PINE RIDGE, SOUTH DAKOTA — A brawl between Oglala District Representative Deb Rooks-Cook and Eagle Nest District Representative Ruth Brown broke out during an Oglala Sioux Tribal Executive Session in Pine Ridge on Tues. Jan. 25.
The new OST Council was in session for their regularly scheduled meeting on the last Tuesday of the month. President John Yellow Bird Steele had been in Washington D.C. so Vice-President Tom Poor Bear was chairing the meeting.
Candidates for the offices of Secretary, Treasurer, Fifth Member and Sergeant at Arms were to be selected during the council meeting. Several of the candidates for the Executive Offices were outside council chambers awaiting council decision. Among the onlookers were also several elders.
Rooks-Cook who serves on the Education, Land, EDA and Judiciary committees spoke to Native Sun News about the Jan. 25 meeting and events leading up to the altercation.
“My district has wanted a land audit for over fifty years and my partner from Wounded Knee has wanted this for his entire life. And I am sure everyone has heard the same thing,” she said and moved that they go back into land transactions for the past 25 years.
“I am sure everyone has wanted even more. Ella John Carlow asked me who will pay for it and I said the BIA has to pay for it,” after which Carlow seconded the motion she said. “So we passed it.”
As to why tribal members would like to see a land audit she replied, “Because there is one million acres on this reservation,” and that certain individuals have acquired land the size of townships which they purchased for a “few bucks or a bag of groceries.” She asserts that a reality officer and her father who “never owned an inch of land, now owe God only knows how much land.”
“There is no way to find out without a land audit. I heard from a very reliable source that a woman in realty wrote three complaints to the superintendent,” because the realty officer was opening up the wills from probate to see who had land. And that the superintendent did nothing.
How important is it to do a land audit?
“It is so important, it will expose everything. We are the ones that have to ask for it. We are the land committee and we approved it. It has to be on Monday’s agenda at Porcupine. If it is not on the meeting at Porcupine we are asking for a two thirds vote to put it on the agenda and if it isn’t on the agenda there is going to be a lot of ruckus,” she said and that this was not the usual council seated for the last 25 years. “We have a pretty damn honest council for the first time.”
She explained that because there was a lot of commotion during the regular council meeting over the election of the Executive Committee, council moved to go into Execution Session.
“When I told the candidates to quit listening in and please close the door because we were in Executive Session. They wouldn’t listen to Abraham our Sergeant at Arms and Cecelia Martin said I was talking to her. I kept apologizing to her cause she was eight to ten feet away from the candidates,” Rooks Cook said.
“Cecelia Martin said, ‘I signed a complaint on her.’ Then Ruth Brown shouted out, ‘I called the cops out here.’ She (Ruth Brown) had been causing problems throughout the whole thing. We would have had the officers selected by one-thirty or two o’clock. She kept throwing these obstacles up, she and Craig Dillon,” she continued.
“We were in Executive Session I can’t tell you everything. They kept throwing these obstacles up and everyone was getting frustrated and so we took a little break. She came in and she started saying all this stuff and I was just totally flabbergasted,” she said.
“And when she said I physically assaulted an elderly, I just lost it because I took care of my mother for three years before she died. I still take care of my dad he is eighty eight years old not here, but he’s in Brookside and whenever I am up there and if he needs anything I take care of him and when he is down here all summer. They are like children you know, they are vulnerable.”
“And when she said that, I just snapped. I walked across the council floor and I asked Deb Blue Bird to please excuse me. And she (Ruth Brown) swung at me first and I just grabbed hold of her coat and I wouldn’t let go and she tried to pull my arms off but I wouldn’t let go.
“Robin Tapio and Sonya Weston and I think Deb (Blue Bird) they were trying to pull me off and they were saying ‘No, Deb, No’ and they were pulling me off and I weigh about 140 but they were pulling me off. I’m not sorry but I did let go of her.”
“They have it on video tape and she kept calling me everything in the book and I called her a liar. I said you’re a liar.”
“They are trying to impeach me out of here and I told them I won’t fight it if they want to. Ten council people are trying to impeach me,” but she has heard people say that there was a hell of a lot more than 10 people that voted for you.”
“They came to the council chambers to arrest me and I was ready to go. I grabbed my stuff and I was ready to go. I wrote my statement and they tried to arrest me because Ruth Brown came in and said that I had physically assaulted an elderly. Then the attorney said they can’t arrest her when tribal council is in session. So we are all standing outside and I am waiting around and waiting around cause I’d rather go to jail even if it is false, I have go to jail for it cause that’s the way it works, I am not going to break the law. It is not up to a police officer, he has got a report and I have to go to jail and I have to go to arraignment and then I have to go to trial and prove that I am not guilty. That’s how it works,” Rooks-Cook concluded.
According to Phyllis Wilcox, Rooks-Cook was not charged with elderly abuse but was charged with disorderly conduct and assault in the second degree.
The Executive Committee has not yet been selected. There are currently nine candidates for Secretary including former OST President Teresa Two Bulls and the current OST Secretary Rhonda Two Eagle.
In next week’s: Ruth Brown responds.
(Contact Ernestine Chasing Hawk at staffwriter@nsweekly.com.)
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