For the first time in the 70-year history of the power company, Sicangu Oyate members, pictured at the 2019 standing-room-only election meeting, gained the majority of seats on the board of directors. "It was standing room only," Rosebud Cordier of Oyate For Fairness and Equal Representation wrote on social media. Photo courtesy Rosebud Courier

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‘New dawn’ on Rosebud: Tribal electric utility voters triumph

Thursday, September 26, 2019

By Talli Nauman

Native Sun News Today Health & Environment Editor

nativesunnews.today

VALENTINE, Nebraska – September 14, 2019 marked the first time that tribal members gained the majority of seats on the board of directors in the 70-year history of the power company supplying the Sicangu Nation’s electricity.

“Unprecedented! Historic!” exclaimed tribal enrollee Rosebud Cordier, a leader of the grassroots citizen action group Oyate For Fairness & Equal Representation (OFFER), which formed a decade ago with tribal government support to encourage reservation residents’ voter participation at the power company’s annual board meeting.

In the wake of an OFFER rally, the Cherry-Todd Electric Cooperative experienced a standing-room-only crowd for its 70th Annual Meeting and Election, held at the Rosebud Casino located between Valentine and Mission on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in Todd County.

When the ballots were counted, tribal enrollees claimed five of the eight positions on the board.

“I strongly believe this win came about from the continued efforts of the grassroots group OFFER, with the support of many, many concerned tribal members who packed the bingo hall today!” Cordier said in a thank-you note to voters who turned out.

Posted by Oyate For Fairness and Equal Representation on Saturday, September 14, 2019

Oyate For Fairness and Equal Representation (OFFER)

Todd County is one of three that constitute districts in the power company’s service area. The county is completely under reservation jurisdiction. With another 30 percent of the company’s Melette County district also under the tribal government’s control, some 80 percent of eligible voters are tribally enrolled.

Cherry County, adjacent to the reservation’s southern border in Nebraska, constitutes the remaining district in the provider’s service area.

“We fought hard to get in the tribal members,” said OFFER Coordinator Ronald Neiss, noting that voters elected the two tribal incumbents running and two new tribal enrollees to the eight-member board, where they joined one other tribal board member whose post was not up for election.

With five enrollees on the board, a history of voter suppression of tribal members under majority non-member boards can now be terminated, Neiss said. “The days of practicing business-as-usual are over. We had very little control of the board. I always equated it to apartheid. Now it’s not,” he told the Native Sun News Today. “It’s a new dawn on the Rosebud. That’s how I look at it,” he said.

In the vote count, Todd County district tribal enrollee and board chair Shawn Bordeaux retained his position, and Noah “Sandy” Tucker won reelection to his seat in the district.

Tribal enrollee Wayne Frederick won over another enrollee, Tamaleon Wilcox, and over incumbent Dave Assman for the third Todd County district seat.

In the run for one at-large board position, tribal enrollee Glen Yellow Eagle garnered more votes than tribal challenger Robert Becker.

They join tribal enrollee Whitney Meek, who is one of two Melette County district board members.

“We now have five out of the eight seats ... and they said it couldn't be done!” Neiss exclaimed.

The triumph followed on the publication in 2018 of news feature stories in The Nation and Le Monde about Sicangu tribal citizens’ long struggle to claim a larger role in the decisions affecting their electricity bills.