Radio Podcast re: Grand Traverse Band’s Successful Child Welfare Program

More than 18,000 children and teens live in Michigan’s child welfare system. Officials in Lansing say there are too many kids who have been taken from their homes to live in the care of strangers. In Leelanau County social workers with the local Indian tribe say they had almost 40 kids in state care a decade ago – but not anymore. What the Grand Traverse Band is doing right And what native traditions of family life can teach us about helping struggling families stick together.

Here is the radio podcast.

Grand Traverse Band Revenue Sharing Slowly Declining

From the Leelanau Enterprise (H/T Indianz):

This winter’s “2-percent” payments from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians are down for the third year in a row to the lowest level in more than a decade.

The twice-yearly payments represent two percent of the revenues earned from video slot machines at the tribe’s Leelanau Sands Casino in Peshawbestown and Turtle Creek Casino in Grand Traverse County. The tribe is required to pay out the money to local units of government in the immediate vicinity of tribal casinos for governmental services and “for impacts associated with existence” of tribal casinos in their vicinity under terms of a 1993 federal court consent decree. Since 1994, the tribe has paid out around $18 million in “2-percent” money.

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GTB Revenue Sharing

From the Leelanau Enterprise (H/T Indianz):

2 percent funding process begins

County receives 10 applications for aid from tribal program.

Requests for “2-percent” casino revenue funding from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians will be considered for endorsement by the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners at the board’s executive committee next week.

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