Building a vision for the future Crowell celebrates 30 years in Community Development

Scott Crowell has visions. When he looks out his office window, at the crossroads of Division Ave. and Suquamish Way, he sees the past, the present, and the future.

He remembers when there was only a patch of woods where the Suquamish Museum now stands. He remembers when the building he now works in was a restaurant in a strip mall and the building now housing the police station and Wellness Center was a grocery store.

The future he sees in places like the patch of woods and the open field located at the other corners of the same intersection.

As director of Community Development, Crowell’s job is to have a vision for those spaces and others like them across the Port Madison Reservation. Celebrating his 30th anniversary working for the tribe in April, Crowell says he’s proud of how far the tribe has come and excited for the future it is building.

Developing a master plan

Shortly after Crowell began working for the Suquamish Tribe he was faced with a pivotal life decision. It was the spring of 1993, and he had just graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in planning. The tribe was one of the first places he’d looked to put his training to work.

There weren’t any openings in the tribe’s small government at the time, but then-Tribal Chairman Emerson George carved out a job for him anyway as a planning technician, paying $8 per hour.

“I will always be thankful to Emerson because he saw that I had worked hard to get my degree and he worked hard to get me working for the tribe.”

Within a few weeks, however, he started receiving job offers from Washington State Ferries, Boeing, the City of Port Townsend and elsewhere.

“Those places offered me jobs making more than double what I was making at the tribe, $18 to $20 per hour,” he recalls.

Crowell sought advice from his father, John Crowell, who suggested he stay with the tribe where he would get more experience and get promoted faster. And the tribe would always be there for him. It was his opportunity to give back to his people.

“It was painful, but it was the right thing to do,” he says. And almost immediately, early mentors were helping him build his vision.

Crowell remembers being sent to see Tony Forsman, who was director of the Fisheries Dept. at the time, “to learn the history of our fishing rights, the Bolt Decision, and how to operate inside tribal government and how to be a tribal member in tribal government. About how to live in a fish bowl and not have it consume you.”

Crowell also credits his early mentors, Marcia Reed and George Wilson, “who taught me everything they could. They had a vision for me and what I could do for the tribe.”

Indeed, less than two years after he started working for the tribe, Crowell was named director of Community Development at age 23, overseeing a staff of ten. A few years later, he was filling in as interim executive director of tribal government, a role he would take on several times while continuing to oversee Community Development.

Building the future

One of Crowell’s very first projects was renovating a building in Indianola to become the tribe’s first Early Learning Center. His kids were among the first to go to daycare there.

A few years later, as money from the newly built casino started coming in, he was tasked with creating the Marion Forsman-Boushie Early Learning Center. “Now I’m hiring people who went to daycare there,” he says.

With the influx of income from the casino came several housing developments and parks, the Suquamish Dock, the Suquamish Museum, the House of Awakened Culture, Youth & Fitness Center, and Suquamish Ball Field.

The Wee Wun neighborhood was particularly satisfying, he says.

“It was a dark time. Some of non-Indians in the area didn’t want us to build a housing development on our own reservation. The hate was venomous.”

The tribe ultimately overcame, of course, “but it was a fight to make it happen.” And while Crowell is proud of the neighborhood itself, he may be just as proud of the name he gave it.

“We submitted a couple of different names to Kitsap County for approval,” he said. But all of the initial submissions were already used or sounded too similar to other roads nearby.

“So, we got a little flippant, and gave them a list that were all kind of smartass names. Unbelievably, the very first one on the list was the one they approved,” he says with a laugh. “I seriously didn’t think they’d pick it; it was my play on We Won. It was just joke, but turns out it was the perfect name.”

Building self-determination

Despite such landmark achievements, Crowell says one of his most significant contributions has been his “almost fanatical approach to hiring and promoting tribal members.” By his count, he’s hired 65 tribal members over the years.

“Because it was done for me, it’s now my job to hard target tribal member talent and get them working for the tribe and into positions of authority,” he says. “There is no self-determination if we, the people of the Suquamish Tribe, are not running the Suquamish Tribe. We need to be the ones in positions of power and authority and moved up and educated.”

Crowell tells any tribal member who asks about the basics of competitive pay and benefits. “But then I ask them: what do you want to do with your life? Do you want to do something that

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