For the second time as governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem has been banished from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Last week, the Oglala Sioux Tribe said the Republican governor was no longer welcome in tribal areas, and its leaders called her rhetoric linking immigration and crime opportunistic and dangerous.
“Our people are being used for her political gain,” said Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux tribe.
After Noem suggested last week that the state would send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to discourage border crossings at the US-Mexico border, Star Comes Out accused her of trying to curry favor with former US President Donald Trump.
Noem also said drug cartels are responsible for killings on the reservation and that they are affiliated with a gang called the “Ghost Dancers” – which takes its name from a Native American religious ceremony. Historically, U.S. and state officials viewed the Ghost Dance as a threat of violence and attempted to ban it, ushering in a painful period in history.
Star Comes Out said the reservation has cartel and gang problems, but singling out a gang with that specific name and history felt like another insult to its people. Noem’s mention of the gang, he said, was the first he had heard of it or its possible presence on the reservation.
Ian Fury, a spokesman for Noem’s office, said in an email Tuesday: “All the governor did was say the name of a gang that does indeed exist and is in fact committing the crimes she refers to.” She didn’t choose the name of the gang, they named themselves.”
Federal and tribal authorities have criminal jurisdiction over South Dakota reservations, and Star Comes Out wants more US funding for law enforcement. Noem has previously pushed for expanding the state’s jurisdiction. In 2018, as a representative of the U.S. House of Representatives, she proposed legislation that would allow federal authorities to arrest people on tribal lands for state crimes. There was much opposition from tribal leaders, who saw it as a threat to tribal sovereignty.
Here are key questions and answers about the governor’s contentious relationship with the tribe.
Tony Mangan, a spokesman for the South Dakota attorney general’s office, said the Ghost Dancers have ties to a motorcycle gang called the Bandidos. The office does not know whether the group has ties to drug cartels, nor whether the Ghost Dancers are present on the reservation, Mangan said.
Noem has named cartels responsible for killings on the reservation, though her office did not share any recent examples. Fury, the governor’s spokesman, pointed to a 2016 killing on the reservation that was linked to a drug cartel, but he declined to provide information about other gang- or cartel-related killings or any connection to the Ghost Dancers.
“Murders are being committed by cartel members on the Pine Ridge Reservation and in Rapid City, and a gang called the ‘Ghost Dancers’ is affiliated with these cartels,” Noem said in a speech to state lawmakers last week. “They have been successful in recruiting tribal members to join their criminal activities.”
Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux tribe, said he had never heard of a gang called the Ghost Dancers until Noem mentioned it in her speech, and that he was unaware of any presence of this gang in the Pine Ridge Reserve.
The Ghost Dance was a religious movement that spread through Native American communities in the US in the late 1800s after a Paiute elder had a vision that their homeland would be restored and they would be reconnected with their ancestors if they practiced it. He also foresaw the removal of white settlers, whose violence and spread of disease had devastated tribes.
For many, this practice represented resilience in the face of the enormous loss that colonization brought.
The dance involves holding hands and moving in a circle while singing the night away. In the early 1890s, American political and military leaders attempted to ban the Ghost Dance, fearing that the movement would be a precursor to an uprising in the communities it subjugated. Tribal states across the country adopted the practice, and in South Dakota it became part of one of America’s most infamous massacres.
In 1890, hoping to stop the spread of the Ghost Dance, federal agents went to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to arrest Chief Sitting Bull, who they believed was behind its influence. After a dispute, officers shot and killed Sitting Bull and several other tribe members. After this, a group of approximately 300 Lakota men, women and children left Standing Rock in hopes of reaching safety on the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The group was intercepted by American forces, who killed hundreds of Lakota people in what would become known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Since taking office in 2019, Noem has clashed with tribal governments several times.
In response to its support for anti-protest legislation following the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Standing Rock, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council voted unanimously to ban the governor from the reservation in 2019.
Months later, the council lifted the ban after Noem and the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota reached a settlement that would prevent the state from enforcing parts of the “anti-riot” laws Noem had drafted.
She also clashed with several tribes during the COVID-19 pandemic as they set up coronavirus checkpoints at the reservation’s borders to keep out unnecessary visitors. When Noem failed to dismantle the checkpoints, she turned to the Trump administration for help.
Nick Estes, an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux tribe in South Dakota, said he sees Noem’s hostile relationship with tribal nations as an attempt to seize a political opportunity and position himself as a strong Republican leader. “It’s a clear signal to Trump,” he said.
Noem is considered one of the leading candidates for Trump’s vice presidential pick in his re-election campaign.
Star Comes Out said Noem is the first person it has banished since becoming president of the tribe in 2022. The ban prevents Noem from visiting the reservation.
Yes. Star Comes Out declared a state of emergency on the reservation in November due to rampant crime that it says cannot be curbed due to inadequate U.S. government funding for law enforcement. The state of emergency is still in effect, he said this week.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government has a treaty obligation to support law enforcement on the reservation, but did not set a specific funding amount.
Star Comes Out said conditions on the reservation have deteriorated since the ruling, prompting him to sign an emergency proclamation saying the U.S. government has failed “to fulfill the treaty, legal, and trust responsibilities of the United States to ensure adequate law enforcement on the reservation. .”
Gun violence, drug crimes and sexual violence are increasingly common on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which covers more than 2.1 million acres, or at least 4% of the state. About 33 officers and eight detectives are responsible for more than 100,000 emergency calls a year on the reservation, which is about the size of Connecticut, tribal officials say.
Oglala Sioux officials have argued that the tribe is entitled to federal funding for 120 fully equipped officers for the reservation, something the federal government has disputed.
The tribal nation filed a second lawsuit against the U.S. government last month to pressure it to act.
___ Graham Brewer is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on social media.
Trisha Ahmed is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15 ___
This story has been corrected to say that Noem was a U.S. House representative for South Dakota in 2018, not a representative in the South Dakota Legislature.