Welcome to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Photo by Pete Markhan
It’s time for the old guard to step aside for the new
By Jeffrey Whalen
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nsweekly.com It’s fast coming up on the new election term for the Oglala Sioux Tribe. For this cycle and comparable to the most recent years it is unusual to see just four (4) candidates running for President. John “Yellow Bird” Steele, who is the incumbent, is running again. Julian Bear Runner, Scott Weston and my youngest brother, Bruce W. Whalen, are also running. Being the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe is a monumental task. First, they have to gain the confidence of the newly elected Tribal Council and if this is not done immediately that council can destroy the President’s office and authority quite effectively. I can’t evaluate Mr. Bear Runner because he is relatively unknown to me and to a large percentage of folks on Pine Ridge. Mr. Bear Runner may very well be a good candidate, but at this time, I simply do not know who he is. So this writing is going to “deflect” away from him until such a time that I can report more reasonably on his potential for leadership of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Scott Weston was a one-time Tribal Council representative from Porcupine who served a few terms ago. My personal interaction with Mr. Weston was simply negative in a hard way. So I basically would never endorse Mr. Weston for President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, but more so because he lacks knowledge of the tribal government. For most of his career, Mr. Weston was a range fire control person and was part of a team who literally “put out fires” throughout the Pine Ridge Reservation when he worked for the Bureau’s Fire Department. My recollection may be incorrect, but it seems that he secured the position at the Fire Department right after he got out of high school. An additional reason why I would not endorse Mr. Weston is because when he was a council member he sided mostly with the other council members who did not move the tribe in a positive direction. Veterans issues for example, when Mr. Irving Provost was the chair of the Tribal Finance Committee a few terms ago and served with Mr. Weston our Veterans Committee, was routinely disregarded and basically stomped on by these two individuals. Our Veterans board consisted of United States Marine Corps Veteran Chuck Conroy as the President, United States Army Veteran Duane Brewer as the Vice President, both of whom served in the Viet Nam War. I am a United States Marine Corps Veteran and was the Secretary of our Veterans group and I served during the Viet Nam Era. Mr. Chuck Ross who is a combat veteran was our Treasurer and is also a United States Marine Corps Veteran. Mr. Irving Provost who is now running for a Tribal Council position in the Pine Ridge District along with Mr. Weston and a few of their cronies on tribal council routinely placed road blocks in-front of the Veterans Group and did not allow the group to gain much traction on the multitude of issues that we were working on. Everything that we were attempting to address was first and foremost for the benefit of other Veterans and their families. Due to the total disregard toward the Veterans and their issues, Mr. Provost and Weston were successful in insuring that we did not flourish.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: It’s time for the old guard to step aside for the new (Contact Jeffrey Whalen at Jeffrey.whalen2@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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