Bad decision after
bad decision polluting Pine Ridge
By Jeffery Whalen
Pine Ridge should hold an
Olympic Gold Medal for setting the record in making the Most Consecutive
Bad Decisions. Each administration has its share of these but the
last administration would have set the bad decision bar so high that it
probably (and hopefully) will never be equaled.
Paying off contractors who
didn’t finish their contracts is one of the biggest errors that any
administration could make. But it didn’t stop there because
Cangleska is in trouble, the Ambulance Service unjustly lost 13
employees, Transportation unjustly lost its Board of Road Commissioners,
Motor Fuels Staff and its Director, Public Safety is in trouble, travel
was unaccounted for by tribal council members and tribal employees, the
Prairie Wind Casino building structure is failing, the Casino profits
were allegedly dipped into by Tribal Council members, and the Oglala
Sioux Tribe has been operating in the red and is in extreme debt.
Where does it all end and how did we end up this way?
Bad decisions are at the root
of all evil. Who is to blame? Is it the Indian Re-Organization Act
government or is it the voters? Or is it a combination of things?
Whoever is to blame, bad decisions continue to fester in the Oglala
Nation.
I always ask people on the
street; “Are we a sovereign nation?” And I always get the same answer:
“Yes we are.” But if we are sovereign, why are we still accepting money
from the federal government? This is not sovereignty, it is
dependency. We are dependent upon the federal government.
Sovereignty and dependency do not mix and is just another bad decision.
We are in a welfare state of un-organization, plain and simple.
The Seminoles in Florida did it right, they bought all of the Hard Rock
Hotels and Casinos with 970 million dollars and paid in cash. We
need to take lessons from them and practice what they preach.
Yesterday, January 25th,
2011 a really big bad decision was made on the OST Tribal Council floor.
Since the Tribal President is on travel status the Vice President was
chairing the meeting. While in the meeting he apparently started
discussing a recent Supreme Court ruling with the Tribes Executive
Secretary and was subsequently removed from the Tribal Council meeting.
They probably should have adjourned the meeting at that point or the
Vice Chairman should have taken control of the meeting according to
Roberts Rule of Order.
After removing the presiding
chair, the council meeting continued and apparently during executive
session an argument broke out when a council member was accused of
elderly abuse. Then an assault occurred between two council
individuals. The police arrived and attempted to arrest one of the
council members. The attorneys advised that since the council was
in executive session that the person accused of assault was protected by
sovereign immunity and could not be arrested.
Wow! A whole series of
bad decision occurred in a matter of minutes. According to the
attorney, when the council members are in executive session they can
beat the living daylights out of each other and get away with it because
of their sovereign status. Yeah, so you council guys and gals have
the green light from your own attorney to give each other black eyes
anytime you want to. That legal advice is just going to be added
to the string of “bad decisions” that are being made on a daily basis.
There is a historic legacy that
leads to bad decisions which is resulting in an even worse economy.
Folks with no experience are given employment priority through the
nepotism system. They are placed into jobs that are just too
complex for them to properly manage. Federal retirees are hired
into tribal positions because they have experience in some unrelated
field. Then failure follows because of more bad decisions.
The Tribe had an airplane pilot
training program which was supposed to train at least 25 persons in the
aviation field. Bad decisions caused it to fail and we didn’t
graduate even one individual. The Indian Action program was
supposed to train tribal members in a variety of fields. Bad
decisions caused it to fail. The casino was supposed to have a
bowling alley, water slide and several other additions but it did not
happen because of the really bad decisions of allowing tribal council
members to get involved in the development and construction of the
facility. Now we are hearing that the motel only has a life span
of 6 or 7 more years because of sub-standard construction and a failing
foundation. There is a massive list of tribal venture failures
because of bad decisions and the list is much too long to publish.
Competent folks should be
placed into key positions to prevent bad decisions. A judge is
competent in legal structures of law but is incompetent in rebuilding an
automatic transmission and vice versa. A secretary is competent in
filing papers but incompetent in contract negotiations. A Tribal
Council member should be competent in developing laws as a legislator
but is incompetent in micro-managing programs.
Our own ignorance keeps us at
the bottom of the barrel when it comes to economic development. We
depend upon outsiders who know their craft to initiate development here
at home, but we fail to incorporate their guidance into our system which
results in more bad decisions. We are probably the most studied
tribe in America, if you read between the lines of those studies you
will find an astonishing result which is; don’t do things the way the
Oglala’s do or you will risk failure.
Pine Ridge is looked at as a
series of failures due to bad decisions by folks off the reservation.
Most of the so called leaders here could potentially be charged under
the Racketeering Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act (RICO)
which is an organized crime law intended on preventing exactly what has
been happening right here at home in Pine Ridge. We need to take
the authority away from the gangsters in office and put it back into the
hands of experienced, educated individuals who actually know what they
are doing.
Finally, the last bad decision
is putting the tribe’s casino out in the middle of nowhere compares to
the Federal Government putting an Indian Reservation in the most remote
corner of the country that they could find. Sheesh, where does it
all stop?