Welcome to Tribal101 — the Sovereign Ground / Tribal Economic Development Institute platform. This guide walks you through everything you can do as a member, in plain language.
1. Creating your account
Click Join / Sign In in the header. You can sign up with an email address and password, or with a Google or Facebook account.
During sign-up you'll choose an affiliation category — how you're connected to Indian Country: Tribal Government (§16), §17 Corporation, §3 OIWA Corporation, ANCSA Corporation, First Nation (cross-border), Individual Tribal Citizen, or Ally / Partner Organization. If your tribe or entity is in our Sovereign Registry, you can link your account to it; if not, you can type it in.
2. Confirming your email
If you signed up with an email and password, we send you a confirmation link. It's valid for 72 hours. Click it and you're confirmed. Signed up with Google or Facebook? You're confirmed automatically.
Didn't get the email? Go to your Member Area and use the resend button (you can request a new link every few minutes). Your email must be confirmed before you can post in the Member Forum.
3. Getting Verified
Verification confirms you're who you say you are, and it unlocks the actions that speak for Indian Country: signing petitions, registering your tribe's opportunities, suggesting Registry corrections, marking Academy modules complete, and the Forum's working channels.
Your status is one of Unverified → Pending → Verified, shown in your Member Area.
Two ways to verify, from your Member Area:
- Path A — Tribal enrollment number. Enter it; it's stored encrypted.
- Path B — Tribal ID card. Upload a photo or PDF (JPG, PNG, WebP, or PDF, up to 10 MB).
A reviewer looks at your submission — usually quickly. What happens to your documents: as soon as a decision is made, your uploaded ID and enrollment number are permanently deleted. We keep only the fact that a decision was made, never the documents themselves. Verification materials never appear in emails or exports.
If verification is declined, you'll get an email explaining why, and you can try again.
4. Your Member Area
Your home base. It shows your profile and affiliation, your verification status, your email alert preferences and topic subscriptions, and your activity log — a running record of what you've done here: petitions signed, events tracked, items watched, modules completed, submissions made.
5. Signing petitions
Petitions live in the Action Center. Each petition states who may sign — some are open to tribal government leadership only; others are open for public comment.
To sign, you type your full name, choose your official title, and attest that you have authority to sign in that capacity. One signature per person per nation on each petition. Some petitions are reviewed before your signature appears in the public count — if so, there may be a short delay between signing and seeing the total move.
6. Tracking events and watching opportunities
- Consultation Calendar: press Track on any summit to add it to your planning list; on EO 13175 consultations, Prepare Position takes you to the Action Center.
- Capital & Funding Desk (in Intelligence): press Save on a funding opportunity to add it to your watchlist. Saving and removing both show in your activity log.
7. The Academy
Ten curriculum tracks, from the foundations of sovereignty through federal contracting, energy, finance, and tribal super corporations. Anyone can read. Verified members can mark modules complete — your completions build a record that will connect to Tribal Careers.
8. The Member Forum
The Forum is a discussion space for members, with tiers:
- Confirmed email → the general channels (open discussion areas). You can read and post.
- Verified members → additionally, the working channels (legislation & policy, contracting, capital & finance, energy, health consortium, governance) and working groups tied to active policy items.
- Leadership channels are limited by affiliation category.
Posts may be held briefly for moderation — especially from new accounts or when a post trips our spam and abuse filters. That's normal; a moderator will release legitimate posts. The Code of Conduct applies everywhere in the Forum: be respectful, no hate speech, no spam. Use the report control on any post that crosses the line.
9. Submitting content
Everything submitted goes through editorial review before it appears — that's how the platform keeps its validated-sourcing promise.
- Suggest a correction (on any Registry profile — Verified members): tell us what's wrong and your source.
- Add Your Voice (Action Center): submit a statement on an active issue.
- Add Your Tribe (Action Center): register your tribe's opportunities — contracting, energy, health consortium, FTZ, finance — which feeds the Registry enrichment queue.
- Post a job (Tribal Careers — Verified members): positions serving tribal communities; approved postings are time-limited.
- Economic data (Data Center): submit tribal economy data with a source; editors verify before anything is published.
10. Tribal Careers
Browse the job board (filter by sector, region, remote/on-site, seniority) and the Board Seat Registry of open §17 / EDC / consortium seats. Verified members can express interest in a board seat — the editorial team is notified and will follow up.
11. A note on limits
To keep the platform healthy, rapid-fire repeated submissions from the same connection are slowed down automatically. If you ever see a "please slow down" message, wait a few minutes and try again — normal use will never hit these limits.
12. Getting help
Use the Contact / Press link in the footer. For account trouble (can't confirm email, verification questions, sign-in issues), include the email address on your account so we can find you quickly.