In Politics: Nationally: We are all preparing for the most corrupt Presidential Administration ever,so corrupt in fact that, much like President-elect Trump himself, we will have difficulty differentiating the Trump Administration from Putin’s Russia.
To counter Trump’s Government of Billionaires and massive conflicts of interest, the Democratic Party will meet in February to select a new Chair. Among others, Ken Martin, the longtime Chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party has announced his candidacy for the post. In support of his candidacy, Martin sent out a ten point plan for the Democratic Party going forward. 10 Points…!!! Ok… As a wit and friend of mine said, “I’m holding out for eleven points. I need eleven points before a plan gets my attention.”
In Politics: South Dakota: For those who haven’t been watching closely, the South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP) has been in serious decline for the last year and a half, if not longer, going from a total of 208,000 registered voters in 2008 to a new low of 146,000 this year, all while Republicans gained 80,000 new registrants. The SDDP got more bad news a day ago when, after being reduced to 9 legislative seats in South Dakota’s 105 seat legislature in November, two Native American legislators from west river abandoned the Democratic Legislative Caucus which now numbers seven, five of whom are from Sioux Falls.
It is hard to believe, but the SDDP continues to deteriorate despite its already, mostly irrelevant status.
The good news is that the Minnehaha Democratic Party announced at its meeting this week that it would soon produce a strategic plan for its membership to review. I can hardly wait to see how it differs from the strategic plan the SDDP produced in 2019.
While I wait, I think I will have a drink, maybe two.
Gee, I wonder if 2021 redistricting, which favored Minnehaha Democrats over the Natives, had anything to do with this? Especially when you consider how the Dems tried to create two Democratic legislative districts in Sioux Falls, which eventually became one due to RV voters, while they were willing to allow white Wall to become a part of LD 27 and never pushed to have the Native precincts of Mobridge tied into 28A, which had been suggested by some at the Mobridge public input meeting concerning redistricting.
If the Natives are leaving the SDDP, then it’s like when Conkrite left LBJ.
Our state constitution requires us to use the US Census and not actual registered voters to determine the size of a potential legislative district. State Representative Peri Pourier, during the Legislature’s sanctioned Rapid City meeting for public input into the re-districting process, warned that the Census had under counted the reservations severly, which if true, then there would have been no justified need to add Wall to 27 and we could have strenghten the Democratic outcome in 26 (state senate), 26B, and 28B with this claim by Pourier, but you never heard a peep out of the SDDP back in ’21 about this issue or claim.
But then again, let us not forget that the current legislative district map that we have is a product of moderate Republicans and the 11 Democrats at the time, but it couldn’t get passed in the state House until State Representative Fred Deutsch and his small band of anti-transgender legislators voted with the Democrats and the moderate Republicans after they restored Deutsch’s all rural legislative district, which then worked to Deutsch’s political favor for survivablity….. That’s right, some moderate Republicans, some Democrats, and some notorious anti-transgender state legislators all walked in to a bar together and….. Wow, no wonder the Natives left that scene… Because the Democrats protected the white vote in Minnehaha, but exposed the Native vote in 27 especially with the final legistlative district map, and now the two Native Democrats from 27 have left the Party and I really cannot blame them…. I guess those two won’t be the ones turning the lights off someday, huh?….. 🙂
( and Woodstock adds: “So, you are saying they protected some anti-transgender folk, but then exposed the Natives?”…… #Yikes! …… )
In the years after a second historic Wounded Knee incident attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez argued that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations. In 1987 New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley introduced the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act that would have returned 1.3 million acres to tribes signatory to the treaty but it died amid squabbling among the interested parties.
In 2018 prisoner of war Leonard Peltier applied for executive clemency then again in 2020 for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but both were denied because Donald Trump detests American Indians.
In 2022 members of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate held a two-day conference to educate the next generation of Lakota leaders about the history of the Black Hills Claim.
Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department’s Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership. Earlier this year the Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the use of $31 million so the Klamath Tribes could acquire nearly 90,000 acres of private land within their historic reservation boundaries for ecosystem restoration and economic development.
Now nation to nation talks are coalescing around the He Sapa Restoration Act that would remand public lands to the Oyate with hopes of introducing it in the US Congress in 2025 but some elders believe it doesn’t go far enough.