2024-02-04 05:48:02
A South Dakota tribe has banned the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, from the Pine Ridge reservation following the official said this week that she wanted to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to stop immigration in the border between Mexico and the United States, and that there were cartels infiltrating the state reserves.
“For the safety of the oyate, effective immediately you are banned from the lands of the Oglala Sioux Tribe!” said the tribe’s chairman, Frank Star Comes Out, in a Friday statement to Noem. “Oyate” means town or nation.
Star Comes Out accused Noem of trying to use the border issue to help former US President Donald Trump in his election campaign and improve her chances of becoming his running mate.
Many of the people who arrive at the border between Mexico and the States are indigenous people from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, who arrive “in search of jobs and a better life,” added the tribal leader.
“They should not be put in cells, separated from their children as during the Trump administration, or cut with razor wire provided by, precisely, South Dakota,” he said.
Star Comes Out also responded to Noem’s comments, in a speech to lawmakers Wednesday, in which she said a gang calling itself the Ghost Dancers was murdering people on the Pine Ridge Reservation and was affiliated with to the cartels that use the South Dakota reservations to cross the border and distribute drugs throughout the north central region of the United States.
Star Comes Out expressed deep outrage at his reference, noting that the spirit dance is one of the “most sacred ceremonies” of the Oglala Sioux, and the term “was used with blatant disrespect and is an insult to our Hey.”
The tribe, he added, is a sovereign nation and does not belong to the state of South Dakota.
Noem responded in a statement Saturday, saying “it is unfortunate that President (Star) Comes Out decides to bring politics into a conversation regarding the effects of our federal government’s failure to enforce federal laws at the southern border and in tribal lands. “My priority remains working together to solve those problems.”
“As I said to Native American legislators this week, ‘I’m not the one who won’t give in here. You can’t build relationships if you don’t spend time together,’” she added. “I remain willing to work with any of the Native American tribes to solidify those relationships.”
Star Comes Out declared a state of emergency on the Pine Ridge Reservation in November due to increased crime. A judge concluded last year that the federal government is bound by treaty to support reservation security forces, but declined to rule on the amount of funding the tribe had requested.
Noem has deployed national guards to the Mexican border on three occasions, as other Republican governors have done.
In 2021, she was criticized for accepting a million-dollar donation from a Republican donor to help cover a two-month deployment of 48 troops to the area.
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Trisha Ahmed is part of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Ahmed is on X, formerly Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15
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