“A wild ride.” That’s how Paul Flores, tribal administrator for the Pit River Tribe in Burney, Calif., describes his life. “Be open to any opportunity, because you don’t know where it’s going to lead,” he says. A member of the Gila River Indian Community, Flores grew up in Arizona, dropped out of high school, joined the Army, and became an infantryman. During the second Iraq war, in the battle-ravaged town of Ramadi, a hidden bomb exploded and wounded him. “I expected to be jumping out of airplanes and fast roping off helicopters for 20 years,” he says. “Didn’t happen that way.”
Back home, Flores became one of the youngest members to serve on the tribal council. “I fell into politics and public policy and became a steward of my community,” he says. “I understood my place was to help others for the longevity of our heritage.” But after 18 months, he realized he lacked the education to serve his tribe as fully as he would have liked. Flores knew he had to go back to school to be an effective leader, so he took the humbling step of enrolling in basic arithmetic and reading classes at the local community college.
“I realized I am smarter than I had been led to believe my whole life,” Flores recalls. He later chose an astronomy class, thinking it would be easy. Soon he learned it was far more math-intensive than he had expected. He rose to the challenge. “You are capable, especially when you’ve got other smart people around you,” he says. “That class was great.”
Three years after taking arithmetic, Flores advanced to calculus. He transferred to Fort Lewis College, where he founded the student Veteran’s Club and served on the Student Senate. He earned joint degrees in environmental science and political science in 2021 at Northern Arizona University, a place where he felt he “could grow and evolve” on his own.
After graduation he took a job as a network analyst with Native-owned Alluvion, a Chandler, Ariz.–based fiber-optic telecommunications company. “Alluvion is on the front lines of telecommunications connectivity,” says Flores. He and his team were emergency responders monitoring multiple screens for mechanical and overheating snafus 24 hours a day. They hunted vandals and kept data zipping at the correct super high speeds through cell towers.
“I love the tech world,” says Flores. “But I was only focusing in that area.” He eventually decided to follow his passion and use his expertise in tribal politics and policy formulation. “I have a high calling because of my ability to manage, organize, and rally,” says Flores. Today he is chief administrator of all 17 departments of the Pit River Tribe, which comprises 11 autonomous bands in Northern California. Besides supervising 100 employees, he spearheads tribal endeavors that range from budgeting and developing policies and workflows to securing ancestral lands from the federal government.
His elders raised him to practice the selfless principles of himdaq, which Flores explains as “being a steward of your community; having values of caring and compassion; loving the land, elders, neighbors; and working as a collective.”
Nothing stops Flores. “I would tell anybody that you can totally take a hit, and you can get back up,” he says. “You could think, ‘Man, this is it. I’m done.’ No — you can get back up. Get back up. I just kept getting slugged and slugged and slugged, and I kept getting back up. That’s the only reason I’m here now, because I kept at it.”
