Members of the tribe, I would like to present a plan that will forever revolutionize your lives, and the lives of your children. The effects of this plan will bring a better quality of life and increased prosperity to your tribe. The plan will make farming easier, and more productive. The plan will also ensure development of your tribe. Tribal members, the plan I present to you today, is to form an electric cooperative. I will discuss with you what a cooperative is, the seven principles that make a cooperative successful, and finally how an electric cooperative would greatly increase the happiness of your tribe.
A cooperative belongs to the people who use its services. In a cooperative, members reap gains in proportion to participation. A cooperative's purpose is to serve its members for their benefit. Your tribe can form a cooperative by pulling your resources together, and putting them towards the electrification of your small village. A cooperative differs from that of an investor controlled enterprise, because in a cooperative, the people who actually use the services are in control. Ever since the dawn of mankind cooperatives have been around in some form, for example in group hunts and in community farming. Through a cooperative your tribe can assure dependable services at the least possible costs. Let me give you an example of a cooperative. Let’s say in order to buy fertilizer; you have to go through an overly costly service to get it. This service is very unreliable, because they don’t come out to your area much because they cannot make a fine profit. When they do come out to your area though, they charge extremely exorbitant prices in an attempt to make a return on their “stockholders investments”. A cooperative would solve your problems, and even create more benefits to your tribe. Your tribe would pull together its resources, and create a better way of bringing fertilizer to your area, and every member of the tribe would have a say in the practice, instead of stockholders thousands of miles away who don’t use the services and could care less about your people. Through hard work and determination, you can start a cooperative just as the people of Mohave County did.
There are seven principles that cooperatives need to abide by in order to be successful. The first is Open Voluntary Membership. This means that everyone in your tribe who wants to use your electric service is allowed to join the cooperative, and accept responsibilities of membership regardless of age, sex, social, or political differences. The second principle a cooperative needs in order to be successful is Democratic Member Control. In other words, everyone who uses the services has equal control of the cooperative. The third principle is Member Economic Participation. Members contribute equitably to the resources of the cooperative. Members also receive limited compensation on capital contributed as a condition of membership. Surpluses will go towards developing the cooperative, benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the cooperative, and establishing reserves. The fourth principle is Autonomy and Independence. The cooperative is a self help organization that must ensure democratic control by its members. If the cooperative enters agreements with other organizations, it must keep this principle in mind. Fifth, is Education, Training and information.
