Charles Trimble. Photo by Native Sun News

It’s troubling sometimes for an Oglala person living away from the reservation to read on the internet or in print about the foibles of the tribal government at Pine Ridge. It’s like watching the tribal government crumbling from implosion in the Tribal Council – the body that is supposed to be exercising the people’s sovereignty.

Indeed, it is shameful, because most of the other OST stories in the news point to the fact that the people whose welfare the tribal government is supposedly responsible for are among the poorest in the United States. The Council, it appears, is out of control and their citizens are suffering.

Several months ago I read about the removal of Pat Lee as Chief Judge of the Oglala Lakota Nation, I’m not familiar with the particulars of his removal, except from what I read in accounts from newspapers serving the Oglala Sioux Tribe. At that time I also read where the Council had adopted a resolution that a certain Oglala journalist named Jeff Whalen could never be hired for any job with the tribal government. He was outlawed, black-balled because it seems he had committed the “crime” of reporting news alleging incompetency and/or corruption in the tribal government. Then I read that Pat Lee’s removal was in part because he objected to the Council’s treatment of that journalist.

I read Lee’s statement of defense and I agree with him that it is serious flouting of the Tribe’s Constitution – the most sacred document that the Oglala Lakota Nation has to justify and support its claim to self-governance.

My fear for the tribe is not that they continue to be a national embarrassment – any poll of Native Americans would rank the OST as the national basket case of tribal politics gone amok. Nor is it my fear that some authority like the US Congress will say – as they did in the 1950s to the 70s – that the “experiment” of tribal government has failed, and the tribe should be terminated of its special relationship with the federal government.

I can withstand the embarrassment and I no longer fear the threat of termination. My concern is for the citizenry of the Oglala Lakota Nation, the people whose rights should be protected by the Tribe’s government, according to its Constitution.

Arrogating to itself the role of prosecution, judge, jury and executioner, as was done by the Tribal Council in the case of Judge Lee and of Lakota journalist Jeff Whalen, is the stuff of tyranny, pure and simple. If this lunacy is not addressed and remedied, no Oglala Lakota citizen is safe from the whims of the tribal government – the Legislative or the Executive (it appears that the Judiciary is no longer even a part of the equation).

When Tim Giago reentered the newspaper publishing business four years ago, he justified it by saying that there needs to be a watchdog to check the tribe from running roughshod over its citizens, and that is why he started Native Sun News. At that time, I ridiculed his statement, and wrote that if he needed to replenish his personal bank account by starting up another newspaper to sell to another tribe, he should just do it instead of blaming the Oglala Sioux Tribe and other tribal governments. And I drew a cartoon to make my point.

Now it appears I was wrong. If so, I apologize to Tim Giago, although I am disappointed that there was apparently no stand by the Native Sun News objecting to the OST Council’s resolution denying Whalen’s right to employment. Neither did I hear any objections from the Native American Journalists Association, for that matter.

I don’t know if Jeff Whalen ever libeled any tribal official, and that is not the point of my contention anyway. My concern is the absence of due process: if he had broken a law, then he should have been charged and tried – and punished if he was found guilty. But if he merely offended any Council members by suggesting they are incompetent or corrupt, that is not a crime. If he wrote truths that embarrassed the Council or the President, that is his right as an Oglala citizen and his duty as a journalist in a free society.

With regard to Judge Lee, it appears that he was denied due process as well. Some outside lawyers declared that his opinion suggesting that the entire Tribal Council should resign was “absurd;” and that justified his removal. Even if the entire Native American Bar had declared that his opinion was “absurd,” he apparently broke no laws. Perhaps his political judgment could be suspect, but he also has a right to express his opinion.

Finally I have just read about the Tribal Council suspending Bryan Brewer, the Tribe’s duly-elected President. Brewer was put in office by a majority of voters of the Pine Ridge Reservation, not the Tribal Council. Then what right or power does the Council think it has to “suspend” him?

Brewer, it seems, will have his day in court as soon as the Chief Judge of the Oglala Sioux Tribe has completed her forty five-day suspension at the hands of this same Tribal Council.

This is madness. It all sounds like the insanity that pervades Washington these days, with the Republican Congress shutting down the government, then shutting down the President by opposing everything he tries to do; then threatening to sue him for taking executive action and doing what has to be done.

The Oglala Oyate should move to put a stop to this tyrannical trend. The Oglala Lakota tribal government is not sovereign; the sovereignty is in the people, and the people have spoken when they elected Brewer. The tribal government is only the corporate agency the people created and empowered to responsibly exercise their sovereignty – that includes protecting the individual rights guaranteed by their Constitution (including the rights of Whalen, Lee and Brewer), and to serve the needs of the tribal citizens.

Charles "Chuck" Trimble is a member of the Oglala Lakota Oyate, born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970, and served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972-1978. He can be reached at cchuktrim@aol.com or charlestrimble.com