Tim Giago: Tribe replies to corruption allegations
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Filed Under:
Opinion
In response to the comments by Doreen Yellowbird, I must remind her as a former journalist that it is often impossible to get responses to accusations from tribal officials on the receiving end of an accusation.
I tried without success to get comments on the charges of several disgruntled members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold right up to press time and just as I was about to put the paper to bed I got a response from Chairman Marcus Levings. I stopped everything and caught the layout and design person just in time and added the chairman’s comments to my column.
In my more than 30 years of news reporting I have found it most difficult to get comments from tribal officials when there are allegations of corruption or crimes within a tribal government and it has always caused me to think about how much an immediate response to any allegations by tribal officials would do to help clear the air. I commend Chairman Levings for stepping forward and speaking out because, in my experience, many tribal officials and chairmen never speak out but sit back hoping it will all go away.
One should also consider that Doreen Yellowbird is an employee of the Three Affiliated Tribes and works directly for Chairman Levings and is indeed obligated to respond to any criticism of her boss. However, I had no idea that she held the position of Press Secretary for the tribe because this bit of news has never been sent to me because if I knew this, I would have contacted her immediately for comments on the allegations by tribal members against the present administration.
Perhaps I will get lambasted again for believing that all members of an Indian tribe have the right to complain when they believe that something within their government is not right. Whether that complaint has teeth is another matter, but they still have the right to voice it. It is up to press secretaries and tribal leaders to dispel the truth of any allegations.
Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the publisher of Native Sun News. He was the
founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association, the
1985 recipient of the H. L. Mencken Award, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with
the Class of 1991. Giago was inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of
Fame in 2008. He can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com.
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