In a previous Rawhide Press article, the SCP community staff committed to post the results from the Economic Development (ED) Survey. The survey asked seven questions:
- If there were 3 things about the life of our people that should absolutely stay the same, what would those be?
- Which values would you say the tribe is doing the best job of maintaining? Struggling to maintain?
- What cultural practices do you think are most important to maintaining our values?
- From our previous surveys, the values of working together and helping each other were identified, how can we use these to create economic activity?
- Of the Tribe’s economic development activities what do you think is most compatible with our culture? Least compatible?
- Can you think of aspects of our traditions or culture that you think we should make part of our future economic development?
- What do we need to do to better prepare our youth to help them have a bright economic future?
Well, it turned out that there were enough responses to fill a 25 page document! Lémlm-t-š! However, that seemed like too much information to post in the blog, so this post will give a brief reminder of the Economic Development element, and provide a snippet of the input offered by the community. Of course you can always look back at ED blog posts, or visit the SCP staff in their offices if you have questions, get curious about, or simply prefer to see all 25 pages of the results.
The economic development surveys were developed by taking a look at the Spokane Tribal Community responses where culture, working together, a simpler time, money isn’t everything, a need for jobs and various other comments were received. Identifying the Tribes values around economic development is an important first step in creating the Economic Development Element to ensure that it, as well as the created goals, objectives, and policies are reflective of the Tribal voice.
Our first survey, Economic development with life/work balance, was designed to identify the values associated with economic development. The survey was distributed at the General Council meeting held on November 26, 2011, email blasts, the Sustainable Community Project Blog site, a poster with the survey questions was set outside of the planning department in the Administration Building, and at the Wellpinit and Spokane arts and crafts fairs. So far we received 47 surveys back from the community and 19 sticky notes on the poster. For results from the survey please visit or call the SCP office and ask for the Community staff in charge of compiling ED survey results.
The second survey, I’m happiest when . . ., was designed to identify what type of job would make you happiest. The survey was distributed at the Wellpinit School Christmas program on Dec. 15, 2011, and at the Spokane, Wellpinit, New House and West End Youth Centers’ Christmas activities that were held on Dec. 21, 2011. We received 170 surveys from the community at these events. See the graph below, which depicts the tallied results from the I’m happiest when…. survey. Participants were asked to circle up to ten of the statements that most closely represented them. Listed below the graph are the 45 statements participants could choose from followed by the number of times each statement was circled in parenthesis.
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