Frank “Popo” Means runs for OST President
Identifies transparency and ethics as key concernsBy James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Correspondent
nativesunnews.today RAPID CITY—Not every tribal election offers voters a clear choice, or even a good choice, but somebody is going to prevail come November 6, 2018, and become Oglala Sioux Tribe president for the next two years. Frank “Popo” Means feels he is the kind of man that can provide the leadership and direction the tribe has been clamoring after. There is a certain aura a practiced politician maintains, and voters tend to mistakenly associate that aura with competence, but Means is not that kind of candidate. Although he has devoted much of his adult life to public service for his tribe, most of it was as director of important and successful reservation programs; he did not make his tribal service bones as a politically motivated councilman. The biggest accomplishment Means ever presided over was the Mni Wiconi Rural Water Project, which most of the public takes for granted, not understanding that this project may be the single most impressive and important reality the Oglala Sioux Tribe ever conceived, developed and implemented for the people. To this day, Mni Wiconi provides quality drinking water to the reservation and many counties surrounding the reservation, reliably and efficiently, year in and year out, and without this system in place, there would be no infrastructure necessary to build the casinos and the nursing home in White Clay, no infrastructure for sorely needed future business or community development. Tribal Attorney Mario Gonzalez is not one to involve himself much in political matters but he said of Means: “Nobody could have pulled the (Mni Wiconi) program out like he did. It was just a mess, a mess. He had all these meetings, and he got the figures out, and he was able to close it out, and had money left over after he did it.” Uncomfortable with high praise, as humility is a fundamental Lakota virtue, Means has his own take on that project: “It wasn’t me alone that did it, I had help, too, it was all teamwork, but I brought the team together to get it done. Just so everybody understands their roles and responsibilities. Just like Mario, on the water project, he had the legal; Mike Watson had the technical; Paul Little was on the council that was the political. We had a team there.” Perhaps the most effective team of Oglala ever put together, as the fight for implementing Mni Wiconi was hardly an easy one. Misguided factions of the tribe fought the water system, they even snookered the public into voting it down in referendum. But a technicality, whereby the system was not subject to voter referendum, allowed implementation to proceed. Means prevailed in his battle for Mni Wiconi, even when it seemed he must lose and the project must fail. With 20/20 hindsight, it is obvious Means was fighting for something important and principled and necessary, but not back when he was fighting for it. Means said, “We’re trying to do the solicitations for qualifications for engineering services. We use the internet to send it out because we didn’t have any money from the tribe to put it in the newspaper. Our policy said just as long as it’s sent out to three firms, so I identified nine of them, so we sent them out, and so four responded. These are the kind of roadblocks we come up against with the federal government. As an example, rural development, is treating us just like any other South Dakota community out there, instead of an Indian tribe, and I think we’re unique. We gotta push Indian policy through for the federal government to treat us different. A lot of times they’re putting us under the state, too, to vote for grants and stuff—that’s not right.” Three things stand out here that are indicative of how Means solves problems. One, he had no funds but he didn’t let that stop him. Two, he clearly identified the source of his problem. Three, he proposed an achievable strategy to correct the relationship that was causing the problem so it wouldn’t happen again. One of the things Means wants to do is reestablish the Oglala Sioux Tribe as a leader in Indian country. Of late, much of the leadership roles and actions have been taken by tribes and agencies with little or no Oglala participation. Rather than butt adversarial heads with these tribes, Means wants to lead by principled example that invites and facilitates intertribal cooperation. Means especially wants to give a voice to two important groups, first the poor: “Wahpanica people, how they survive, I don’t know, but they’re an inspiration to me. I respect them. A lot of them don’t even go to the tribe for help, just doing it themselves.” The second group, are young people: “The people I hire, most will be young people in my office, young, intelligent people. I gotta represent the silent majority. What we gotta focus on is enlightening the people, creating awareness, and empowering them to get involved. Something like John Kennedy had—‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’” In this case, Means is asking what can you do for your tribe, in an environment where many people expect handouts and are not conditioned to return hard work: “We can only go so far working with what we got. We gotta create a destiny for the young people, and then they are going to have to take it over, so we got to include them in everything. I don’t think anyone’s even thinking like that; it’s all about I-I, me-me. They’re not working together as a team, because teamwork will take you a long way. We can’t do things individually; we have to do it collectively. Workin’ together.” Of the future projects, Means is most focused on one: “I want to make this Seven Years for Seven Generations project my priority for projects, because so far we’ve brought in $13 million. I’m in office we will get that whole 32 committed, that’s for infrastructure. I want to take a look at our infrastructure—I want to improve the roads, I want to improve the waste water. You know, without good infrastructure, we are going nowhere—we gotta get ready, build like a foundation, take it step by step, and build something.” When Means talks about building something for the future, he does not mean grandiose plans. He tries to stick to the basics, the serviceable, that can be used for foundation to build projects not presently possible: “We’re spending too much and not bringing in enough income, so it puts us in debt. But just like all these other people campaigning around us for governorship, or for municipal offices, we need transparency, and that’s why I say we have to enlighten the people, and empower them.” Leadership responsibility for Means can be broken down into a traditional definition: “We’re just like a bunch of prairie chickens dancing to Iktomi’s drum, and he’s knocking them in the head—some of us just got to wake up, and the people will hear our wings flapping, and they’ll fly away with us. We gotta change.” Once in office, Means intends to keep the lines of communication wide open, especially to those tribal members long denied access to leadership: “I’m not gonna declare executive session unless it’s a matter of tribal security or if it’s a personnel issue.” Federal regulations are a major sticking point with Means, too: “The way they got it for land, for right of ways and easements, it’s so cumbersome, and we can’t get information out of them, to even do a correct compensation to land owners. If they don’t provide us with the correct information we can’t put the proper amount of how much we gotta pay the land owners. Their capabilities need to be improved, we need real time information, and if we don’t get it, it just hampers our ability to do development on the reservation. So, if you want to talk about economic development, we can’t get there with all these regulations, either.” Means has noticed something the White House does in that regard: “So, I’m saying to Trump, you’re coming up with all these executive orders, to relax the federal regulations, so why don’t you do the same thing for us Indians, too, so we can do development?”
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