‘Famous Dave’ becomes top BIA regulator

Renee Ruble

Monday, Dec. 29, 2003 | 11:42 a.m.

EDINA, Minn. -- Dave Anderson said he just kept cooking ribs while awaiting confirmation to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It took months, but now the man behind Famous Dave's restaurants is eager to drop the apron and head to Washington. Among his goals: resolving a long-running lawsuit over the government's mismanagement of an Indian trust fund, and gaining the trust of the nation's tribes.

Anderson is the first to say he was surprised that the Bush administration called on him to take over the BIA, which is responsible for managing almost 56 million acres of land held in trust for American Indians.

"I'm not a tribal leader. I'm not a bureaucrat. I'm not a historian or an attorney. I've pretty much been in business my whole life," said Anderson, a Choctaw and Chippewa and an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Lake Superior Band of Ojibwa.

Many people have questioned why he would want to oversee the much-criticized agency, Anderson said. He says he considers it an obligation, after his own success following bankruptcies, alcoholism and substance abuse.

The trust fund lawsuit, which alleges the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars owed to more than 300,000 American Indians, is an opportunity to establish trust between tribes and the government, Anderson said.

"That is something that does need to be settled, and I'm hopeful we can get that done during this administration because we really need to address the responsibility the BIA has so that this never happens again," he said.

Anderson would not discuss another lawsuit -- calling it a policy question -- that seeks $25 billion from the federal government on behalf of perhaps thousands of Indian students allegedly abused at BIA boarding schools around the country.

Yet when asked if he thought abuse occurred, Anderson said yes. His own father, he said, was whipped as a child with switches for speaking his language at a BIA boarding school in Lawrence, Kan.

Anderson has been in business since he was 18, including selling wholesale plants to florists in Chicago and traveling the powwow circuit selling homemade jewelry alongside his mother's fry bread stand. From those beginnings, he went on to serve as chief executive for his Lac Courte Oreilles Band and co-founded Grand Casinos Inc., the former casino management company for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in central Minnesota.

But he thinks Washington will be one of his biggest challenges.

"I'm a business person and I'm used to getting things done," Anderson said. "It remains to be seen how much the political atmosphere in Washington, D.C., will let me get things done."

Anderson says he'll bring a team approach to the BIA, visiting tribes to ask for their input and support for his agency.

"As an organization we need to be spending more time with our constituents. We need to establish better lines of communication," he said. "The BIA would not exist if it wasn't for Indian tribes and I think we need to understand that."

He said tribes need to take advantage of Indian gambling and invest casino profits in diversifying tribal enterprises and providing education for tribal members. Tribes that have become highly successful, he said, are the ones that took action to be self-governing and created economic infrastructures that put a high priority on education.

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