By LEE JUILLERAT 

H&N Regional Editor

October 22, 2010

     BEATTY — Gary Frost isn’t an attention seeker.

   Given the choice, he prefers to let others do the talking. Since being elected chairman of the Klamath Tribes earlier this year, Frost has mostly worked behind the scenes. He feels comfortable sharing responsibilities with the nine other tribal council members, including six other first time members.

   “I do delegate,” he says. “Without the other members, this job would be overwhelming. We’re trying to function as a 10-member team.”

   Frost, 59, won election to a three-year term in his third try, receiving the most votes in a three person field that included incumbent chairman Joe Kirk and Kirk’s predecessor   , Allen Foreman.

   “I beat them both, to my surprise,” he says.

   Frost believes he won because voters believed his campaign pledge to improve tribal government transparency, including communication between the tribal council and tribal members.

   “They deserve that, and that’s who I’m taking my direction from,” he says of tribal members, about 3,500 people of Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin descent. He estimates about 1,000 live in the Klamath Basin “and you meet them face-to-face.”

   Frost speaks deliberately. He chooses his words carefully, aware that his words might be interpreted different ways by different groups or individuals.

   “Being a new player to all of this, like all new council members, you have to hit the ground running to get up to speed on so many issues,” he says, admitting, “It’s been a little more than I expected.”

   Working without an agenda

   Since taking office, Frost has made trips to Salem and Washington, D.C., and met hundreds of people with various political agendas and goals.

   “I don’t have a personal agenda,” he says. “My concern is for the benefit of all tribal members. I can’t stress that enough.”

   His focus are tribal health issues — “That’s where I’m at, Indian health services” — and housing.

   Frost is working with intertribal programs that provide services for drug and alcohol treatment and encourage education, including high school equivalency degrees.  

   Since moving to Chiloquin five years ago, he’s been involved in and overseen youth football, wrestling and baseball programs, including the eight-team Chiloquin Little League that’s grown and now involves 130 youth ages 5 to 12.

   “Prevention programs are what I call them,” he explains. “We’re dealing with a lot of youth things to get them on, and keep them on, the right track.”     

   He wants to keep the tribes on the right track, which he believes includes increasing interaction with other tribes on items of mutual interest, and strengthening a sense of unity among Klamaths.   He doesn’t support efforts to create a Modoc Nation and is bothered by lingering divisions between tribal members stemming from the tribe’s 1954 termination.

   “I’d like to see the Klamath Tribes as one,” says Frost, noting his ancestry is a mix of Modoc, Klamath and Mollaha. “We’re all one. We’re one tribe.”