Four of South Dakota’s federally recognized Indian tribes have expelled the state’s governor, Kristi Noem – a Republican whose name has been floated as a possible candidate for former President Donald J. Trump – from their reservations. The latest to block Ms. Noem was on Thursday.
Three of the tribes banned Ms. Noem this month, joining another tribe that sanctioned the governor after she told state lawmakers in February that Mexican drug cartels had gained a foothold on their reservations and were committing murders there.
Ms. Noem further angered the tribes with comments she made at a town hall event in Winner, South Dakota, last month that appeared to suggest that the tribes were complicit in the cartels’ presence on their reservations.
“We have some tribal leaders who I believe personally benefit from the presence of the cartels, and that is why they attack me every day,” Ms. Noem said.
The tribes are the Cheyenne River Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux and the Standing Rock Sioux, as well as the Oglala Sioux, which were the first group to ban Ms. Noem from their reservation in February. According to the state and federal governments, their reserves have a total population of nearly 50,000 people and cover more than 8 million acres. The Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the third tribal area that has restricted Ms. Noem’s access, extends into North Dakota.
The tribes have accused Ms. Noem of stoking fears and denigrating their heritage when, in an address to state lawmakers, she referred to a gang called the Ghost Dancers and said it had recruited tribal members to join their criminal activities .
The gang shares the same name as participants in the Native American Ghost Dance ceremony, a sacred ritual dating back to the 19th century.
“Governor. “Kristi Noem’s wild and irresponsible attempt to link tribal leaders and parents to Mexican drug cartels is a sad reflection of her fear-based politics that do nothing to bring people together to solve problems,” said Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. said in a statement this week.
Ms. Noem stood by her comments in a statement to The New York Times on Friday.
“Tribal leaders should immediately ban the Mexican drug cartels responsible for murders, rapes, drug addiction and many other crimes on tribal lands,” she said. “People in communities live with unspeakable horrors and tragedies every day, but banishing me for telling the truth about the suffering does nothing to solve the problems. It may be good for the left-wing media, but in reality it is pointless.”
When asked about Ms. Noem’s claims that tribal leaders benefited from the cartels’ presence on the reservations, an aide pointed to her recent comments to The Dakota Scout, an alternative newspaper based in Sioux Falls, S.D., in which she further strengthened the cartels criticized and criticized the tribes’ response to the cartels.
“That tells me that they are tied to them or benefiting from them in some way for allowing them to stay in their communities,” she said.
The governor’s office provided the Times with photos it said were from a gang promotion ceremony in which several men wore clothing emblazoned with Ghost Dancers patches. The Times could not independently verify the images.
A recording of a conversation purportedly between the secretary of the South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations and a leader of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was also released in which they discussed how a single South Dakota tribal council representative had voted in favor to lock woman. Noem from his reservation. The remaining votes came from tribal council members who live in North Dakota, according to the governor’s office.
Efforts to reach the tribal council member allegedly included in the recording were not immediately successful.
In a social media post on Thursday, Ms. Noem argued that her comments about cartel activity on the reservations were similar to remarks made by Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee last month.
“We have cartels in Indian Country,” he said, using a profanity to say there were a lot of “bad” things going on.
Mr. Tester, a member of the Indian Affairs Committee, had pushed for additional resources for law enforcement on tribal lands, answering calls from tribal leaders in Montana for federal government help in fighting crime. His comments differed in tone from Ms. Noem’s, and he made no allegations that tribal leaders were involved in the rise of cartels on the reservations.
A spokesman for Mr. Tester, who is running for re-election in a crucial contest for control of the Senate, declined to comment on Friday.
In November, the Oglala Sioux Tribe declared a state of emergency on its reservation amid a spike in drug crimes, assaults and murders, which remains in effect.
Then in January, the tribe accused the federal government in a lawsuit of failing to provide adequate funding required by longstanding treaties for law enforcement on the reservation, an area larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
The tribe said in its lawsuit that it only receives enough federal funding for 33 police officers and eight criminal investigators, which it said has contributed to an increase in crime. But the tribe pushed back against Ms. Noem’s claims that the cartels were using the reservation to facilitate the distribution of illegal drugs, saying the problem existed when Mr. Trump was president.
The cartels’ reach into tribal lands is drawing increasing attention on Capitol Hill, where at least two congressional panels recently focused on rising crime linked to the groups.
At a hearing Wednesday, Jeffrey Stiffarm, a tribal leader from Montana, told a House oversight committee that “these drug cartels are specifically targeting Indian Country because of a dangerous combination of rural terrain, history of addiction, underfunded law enforcement and regulatory loopholes.” sparsely populated communities and exorbitant profits, and it is devastating to tribal reservations.”
There are nine federally recognized Indian tribes in South Dakota that have at times clashed with Ms. Noem over issues related to their sovereignty, her support for the now-stopped Keystone XL pipeline and access to their reservations at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who lifted a previous ban against her in 2019, said the governor’s political ambitions motivated her actions.
In a statement posted on Facebook in February, President Frank Star Comes Out said: “The truth is that Governor Noem wants to use the so-called ‘invasion’ at the southern border as a Republican ‘crisis’ problem” to encourage Mr. Trump to take it to use it as a campaign issue and select her as his vice president.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference later in February, a poll showed Ms. Noem tied for first choice to replace Mr. Trump.
The tribes’ criticism of Ms. Noem began after the governor spoke about the surge in illegal border crossings in a joint session of the South Dakota Legislature on Feb. 2.
“Make no mistake, the cartels have a presence on several tribal reservations in South Dakota,” she said. “Murders are being committed by cartel members on the Pine Ridge Reservation and Rapid City, and a gang called the Ghost Dancers is affiliated with these cartels. They have managed to recruit tribal members for their criminal activities.”
Ms. Noem said the state government does not have the authority to step in and provide law enforcement assistance to South Dakota tribes.
On Thursday, Ms. Noem announced that South Dakota would begin offering training to tribal law enforcement officers, who currently have to travel to New Mexico to do so.
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2024-04-15 03:43:02
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