"If you want a tribe, then the chief has to be a member of the tribe, " says Godin, whose book Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? (due out in December) talks about how big companies often bungle communication on the Web.

FORBES: Crowd Control

There's another totem pole in Pioneer Square Park , carved by the Tlingit natives in 1938, as well as a bust of Chief Sealth of the Duwamish tribe, after whom Seattle is named.

CNN: Seattle: What to see

Peter Carl Mackay (1881-1965), rather than being a chief of the Falasha tribe of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), came from the Caribbean.

BBC: A History of the World

More painfully, says Joe Flies-Away, the chief judge, some have engaged in a kind of reservation shopping, disenrolling from the tribe and using family connections to join others that run casinos and pay monthly dividends.

ECONOMIST: Indian tribes and casinos

If a family offends gravely against the rules of the tribe, the chief can take their land away and give it to someone else.

ECONOMIST: No title

Roland Manakaja, whose great-grandfather was Chief Manakaja, the tribe's last traditional chieftain, says the creation of the park had a disastrous effect on the tribe.

ECONOMIST: Indian tribes