Mel Pervais | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1940 (age 83–84) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Engineer, entrepreneur |
| Known for | Cataract Inc., Rhodium 2001 |
Melvin "Mel" Pervais (born 1940) [1] is a Canadian-American business executive, entrepreneur, engineer and member of the Ojibwa Nation.
Pervais was born and raised on the Fort William Reserve near Thunder Bay, Ontario, the eldest son of eight children. At age five he began his academic studies in a one-room schoolhouse, housing eight grades, on the reserve. At age twelve he was sent to a Jesuit-run boarding school for Indian boys, the Garnier Residential School, 500 miles (800 km) away in Spanish, Ontario, and graduated at sixteen. [2]
At age sixteen, Pervais started work as a night watchman for the Jones Construction Company. [3] Two months later, he took the opportunity to begin an apprenticeship as an instrument technician with Noranda Mines in Cutler, Ontario. Over the next seventeen years, he held various positions in the power generation industry before joining Johnson Controls in 1973 as the manager of a newly formed calibration engineering department. Pervais redirected the department's focus to nuclear power, boosting sales from $100,000 to $5 million over three years.
Pervais left Johnson Controls in 1976 and, with his expertise and $10,000, started Amalgamated Services in Philadelphia with a business partner, providing engineering services to nuclear power plants. [4] In 1979 the company merged with Cataract Engineering and Construction and Pervais became president. [4] Never shy about his Indian heritage, Cataract's logo had an Indian motif and the company strived to hire Indian employees. [4] Cataract also used a unique bonus and salary system to discourage sick days and draw talent from other companies; it was not uncommon for workers to out-earn their bosses, with some field technicians earning $90,000 a year. [5] By the early 1990s a sharp decline in revenue resulted in Cataract defaulting on substantial obligations for direct debt and guarantees of ESOT loans. Due to Cataract's inability to pay it's debt, The Prudential Insurance Company of America, Cataract's main creditor, was in a position to shut down Cataract's operations through foreclosing on its security interest in the company's assets. Rather than allow Prudential to foreclose on Cataract, a new investor group was located to form a Pennsylvania corporation to acquire the defaulted loans. Cataract, Inc ceased operations effective Jun 1, 1993. At that time Cataract's obligations to Prudential exceeded the value of Cataract's assets by over $10,000,000. The Trustees of Cataract obtained a payment of $43,665 to split among the remaining employees. An employee with 20,000 shares of stock was left with a value of around $355. [6] At the time, Cataract had 500 engineers and technicians and reported annual sales of $50 million. [2] Pervais retired at age 45 to focus on a horse breeding and cattle operation on the Chief Joseph Ranch near Darby, Montana. [2] The Los Angeles Times reported in 1984 that Pervais was one of the wealthiest Native Americans in the United States. [4]
In 1991, Pervais returned from retirement to found Rhodium 2001, dedicated to recycling materials from scrapped catalytic converters. Pervais put more than $2 million of his own money into the new company, originally housed in a remodeled calving barn on his ranch. [7] Pervais and partner Don Golbeck bought a license to a process developed by metallurgist inventor and chemical engineer C.A. Dickey to refine precious group metals from automotive catalytic converters, a process they used to retrieve a number of materials, including fine sand for the asphalt industry and platinum, palladium and rhodium compounds to sell to refiners. [8]
Rhodium 2001's extraction process is notable for being environmentally friendly, requiring no smelter nor airborne emissions, and for being a closely guarded secret. It took two years of research and development by Dickey, who claimed it involved temperature and pressure. Neither Pervais, nor Dickey, were willing to reveal more about the process than that, for fear that other competitors might adopt it, rendering their company irrelevant. Said Pervais, "If you're an environmentalist, it's probably the greatest invention. I don't need a polluting process. I'd stay retired if that was the case." [7]
Pervais, whose grandfather was a tribal chief, [4] has said his father pushed him into the non-Native American world at an early age. "It was the most traumatic thing he ever did," he says. "But it was the best thing he ever did for me." [9] Pervais is an advocate for self-sufficiency in the Native American community and has spoken before students and other groups arguing that Native Americans must stop relying on federal aid and begin supporting themselves in the free-enterprise system. [10]
In 1982 Pervais was invited by President Ronald Reagan to serve on a private sector task force that encouraged support of community projects including homes for the elderly and day care centers. [5]
Pervais received honorary Doctorates of Engineering from Montana State University in 1995 and Lakehead University in 1996. [2] Pervais is a former member of the United Indian Development Association, a Los Angeles organization that provides consulting services to Indian businesses. [5] He is on the council of trustees with United National Indian Tribal Youth Inc. (UNITY), [11] a national organization promoting personal development, citizenship and leadership among Native American youth.
In 1987, Pervais bought the 1,400-acre (5.7 km2) Chief Joseph Ranch, including a 5,000-square-foot (460 m2) lodge built in 1917, a summer home for the family of William S. Ford. After the Fords sold it in 1952, it traded hands several times. When Pervais took it over, the ranch was in poor shape; the barns were falling apart and its perimeter was unfenced. Pervais improved the property and extensively renovated the lodge to its Ford-era conditions over a ten-year period. At the time, he owned a pet bobcat, Toma, named for one of Chief Joseph's wives. [12] Pervais sold the ranch in 2004. Today it is a guest ranch, and also a filming location for the TV series Yellowstone . [13]
Melvin Pervais married his first love, Patricia, shortly after his graduation from the Garnier Indian School. Together they had 6 children. They later separated, then divorced, but remained close, loving, friends, until Patricia's passing in 2017. Pervais married Lynda Hart Bailey, former wife of lawyer F. Lee Bailey, in 1985. Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo Tribal Chairman, served as Bailey's adopted Navajo "father" and offered twelve wild horses, a traditional dowry to the groom and a Navajo medicine man. In accordance with Pervais' Ojibwa heritage, a second ceremony took place at sundown the day after the wedding on the night of a new moon. Pervais is the father of seven children. [9]
The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado River Indian Tribes of the Colorado River Indian Reservation at the border of Arizona and California.
The Navajo Nation, also known as Navajoland, is an Indian reservation of Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. The seat of government is located in Window Rock, Arizona.
Acer negundo, also known as the box elder, boxelder maple, Manitoba maple or ash-leaved maple, is a species of maple native to North America. It is a fast-growing, short-lived tree with opposite, ash-like compound leaves. It is sometimes considered a weedy or invasive species, and has been naturalized throughout much of the world, including South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, much of Europe, and parts of Asia.
An American Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a U.S. federal government-recognized Native American tribal nation, whose government is autonomous, subject to regulations passed by the United States Congress and administered by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, and not to the U.S. state government in which it is located. Some of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes govern more than one of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all. Historical piecemeal land allocations under the Dawes Act facilitated sales to non–Native Americans, resulting in some reservations becoming severely fragmented, with pieces of tribal and privately held land being treated as separate enclaves. This intersection of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation are a federally recognized tribe in the U.S. state of Montana. The government includes members of several Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d'Oreilles tribes and is centered on the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation is one of seven Native American reservations in the U.S. state of Montana. Established by an act of Congress on September 7, 1916, it was named after Ahsiniiwin, the chief of the Chippewa band, who had died a few months earlier. It was established for landless Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indians in the American West, but within a short period of time many Cree (Nēhiyaw) and Métis were also settled there. Today the Cree outnumber the Chippewa on the reservation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) recognizes it as the Chippewa Cree Reservation.
The Blackfeet Nation, officially named the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, is a federally recognized tribe of Siksikaitsitapi people with an Indian reservation in Montana. Tribal members primarily belong to the Piegan Blackfeet band of the larger Blackfoot Confederacy that spans Canada and the United States.
The White Earth Indian Reservation is home to the White Earth Band, in northwestern Minnesota. It is the largest Indian reservation in the state by land area. The reservation includes all of Mahnomen County, plus parts of Becker and Clearwater counties in the northwest part of the state along the Wild Rice and White Earth rivers. The reservation's land area is 1,093 square miles (2,830 km2). The population was 9,726 as of the 2020 census, including off-reservation trust land. The White Earth Indian Reservation is one of six bands that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, their governing body for major administrative needs. It is about 225 miles (362 km) from Minneapolis–Saint Paul and roughly 65 miles (105 km) from Fargo–Moorhead.
The Navajo Livestock Reduction was imposed by the United States government upon the Navajo Nation in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. The reduction of herds was justified by the government by stating that grazing areas were becoming eroded and had deteriorated due to too many animals.
Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation is a reservation located in northern North Dakota, United States. It is the land base for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The population of the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation consists of Plains Ojibwe and Métis peoples; the reservation was established in 1882.
Peter MacDonald is a Native American politician and the only four term Chairman of the Navajo Nation. MacDonald was born in Arizona, U.S. and served the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II as a Navajo Code Talker. He was first elected Navajo Tribal Chairman in 1970.
Kevin K. Washburn is an American law professor, former dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, and current Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law. He served in the administration of President Barack Obama as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2012 to 2016. Washburn has also been a federal prosecutor, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, and the General Counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission. Washburn is a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, a federally-recognized Native American tribe.
Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States holding that an Indian tribe has the authority to impose taxes on non-Indians that are conducting business on the reservation as an inherent power under their tribal sovereignty.
The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), headquartered in the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C., and formerly known as the Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP), is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. It is responsible for the line direction and management of all BIE education functions, including the formation of policies and procedures, the supervision of all program activities, and the approval of the expenditure of funds appropriated for BIE education functions.
Roland W. Reed, an American artist and photographer, was part of an early 20th century group of photographers of Native Americans known as pictorialists.
Nathan Begaye (1958–2010) was a Native American ceramics artist of Navajo and Hopi descent.
The Indian National Rodeo Finals Hall of Fame is a hall of fame in Browning, Montana, United States, dedicated to the sport of indian rodeo. The Indian National Finals Rodeo is dedicated to preserving and promoting the sport of Indian rodeo through as many channels as are available to it.
{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help){{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help){{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help){{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help){{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)