"A South Dakota tribe has banned Republican Gov. Kristi Noem from the #PineRidgeReservation after she spoke this week about wanting to send #RazorWire and security personnel to #Texas to help deter immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and also said cartels are infiltrating the state’s reservations.
“'Due to the safety of the #Oyate, effective immediately, you are hereby Banished from the homelands of the #OglalaSioux Tribe!” Tribe President #FrankStarComesOut said in a Friday statement addressed to Noem. “Oyate” is a word for people or nation.
"#StarComesOut accused Noem of trying to use the border issue to help get former U.S. President Donald Trump re-elected and boost her chances of becoming his running mate.
"Many of those arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are #IndigenousPeople from places like #ElSalvador, #Guatemala and #Mexico who come 'in search of jobs and a better life,' the tribal leader added.
"'They don’t need to be put in cages, separated from their children like during the Trump Administration, or be cut up by razor wire furnished by, of all places, South Dakota,' he said.
"Star Comes Out also addressed #Noem’s remarks in the speech to lawmakers Wednesday in which she said a gang calling itself the Ghost Dancers is murdering people on the Pine Ridge Reservation and is affiliated with border-crossing cartels that use South Dakota reservations to spread drugs throughout the Midwest.
"Star Comes Out said he took deep offense at her reference, saying the #GhostDance is one of the Oglala Sioux’s “most sacred ceremonies,' 'was used with blatant disrespect and is insulting to our Oyate.'"
In the new book Voting in Indian Country, Jean Reith Schroedel weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts as the election nears
by Nina Lakhani in New York
Fri 16 Oct 2020
"#VoterSuppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we’ve heard little about the 5.2 million #Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a US president.
"The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to #CleaAir and #water, #health, #education, economic opportunities, #housing and #sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
"In a new book, Voting in Indian County: The View from the Trenches, Jean Reith Schroedel, professor emerita of political science at Claremont Graduate University, weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts.
"Is the right to vote struggle for Native Americans distinct from the wider struggle faced by marginalized groups in the US?
"One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and #NativeAlaskans were the last group in the #UnitedStates to get #citizenship and to get the #vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said #IndigenousPeople could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.
"The motivation for the VRA was the egregious treatment of #black people in the south, and for the first 10 years there was a question over whether it even applied to #AmericanIndian and Native Alaskan populations. It wasn’t really discussed until a #CivilRights commission report in 1975 which included cases from #SouthDakota and #Arizona that showed equally egregious #discrimination and absolute denial of right to vote towards Native Americans – and also #Latinos.
"When voter suppression is discussed by politicians, advocates and journalists, it’s mostly about African American voters, and to a lesser degree Latinos. Why are Native Americans still excluded from the conversation?
"Firstly they are a small population and secondly most of the most egregious abuses routinely occur in rural isolated parts of #IndianCountry where there is little media focus. But it’s happening – take Jackson county in South Dakota, a state where the governor has done little to protect people from #Covid. The county council has just decided to close the legally mandated early voting centre on the #PineRidgeReservation, citing concerns about Covid, but not in the voting site in #Kadoka, where the white people go. Regardless of the intent, this will absolutely have a detrimental effect on Native people’s ability to vote. And South Dakota, like many other states, is also a very hard place for Native people to vote by mail. In the primary, the number of people who registered to #VoteByMail increased by 1,000% overall but there was no increase among reservation communities. In #Oglala county, which includes the eastern part of Pine Ridge, turnout was about 10%.
"The right to vote by mail is a hot political and civil rights issue in the 2020 election – could it help increase turnout in Indian Country?
"No, voting by mail is very challenging for Native Americans for multiple reasons. First and foremost, most reservations do not have home mail delivery. Instead, people need to travel to post offices or postal provide sites – little places that offer minimal mail services and are located in places like gas stations and mini-marts. Take the Navajo Nation that encompasses 27,425 square miles – it’s larger than West Virginia, yet there are only 40 places where people can send and receive mail. In West Virginia, there are 725. Not a single PO box on the Navajo Nation has 24-hour access."
Cecilia Firethunder has spent decades fighting for the rights of the #Ogala people of #SouthDakota .
Ms Firethunder, 76, was the first woman elected Oglala Tribal president, and works teaching culture, language and history at Red Cloud Indian School on the #PineRidgeReservation .