with McDonald that the people are essential in building this strong economy. She says, “The consistency in the staff is part of our success.”

Tribal Chairman Fred Matt agrees that stability is important, a factor not often in play at other reservations.

“It is to our benefit to not have a high turnover rate on the council or in the administration,” he says. “Turnover creates chaos and hardship on government.”

Not only is the turnover rate low, but the organization of the tribal government in relation to tribally owned businesses also sets the Flathead Reservation apart from others. The 10-member tribal council heads the government but it is not involved directly in daily business decisions.

“If you want a business to fail, have a government run it,” DuMontier says.

Flathead’s government has close ties to its businesses but it leaves the business decisions to the company’s council-appointed board of directors rather than the council itself. The board then answers to the company shareholders, which is the tribal council. Boards decide how much of the company profits go back to the shareholders and into the tribes’ general fund. All programs on the reservation request funds from the general account. Based on the needs of the reservation, the shareholders allocate money to programs or businesses. In its first year, S&K Technologies paid the shareholders—the tribe itself—$150,000.

While DuMontier would rather spend all of his days in the comfort of the outdoors participating in what he coins “chainsaw therapy” or cutting wood, or spending time with his children and grandchildren, he knows the importance of his role in the tribal community. And with great anticipation of what information technology could bring home to his people he eagerly leads the tribes into the new age of technology.

S&K Technologies is on its way to making perhaps the largest footprint in tribal business history.

S&K Technologies was born out of another tribal entity, S&K Electronics, a manufacturing company. Fewer than five years ago, DuMontier and his colleagues realized the government manufacturing market was on the decline, while the information system market was on the incline, so developing S&K Technologies was the next logical step. Since then it has quickly crawled out of infancy into adulthood with the help of its designation as an 8A business program.

It quickly won a contract with the U.S. Air Force working with corrosion control. Then it landed a contract with the United Space Alliance and NASA at Johnson Space Center, developing computer programs for the space shuttle, designing United Space Alliance Web pages and maintaining the server.

This March, S&K Technologies struck gold when it signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force in connection with the Royal Saudi Air Force in Saudi Arabia. The contract grants the tribal company $336 million over the next eight years.

The Royal Saudi Air Force recently bought 72 F15 jets from the United States and S&K Technologies will provide technical support to the Saudis via the U.S. Air Force. S&K Technologies acts as a middleman in the repair process. When a plane part breaks or fails inspection, DuMontier’s company uses information technology to find the best firm to fix the part in the most timely manner.

While tribal members are enthusiastic about the business climate, some express misgivings about ways in which it’s changed the reservation.

“We’ve lost a lot of culture,” McDonald says. “We had to jump into the mainstream.” He explains the difficulties in running a business and trying to attend ceremonial gatherings that sometimes last into the early morning hours. He says it’s hard to get the days off of work to participate.

“A lot of tribal tradition is lost this way,” McDonald says.

It is not just the ceremonial life that is fading, but the language is vanishing one word at a time. McDonald says the tribes’ languages are seldom used and his faculty struggles to get people to take the language classes offered through the college.

“I think people think they have to give up who they are to succeed,” he says.

But S&K Technologies executives believe it can succeed without fundamentally changing reservation life.

“That is the beauty of information technology, you can do it anywhere,” says Rhonda Whiting, the company’s vice president of communication and education. “You’re not going to upset the environment. For reservations it is a real advantage, especially for those who are isolated.”

The advantages of an information technology enterprise are welcomed by many tribal members who look to leaders like DuMontier to lead the way. But DuMontier is uncomfortable in the spotlight and is quick to point to the support and success of other tribal leaders.

“It’s amazing what you can get done when you don’t care who gets the credit,” DuMontier says.