The Ann Arbor Tribal Council

The Ann Arbor Tribal Council

The followlng text is from a forthcoming Tribal Council pamphlet to be distributed to students, street people, travelers and new corners in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. A couple of the organizations are not formally affiliated with the Tribal Council at this time, but we wanted to present as many of the functioning community serve-the-people organizations as do exist now. We expect the Tribal Council to include more groups by Spring when we plan to do a more comprehensivo pamphlet about our emerging Rainbow Colony here in Washtenaw County. LET IT GROW!

STATEMENT OF THE ANN ARBOR TRIBAL COUNCIL

July 27,1971

Sisters and Brothers of Ann Arbor:

As our community grows it becomes more and more necessary for us to begin to provide for our own needs. And since so many of us face the same solutions which will help us take care of people's problems and our common needs. We have already created a lot of new people's institutions and service organizations which have developed spontaneously out of the conditions in which we live, but our needs are such by now that we have to start thinking about how to pull everything together so we can make the most effective use of our present and potential resources.

A number of people from the community have been working for some months to create an Ann Arbor Tribal Council which can serve as the framework for our future growth and development as a community of new people. We have been meeting and discussing our common problems, working on projects like the Commuaity Parks Program, and trying to come up with ways to involve more people in community service work. We know that there are lots of people who would like to do things with brothers and sisters but don't know how to get together. At the same time we are concerned with expanding the present scope of the Tribal Council so we can take on larger projects and get more done in terms of serving the needs of the people.

What we are now trying to do is funnel energy into existing community service groups and create People's Committees to meet the needs not now being met in the areas of food, health, community activities, education, housing, transportation, and defense, with the Tribal Council as the linking organization. The idea is to have all the interests in the community represented on a Steering Committee, and to have as many people as possible involved in work with one or more of the existing organizations or the new People's Committees, so all of us can share in the decisions and in the work which affects the whole community. The Committee would then meet once a month to get report from the various committees and to plan new projects which would require the cooperation of two or more of the People's Committees or organizations. The People's Committees, on the other hand, would meet whenever necessary and carry on their work independently of the Steering Committee or the other Committees unless they had common projects to work on together.

But the Tribal Council has to be responsive to the community, whether they work with the committees or organizations or not. We want to make sure that everybody's views are represented in matters which affect the whole community, and we will schedule mass meetings from time to time at which all the people who want to say anything about anything that's happening can do so. The People's Committees will be open to everyone who wants to work on them, and we hope they will provide a framework which will enable the community to make the best possible use of its own energies, resources, and time so we can deal with our problems as a people and grow as a people.

Only by taking advantage of every opportunity open to us and working together to deal with our own needs can we come to have some control over our own lives and the life of our new community as a whole. All Power to the People!!!

- Tribal Council