When the City of Portland established its Tribal Relations Program in 2017, it turned heads. In a city with one of the nation’s largest populations of Native residents, creating a program to bridge the long-neglected relationships between Tribal and city governments seemed obvious – and overdue.
The trailblazing program became a quick model for how other U.S. cities and counties could reimagine their relationships with Tribal leaders and Native residents.
But a cycle of tumultuous firings, staffing cuts and political neglect has reduced the office to a shadow of its former self. The office has sat empty for more than seven months, putting programs and projects on pause.
Now, as Portland ushers in a new form of government, city managers are poised to hire yet another new employee to lead the troubled office. Indigenous community leaders and Tribal officials see an opportunity to get the program back on track – if city leaders are willing to listen.
“I think that the city could be doing more, at least in partnership or engagement with the Native community around this,” said William Miller, Blackfeet and Cherokee, who is the executive director of the NAYA Action Fund, a political advocacy group lobbying for Native communities across Oregon and Washington. “It feels very ‘us versus them.’”
Their tolerance for allowing the city to further impede the office’s progress is growing thin. If the city continues to struggle to staff and support the program, it could lead to legal troubles over treaty rights – among other damages.
“If they fail, it will be another example of the city not following through on saying that they have a commitment to Native people,” said Laura John, a descendant of the Blackfeet and Seneca Nations who led the city’s Tribal Relations office for five years. “It will tarnish the reputation of the city and create harm.”
Origins of Portland’s relationship with Native nations
The land where the Willamette and the Columbia rivers meet has been home to dozens of different Native nations since time immemorial.
Since settlers first forcefully occupied this land in the mid-1800s, the city of Portland has failed to build trust with sovereign Tribal leaders and Indigenous residents.
In 1866, just over a decade after the city was incorporated, the head of the city’s police department wrote a letter to then-mayor Henry Failing, warning him of a potential smallpox outbreak in a group of “Indians” who had set up camp outside of town. In the letter, which OPB/UNN obtained through the city’s archives, he assured Failing that the group would be surveilled and prevented from entering city limits, but did not suggest offering any medical help. The city archives have no further details about what became of this group.
A century later, the city saw an influx of Native residents, as the federal government began to cut support to reservations, dissolve peoples’ Tribal status and urge Native Americans to move to cities and assimilate, in what is known as the Termination Era. The act of having their identity and community stripped away – paired with the discrimination and inequities of city life – was traumatizing for Indigenous people across the country.
In Portland, elected officials noticed its new residents struggling, and drafted a plan to create an Urban Indian Program in the early 1970s. Its focus would be on connecting Native Portlanders with healthcare, education and job programs. The plan appeared to go nowhere. Ron Buell was chief of staff to then-mayor Neil Goldschmidt at the time. In 1973, Buell wrote a letter criticizing the early draft of the program for not going far enough “to rectify past mistakes and right current wrongs.”
The city didn’t revisit a relationship with its Native residents, let alone neighboring Tribal governments, until the 2010s.
As former city commissioner Amanda Fritz remembers, it happened through a series of missteps.
Like when, as she recalled, some city officials didn’t know that Tribal governments were federally mandated to be involved in the city’s Superfund cleanup work at the Portland Harbor, leading to miscommunication. Or when she said “welcome” to then-chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Cheryle Kennedy as she stepped into a city building.
“And she said, ‘No, this is our land, so welcome to you,’” Fritz said in a recent interview. “And I was like: Open mouth, insert foot.”
TIMELINE: Portland’s rocky relationship with Indigenous communities
Portland had no formal policy for working with Tribal governments when city decisions – like excavating land for a new development or water filtration projects – could impede treaty rights. Paul Lumley, who was the executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission at the time, said that when the city did engage with tribes, it was inconsistent and inequitable.
“You can’t just speak with one tribe and say, ‘This is the voice of all tribes,’” said Lumley, a citizen of the Yakama Nation, who is now the CEO of Cascade AIDS Project. “They all have their own histories and need to make their own decisions.”
The Tribal Relations Program
In 2012, Fritz led a non-binding city resolution directing the city to “mutually formalize coordination and consultation with its Tribal Government Partners.” Two years later, the city formally recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day for the first time. Four years after that, Portland hired its first part-time Tribal liaison, a position embedded in the mayor’s office. It morphed into a full-time position in the new Tribal Relations Program under the city’s Government Relations office by the end of 2017.
Laura John was the first person in that role.
John, who grew up in Portland surrounded by a tight-knit Native community, saw the value of focusing both on intergovernmental relationships with sovereign tribes and on supporting Native Portlanders – many of whom aren’t citizens of local tribes. John spent months researching the few state and city Tribal relations programs that existed across the U.S. Then she got to work.
Her impact was swift. John established Tribal liaisons in each city bureau – people she could regularly check in with about work that may intersect with tribes. She created trainings to educate employees on treaty rights, and advised the city on its legal requirements to work with Tribal governments on major city projects, like the Bull Run water filtration plant. For decades, Portland police weren’t required to follow Tribal court orders that offer protections to Native victims of certain crimes, including domestic violence, sexual assault, and harassment. John helped create a city policy mandating that PPB recognize these orders.
Under John, the city held its first Tribal Nations Summit in 2018, which brought officials from seven Tribal governments into City Hall to discuss their priorities.
“For some of the tribes, this was the first time that the city had ever reached out to them and invited them in,” John said. “And you had city officials finally realizing that these leaders are their peers. It was the start of something powerful.”
City officials began visiting tribes more regularly to discuss overlapping issues and build relationships.
But that work fizzled with the onset of COVID-19, and the city began shirking its commitments to the program. The city’s own 2021 deadline to establish a land acknowledgement statement, create a training for all staff on Tribal Nations, and formalize a plan for how the city should partner with sovereign Tribal governments, came and went with nothing achieved.
In 2023, the city hired former Metro Councilor Sam Chase, who is non-Native, to lead its Office of Government Relations, which oversaw the Tribal Relations Program. At the time, John was on medical leave for knee surgery and for stress related to her job. John returned in mid-April. On her first day back at work, Chase said he was going to place her on a “performance improvement plan” for not completing projects swiftly enough, among other things.
John said she felt like she was being “forced out” of the job. The stress of her return to work prompted John’s doctor to recommend that she go back on medical leave. By the end of April, Chase informed John she would be laid off if she didn’t return from medical leave, stating that she had “exhausted all available leave options.”
John resigned, accepting a severance payout of $136,000. She said she felt that she “had no other option.”
Fritz, who was no longer on City Council at that time, called Chase’s decision a “disaster” and noted that John had “glowing reviews” from across the city and Tribal governments.
“It shows a lack of understanding,” Fritz continued. “I think you have to have the humility to realize that you don’t know, and to say, ‘I’m willing to learn.’ And I’m just not seeing that from him.”
The program only continued to lose momentum after John’s exit. John hired two employees during her tenure. After she left, the city eliminated both positions. John was succeeded by Miranda Mishan, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who previously worked under John. Mishan left voluntarily after five months. The position sat vacant for nearly six months before Chase hired Adam Becenti, Diné, to lead the program in April 2024.
Chase asked Becenti to establish a new strategic plan for the nearly dormant office, one that could help set it on course to meet the needs of Portland’s new government. The pressure to swiftly complete a plan was hard on Becenti, who understood that rebuilding trust with Tribal leaders and communities after a period of unreliable Tribal Relations leadership would take time.
“You can’t rush relationships,” Becenti said. “You can’t demand a plan without getting support from critical Tribal partners or create a plan without Tribal voices leading this work. What this tells me is that the city still does not understand how Indian Country works.”
A sudden exit
Chase fired Becenti after five months on the job. In a memo Chase wrote about the program’s problems, which OPB/UNN received through a public records request, Chase pointed to issues he had with Becenti making commitments to tribes or city officials without Chase’s approval, and concerns with Becenti missing deadlines regarding the strategic plan.
“Adam has a strong resistance to collaboration and partnership with subject matter experts and leadership within the city,” Chase wrote.
Becenti was given the choice to step down or be fired. He chose firing, because he said he had no desire to leave the role. Unlike John, Becenti didn’t receive a severance package.
Reflecting on the tumultuous moment five months later, Becenti said he believes the city had misplaced priorities.
“I was often asked how my actions or work benefited the city or city leaders, when we should have been asking how this benefits tribes and the Portland Indigenous community,” he said. “I was always taught to serve the collective community before the system.”
Months later, Chase said he’s learning how to slow down when making decisions about the program, especially as a non-Native person.
“There’s been times where I’ve been like, ‘Let’s just get this done and do this,” said Chase. “And I’ve had to push back to say, ‘No, we need to make sure we’re getting it right.’”
But, he said, he “absolutely” feels a great sense of urgency to get the program back on track.
The impact of Becenti’s exit – and the office’s current vacancy – has been felt across city bureaus.
David Abrahamson, a captain with the Portland Police Bureau, became PPB’s Tribal liaison in June 2024, and quickly saw how the office could help mend the history of distrust Indigenous communities have with law enforcement.
As an example, Abrahamason, who is not Indigenous, said Becenti helped PPB build a relationship with the Warm Springs Police Department, something that hadn’t existed before.
“They trusted him, and he shared that trust with me,” Abrahamson said. “That’s powerful work.”
But with Becenti’s abrupt exit, those relationships have begun to fade.
“Those connections have been strained because trust has been questioned,” said Abrahamson. “I am a reflection of government, and because government has removed him, creating harm, there’s a reluctance to work with me.”
The city considers a new model
In March, Portland announced plans to hire a new Tribal Relations Program manager. Unlike the initial role, this position was more narrowly focused on serving as a liaison between city and Tribal governments. According to the city, it’s interested in creating a separate position outside the Office of Government Relations to focus on community engagement work with Native Portlanders.
This has been a longtime structural debate in the city: Whether the Tribal Relations office should focus solely on working with Tribal governments or also work to support Portland’s Native residents.
In Multnomah County, the Tribal relations liaison role focuses on both engaging with Tribal governments and with Native county residents. JR Lilly, the county Tribal relations liaison, said it would be disrespectful to splinter the work.
“Tribal citizens are not just another community of color because of their unique political status as a Tribal citizen, and our engagement with them should be different than anyone else’s,” said Lilly, Diné. “It is not a DEI project. It is not an equity issue.”
While John believes splitting the two responsibilities into different departments would “diminish” the strength of the office, Becenti said it could direct more city investment toward the two areas of work.
What both John and Becenti agree on, though, is that it’s a decision that must be made with community involvement. Becenti was critical of the city’s decision to open the new Tribal Relations position without more lengthy engagement with Indigenous Portlanders and Native nations.
“You’re just continuing to make decisions about us without us,” he said.
Portland’s Native community speaks up
Becenti’s abrupt firing has left many in Portland’s Native community wary of trusting the city.
“I was just blindsided, we all were, when Adam was terminated,” said John Spence, Aaniiih citizen of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana. Spence is a member of the Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable (PILR), an Indigenous leadership organization that began in 2007 as a gathering of people from 24 Indigenous agencies across Portland.
In November, PILR met following Becenti’s termination. They were joined by then mayor-elect Keith Wilson, then-mayor Ted Wheeler and Chase, with the city’s government relations office. Those in attendance described it as contentious.
“It was a lot of people talking about their surprise and their indignation that something like this happened,” Spence said, referencing Becenti’s termination. “So again, the [city] government is getting accused of lack of transparency.”
On Nov. 18, PILR sent a letter to the mayor’s office with a request to “rebuild trust with Portland’s Native community.”
The letter included a list of six recommendations. The number one recommendation was to establish a standalone Office of Tribal Government Relations led by a director level position and guided by a Native advisory council.
Other recommendations included addressing systemic inequities within the city’s hiring and recruitment process; returning land to Native nations and organizations; and creating a formal consultation process with Native nations as well as engagement with the urban Indigenous community.
“I think that time and time again, we’ve seen harm done to Native people who have been in roles in the Office of Government Relations at the City of Portland, which was the precipice for this letter,” said Miller, with the NAYA Action Fund.
The City of Portland responded on Jan. 24.
In the letter, Wilson detailed the steps he said the city would be taking to address community concerns and “rebuild trust with Portland’s Native community.”
Wilson promised to hire a consultant to provide recommendations for the city’s recruitment, retention and support of Native employees and develop staff training and “explore” a paid holiday for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
“I recognize that these steps do not address each of your recommendations,” Wilson wrote. “However, we believe this process will establish a strong foundation for advancing the City’s relationship with Tribal governments and Native and Indigenous communities in the years to come.”
Chase said he believes the Tribal Relations Program has struggled because it’s tried to do too much, “where it’s had everything thrown at it.” He sees the Tribal government relations work distinctly separate from community engagement with Native Portlanders.
“Those roles have gotten blended together and they’re really two separate bodies of work,” Chase said.
Portland’s redesign of the Tribal Relations Program was influenced by Seattle’s model, he said. Chase said the decision was also influenced by input from different Native community groups, like PILR, and Tribal governments.
“It feels like I’m getting a lot of enthusiasm and excitement from the tribes about what we’re actually doing,” he said. “So that feels satisfying.”
Nils Tilstom, deputy director of government relations, said that their office was “pleasantly surprised” to receive more than 60 applications for the new position. Once that position is filled, the city will start talking to Native Portlanders about whether a separate Native community engagement position is needed. That work will be led by Amanda Gracia-Snell, the city’s new Engagement Officer. In an interview with UNN/OPB, she didn’t offer any details about what the process would look like to decide whether another office is needed.
Looking to the future
As the city prepares to bring on its fourth Tribal Relations Program manager in the past 8 years, Indigenous Portlanders are cautiously optimistic.
Kati Robb, a Water Bureau employee and Red River Métis citizen, has led a group for Indigenous staff since last May. This group meets regularly to discuss city policies, plan events and offer support if issues arise at work. Robb said city managers met with the Indigenous PDX resource group at the start of the year, to get feedback on the Tribal Relations Program.
From that conversation, she said, “I was feeling there might be an interest in healing from the city.”
But she’d like to see more accountability from the Office of Government Relations to keep the program running. For starters, she’d like to see the office put out an annual report and report to City Council on its accomplishments and shortfalls. She’d also like to see the city show they’re actually listening to Native employees.
“We are asked for input over and over and over again,” Robb said. “It can feel like a real drain on resources and trust. I think people would like to see some movement from the city before we’re asked questions again.”
There’s also hope that the city’s newly restructured government can strengthen the program. In January, Portland scrapped a century-old governance system that put city council members in charge of city programs and bureaus. Now, a centralized city administrator’s office oversees all city departments, allowing councilors to focus on policy making.
Before Portland City Councilor Angelita Morillo was elected in November, she worked for former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, under the previous style of government. In that role, she served as the office’s Tribal liaison, where she worked closely with John, the city’s inaugural Tribal Relations manager. She saw how the Tribal Relations Program appeared to operate at the whim of whichever elected official oversaw the program.
Unless it was a clear priority for an elected official, she said, “Tribal Relations was sort of treated as this side project, instead of something that should be integrated as a policy lens and in everything that we do.”
Morillo said she’d like to see all new city policies go through a process, not unlike a legal review, where the Tribal Relations office measures the policy’s impact on Native communities.
“I think that it should almost play a role, almost like the auditor, where they’re an accountability branch for us,” she said.
John said it shouldn’t be too difficult for the new hire to step into the role to get the program back on track and meet expectations.
“The city has an opportunity to continue that momentum,” she said, “to be a leader in this work as a city government, to be a model of how to do it the right way.”
But there’s a risk that comes with not getting it right.
If the program continues to disappoint Indigenous Portlanders and not reflect their views, John said the community and Tribal leaders may become less interested in working with the city. That could potentially land the city in legal trouble, for ignoring Tribal agreements, and further tarnish how Portland is perceived by Native communities.
Already, the absence of leadership in the Tribal Relations office has led to erasure.
For five consecutive years the first week of May was Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Awareness Week in Portland City Hall. Led by the city’s Tribal Relations office, the events began in 2018 and featured panel discussions, film screenings, and rallies to bring awareness to the disproportionate rates of violence against Native people. It was often as much of a chance to shine light on the crisis as it was an opportunity to bring Portland’s Native community together.
“It helped us gain momentum in making sure that the Tribal citizens in the community felt seen and celebrated,” said Robb.
In 2023 and 2024, that week was reduced to a single day, acknowledged by a brief Portland City Council proclamation.
This year, the week came and went in City Hall without any recognition.
SIDEBARS
No One Model to Tribal Relations Work
Every U.S. city with some kind of tribal affairs office has a slightly different structure.
In Albuquerque, the city’s Native American Affairs office does both Native community engagement and tribal government relations. In Denver, the American Indian Commission focuses strictly on the needs of the city’s Native residents. And in Seattle, the city has an office focused on government tribal affairs and community engagement programs embedded in different city departments.
Tim Lehman, a citizen of Northern Arapaho, has been Seattle’s Indigenous Planning Strategist in the city’s planning department since the position was created two years ago. His job, he said, is to “decolonize what planning looks like” in city government, by bringing local Indigenous perspectives into policy conversations.
He said his work wouldn’t make sense to couple with the city’s tribal government program, since many Native Seattlites aren’t citizens of tribes that the government works with.
“There’s some overlap, but it’s also a distinctly different population,” said Lehman.
Portland is using Seattle’s structure as a model for its new program. There is one significant difference: Seattle has an Indigenous Advisory Council, which gives city government input on issues affecting Indigenous people in Seattle. Creating a similar body is one of PILR’s top recommendations.
Sam Chase, with the city’s Office of Government Relations, said the city won’t consider adding something like this until it gets more public feedback on whether it’s necessary.
Engagement with Native Nations
One of the main roles of Portland’s tribal relations manager is to engage in conversations with Native nations across Oregon.
That has happened with different nations to varying degrees of success.
For the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, that relationship has felt largely positive, according to a statement shared with UNN/OPB.
“We have valued the department’s commitment to regular communications and visits to our Reservation, communication that we hope continues and increases as the department evolves,” said Jonathan Smith, former Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Tribal Council and current Tribal Council member.
In his three years as CEO of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Kurtis Barker said that he felt like communication with the city, including through the tribal relations program, has been limited, including when the city’s formal tribal relations manager Adam Becenti was in that position.
“And if [Becenti] was communicating, it would have maybe been advertising an event or something that’s happening in the Portland area,” Barker said. “But creating a government to government relationship with the city? I feel like that wasn’t really happening.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story did not fully explain the process through which Laura John left the city’s Tribal Relations Office.
This story was updated to attribute a quote to the proper Warm Springs official.
This story was written and reported by Alex Zielinski and Nika Bartoo-Smith, edited by Christine Trudeau, Andrew Theen and Anna Griffin and digitally produced by John Hill, with an illustration by Jonathan Case and visual editing by Kristyna Wentz-Graff.
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