The following story was written and reported by Stephanie Woodard. All content © Native Sun News.

WAGNER, SOUTH DAKOTA — Yankton Sioux Chief Judge Curtis Carroll has dismissed the petition of four tribal members who charged that persons on the tribe’s Business and Claims Committee, or B&C, had violated a 2007 General Council resolution and were not eligible to run in this year’s tribal election, a biennial event.

The petitioners had asked the B&C-appointed Election Board to strike these individuals from the slate of candidates, but the board refused to do so after a closed-door meeting with the B&C.

According to Roderica Rouse, she filed a similar protest, but never heard back from the Election Board. An additional petition, filed by a candidate who says she was improperly struck from the list, Lisa Arrow, will come before the court on July 7, Judge Carroll said.

The 2007 resolution prohibits candidacies by officials who receive payments the General Council has not approved. Current B&C officials, including Chairman Robert Cournoyer and Vice-Chair Karen Archambeau, ran up against the resolution when they took over duties of the tribal school board in late 2010 and thereafter received unauthorized Christmas payouts. Treasurer Leo O’Connor returned his school-board monies, and the four petitioners — Faith Spotted Eagle, Robert Grey, Twila Zephier, and Elizabeth Marcellais — did not challenge his candidacy.

During a June 22 hearing on the complaint, tribal attorney Charles Abourezk appeared (via speakerphone) on behalf of the Election Board. He described Spotted Eagle as a “perennial litigant,” who files lawsuits “as surely as the grass grows in the springtime and the birds return to the Northern Plains.”

“Oppressive” was Spotted Eagle’s assessment of Abourezk’s statement. “People in this country and on this reservation have civil rights and sarcasm is a way to shame me into not exercising mine,” Spotted Eagle said in an interview after the hearing. “The missionaries used shame to silence our people. We live in a culture of silence. It should be normal, not shameful, to stand up for your rights.”

Chairman Cournoyer’s office did not comment, other than to say that this year’s primary is postponed from July 7 to July 21 and the general election will take place September 1, as planned.

Differing interpretations of the tribe’s constitution figured in the proceeding. Petitioners’ attorney Gary Montana described the Yankton Sioux as a non-IRA tribe with a 1932 pre-Indian Reorganization Act constitution. The Yanktons’ governing body is their General Council, made up of the voting-age membership, Montana said, with day-to-day business delegated to the Business and Claims Committee, which includes the chairman, vice-chairman, secretary, treasurer, and five at-large representatives.

During the June 22 hearing, elder Liz Simmons riveted the attention of onlookers when she proclaimed on the witness stand, “The General Council is our supreme authority.” The B&C works for the General Council, not the other way around. I’m tired of what’s happening on this reservation. I want the people to know what kind of leaders we have.” Simmons also told Judge Carroll and attorney Abourezk that they, too, work for the General Council, not for the B&C.

Abourezk disagreed. In an interview, he described the General Council and B&C as having equal and balanced powers. “The General Council is a legislature, like the U.S. Congress, and the B&C is the executive branch,” Abourezk said. Explaining how he decides whom to defend when internal disputes arise, he said: “I represent all entities of the tribe and have to make my best decision as to which one to represent.”

Carroll described the constitutional language as “vague” and said there was a meeting July 7 to begin to amend and clarify it. In his June 27 opinion explaining why he dismissed the petition, Carroll evoked the tribe’s sovereign immunity and other issues and said the only individuals who have legal standing to bring a complaint about the election slate are candidates removed from the list, not third parties such as Spotted Eagle and her fellow petitioners. Carroll also said there was a “modicum” of “disputed” evidence that the B&C improperly influenced the Election Board; but he also chided the petitioners for cooking a traditional meal for a meeting with the board, calling that an “improper attempt to influence the group.”

In their testimony, the petitioners and some witnesses at the hearing also alleged election tampering and vote buying. Carroll did not discuss this in his opinion. However, on a recent visit to the reservation, this reporter heard allegations of vote-buying over the years from multiple tribal members in separate communities: these included votes traded for food and gas vouchers and for cash scooped up from casino receipts. Apparently, at times, voters have even bargained to obtain a higher price for their ballots.

Abourezk, who has been a tribal attorney since the early 1990s, dismissed this as a “whispering campaign” and said he trusted the Yankton Sioux officials and electorate: “I have a lot of respect for those who run for office. They give up time and income in order to serve, and they cope with scarcity, poverty, and few resources. At election time, the people will speak.” He added that tribal elections are cleaner than federal elections, which are awash in corporate money and influence.

Carroll asked the Election Board to reconsider its decision; he did not direct the board to come to any particular conclusion, as that was outside the scope of the court, according to his opinion. The board did so and re-issued its most recent list of candidates, including those targeted by the petitioners.

Montana said the four will file an appeal with the Northern Plains Intertribal Court of Appeals. He also called the Election Board’s and B&C’s actions “the most flagrant abuse of power I’ve ever seen in all my years as an Indian country lawyer.”

(Contact Stephanie Woodard at (718) 986-3571, swoodard2@gmail.com. Or visit www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-woodard)