Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians Chairman Jamie Azure speaks at the Tribal Leaders Summit in Bismarck, N.D., on Sept. 10, 2026. (Photo by Jack Dura/North Dakota Monitor)
BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) – Tribal leaders should support their community’s youth to spur growth and break away from old politics that hinder opportunities, the leader of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians told college students, instructors and other tribal officials Thursday.
Tribal Chairman Jamie Azure said he wanted to break away from that “standard approach” soon after his entry into tribal government as a council member in 2016. He outlined how his tribe worked to engage youth and drive toward goals for the Turtle Mountain community after trainings on strategic planning for Native nations showed why opportunities were lacking.
“We learned that if we are going to move forward as a nation, we needed to start planning on moving forward by using correct data, by using higher education, by showing people that our sovereign nations weren’t just little specks on a map,” Azure told an audience at the 29th Tribal Leaders Summit in Bismarck.
In 2018, Turtle Mountain leaders and the Native Governance Center organized a youth summit with roundtables to ask young people what challenges, opportunities or lack thereof they saw in the community, Azure said.
The tribe began a 10-year strategic plan based on that feedback, “and that’s still going through to today,” the chairman said.
The tribe built a water park for a safe, fun place for families and job opportunities for young people, and a recovery center to help people move forward from addiction, Azure said.
The tribe raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour and made youth employees eligible for a 401(k) retirement account and insurance after six months, he said.
“That to me is sustainable security for our people for the next 40, 50 years,” the chairman said.
Additionally, the tribe’s natural resources group and 25 to 50 youth workers cleaned up and transformed the beaches of Gordon Lake into Sky Chief Park. The youth asked the tribal council to prohibit alcohol at the lake, which passed, Azure said. And those teenagers began to enforce the rules, he said. Parking and camping areas got cleaner, he said.
“You can sit back and you can watch our young ones really just take a grasp and say, ‘This is who we are.’ That’s true sovereignty. That’s people coming together and saying, ‘We have the power,’” Azure said.
Tribes can take the example of the youth at Turtle Mountain and other tribes and “say we need to come together unitedly” and move forward on issues together, he said. He noted Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake brought a voting rights lawsuit regarding North Dakota’s legislative redistricting that is ongoing.
“We continue to fight and we continue to move forward,” Azure said.
He said he’s become more connected with other tribal leaders across North Dakota the last two years, especially over developments at the federal level, such as tribal college funding cuts.
“Sovereignty does not mean that we work alone,” the chairman said.
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