Jeffrey Whalen: Tribal government's many moments of tyranny

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Looking at the IRA form of government

By Jeffrey Whalen
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today

Today, I am going to write about some of the history of how America came up with their Constitution and compare that to the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) Constitution in an effort to support the Oglala Sioux Tribes Constitutional Reform process.

It will be important to refer to what is called the Federalist Papers and the internet has made it convenient for me to search and find some language that was written by some influential folks who lived in a time period around 1787. The search starts at www.let.rug.nl for American History and the Federalist papers where I find the words of its preamble; “Beginning on October 27, 1787 the Federalist Papers were first published in the New York press under the signature of "Publius.”

These papers are generally considered to be one of the most important contributions to political thought made in America. The essays appeared in book form in 1788, with an introduction by Hamilton. Subsequently they were printed in many editions and translated to several languages. The pseudonym "Publius" was used by three men: Jay, Madison and Hamilton. Jay was responsible for only a few of the 85 articles. The papers were meant to be influential in the campaign for the adoption of the Constitution by New York State. But the authors not only discussed the issues of the Constitution, but also many general problems of politics.”

The Federalist Papers are an important resource to refer to if a person wants to see how the governing bodies of this country were developed. For the purpose of this article, I am going to quote some of the parts that come from Federalist #47 of which was authored by James Madison who was the 4th President of the United States and served from 1809-1817. Madison is also credited as being the founder of the U. S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe is currently going through a Constitutional Reform process. The tribal government could easily vote to move the process forward, but there are problems. It appears that a majority of sitting council members are against the reform and a council vote to support any type of change has not been done.

Jeffrey Whalen. Photo courtesy Native Sun News Today

The Constitutional Reform Committee have five (5) council members who are consistent with pushing this forward. Robin Tapio, Pine Ridge, Jackie Siers Wakpamni, Valentina Merdanian, Oglala, Steph Leasure, Oglala and Lisa Jumping Eagle DeLeon, Wounded Knee.

These council members are tasked with bringing constitutional change language back to the tribal council. After doing research, hosting lengthy meetings, and getting opinions from the Oyate, and after bringing that info back to the council, it all got rejected.

The majority of the sitting council members are against the reform and give a wide variety of reasons as to why they won’t support the revisions, but in the end, their alleged support of changes all seemed like a bait and switch scheme. The reform committee was forced to go back to the drawing board where they decided to start a petition drive. The needed somewhere around 4,500 signatures (as determined by the Bureau of Indian Affairs) for each item that was to be voted on and they had about 50 or so items for each constitutional change that ultimately came from the Oyate themselves.

The collection of signatures to place each issue on a ballot separately would have been a monumental task in itself. The Constitutional Reform Committee would have been required to collect 225,000 signatures altogether which would have been a very repetitive signature drive. Additionally, according to the tribal Enrollment Office, the Oglala’s only have 12,283 eligible voters. Rather than collecting all those signatures over and over again, the ladies decided to bundle all of the suggested changes into one single voting event of which would overhaul the entire tribal constitution including the preamble.

However, the tribal council could still host a Secretarial election which would enable the Oyate to vote on all 50 suggested amendments individually. But that doesn’t seem to be reasonable to the council because for starters, the Finance committee recently stopped the Reform Committee’s funding which in effect, suppresses the Oyate’s vote.

Now, we go back to the Federalist Papers and way back into time when the States were being formed and to the opinion of James Madison in Federalist Paper # 47 which was written on February 1, 1788. There is language in that paper that suggests doom if a single government department has too much power. “To control the abuses of government…to shed a clearer light…to enact a separation in favor of liberty… to prevent a danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts…the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether be hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny…”

Think about that and compare it to our existing tribal government. If you, the reader, should have an opportunity to get on the internet, search for this paper to view it all.

The Oglala’s have a somewhat separation where the Judiciary is partially separated from the Legislative, but the Executive still remains under the Legislative branch. Madison comments on this situation as well and writes; “When the legislative and Executive powers are united in the same body or person, there can be no liberty because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

Two hundred years ago, James Madison saw what could happen if a governments powerful branches were not separated, and he warned about it. We wonder why the Oglala tribal government seems to have had it blinders on…all this time? They want to retain their tyrannical type of power over the Oyate through the IRA system. We all know that our tribal government has had many, many tyrannical moments and they continue to do so.