By Joe Morey
News Editor
LCO Tribal Member David Baker was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Music at the General Membership Meeting held on Oct. 27, 2018, in recognizing his musical career that spanned from the late 1960’s all the way to the present day.
LCO TGB member, Don Carley, introduced Baker and explained how he came from a musical family.
“It was like listening to Honkey tonk,” Carley said, of the popular Saturday night radio show on WOJB.
Baker’s musical career included sharing the stage with Bob Dylan and Buffy Saint-Marie, the musician who once accepted an Oscar for Marlon Brando.
Carley told of how Baker came back from New York in 1972 and had a concept for a concert at LCO. He brought his idea to a membership meeting at the time, and it later became the start of the Honor the Earth powwow.
Baker said out of all his world travels, his greatest accomplishment was when he was given the Community Action Program Director position for the tribe in the early 1980’s.
“The building was an old pole barn building in Reserve back then,” Baker said. “Don Carley was working there and my brother Rick was the tribal chairman. Rick didn’t want to hire me because I was his brother but Rick St. Germaine stepped forward and said hire him.”
Baker said it was back then he got to know Don Carley. Baker said as part of his position was to travel around the reservation and meet with people, and Elders, in the community and see what they wanted. He said it was rewarding.
“I’ve played some concerts in Europe where we were flown in by helicopter for hundreds of thousands of people, but my greatest accomplishment was as CAP director,” Baker said.
He also thanked the tribal council for putting up with him through the years.
