From left to right: Tex Hall, former U.S. Congressman Rick Berg, former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota) during an April 2012 visit to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota. Photo by Tami A. Heilemann / Department of the Interior

Independent investigation of former MHA Chair Tex Hall
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Correspondent

FORT BERTHOLD, N. D.  ––  At its most recent special meeting, the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation Tribal Business Council approved a request to provide federal investigators findings of an independent inquiry into former council Chairman Tex Hall’s alleged malfeasance.

Council members had commissioned the giant international Dentons Law Firm to undertake the investigation and only released the results when a crowd insisted in storming their office just before the September primary election that eliminated Hall from the running for a fourth-term as the nation’s top official.

Findings included evidence that the former chairman knowingly violated the tribal Ethics Code with impunity, failed to disclose arrangements that entailed kickbacks, and refused to recuse himself from council decision making about private business activities in which he could have bilked the tribe.

Among other things, the Denton Report indicated that Hall illegally stored radioactive fracking socks on his property and sent tribal employees to clean up the mess; used his office to influence energy-company decisions; and competed in private enterprise with other tribal members doing business in the oilfields.

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(Talli Nauman, NSN Health and Environment Editor can be reached at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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