Friday, August 21, 2009

Week's End

It’s the end of the week and I want to thank all my team members for a job well done. Our tribal government employees are working hard to improve services to you, our tribal members. This week our Indian Education Parent Committee met for the first time about the 2009/10 school year. They talked about falling test scores and how to better meet our children’s needs.

Our Health Clinic staff did a fantastic job, as usual, on the 26th Annual Tulalip Health Fair. Cardiovascular health was the focus for this year’s health fair. There were 32 education booths to educate and inform tribal members about preventative medicine, healthy hearts, diabetes and other preventable diseases. Don “Penoke” Hatch spearheaded the blood drive and recruited community members to donate blood to the Puget Sound Blood Center. In all, the center collected 68 pints of blood. Each pint can potentially save 3 people. So, kudos Tulalip, we may have saved 204 lives!


Thanks again to our Lushootseed Department, our community members and our kids for all your work in making the Lushootseed Language Camp a success. For two weeks in a row our teachers, youth workers, volunteers, and students worked hard learning the language and making gifts for their giveaway. The play was wonderful. It makes my heart happy and I’m just so proud when I see our children speaking the language of our ancestors.

We’ve set dates for administration move-in. I know, you’ve heard that before. Believe me, I’ve gotten a little frustrated about all the setbacks, but this is it. Our traffic signals are in place and the construction crew is putting the finishing touches on our dXdiGidteGelalftX, or Administration Building. The new building will be open for business on September 14th. Some tribal government departments may be closed on September 10th and 11th while we move our things to the new building, so I apologize in advance for the inconvenience. The first visitors meeting in the new Board Room will be held on October 3rd from 9-12:00, and we’ll have our Grand Opening and open house the same day, starting at 12:00.

We’ve got some exciting events planned for next week, like our sGaaGateGel Community Meeting. We’ll be hearing from Patti Gobin in Special Projects and Mithun Architects about the Tulalip Tribes Vision Plan. I really hope you can make it to the meeting to give us your input about how the reservation will look in the future. The meeting will be held next Thursday, August 27th, in the tribal gym. Dinner is served at 5:00pm and the meeting starts at 5:30pm.

Be sure to watch the blog for updates next week. Hoyt!

cisanla;

Shelly L. Lacy