South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is now banned from entering nearly 20% of her state after another tribe banished her this week and the leaders of a sixth tribe recommended taking that action over comments she made earlier this year about tribal leaders benefitting from drug cartels.
The latest developments in the ongoing tribal dispute come on the heels of the backlash Noem faced for writing about killing a hunting dog that misbehaved in her latest book. It is not clear how these controversies will affect her chances to become Donald Trump’s running mate because it is hard to predict what the former president will do.
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The Sissteon-Wahpeton Oyate tribe banned Noem earlier this week. Then Friday the leadership committee of the Yankton Sioux Tribe recommended that Noem be banned, but that tribe's general council must vote on it before Noem could be banned from their land in southeastern South Dakota. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes had already taken action to keep her off their reservations. Three other tribes haven’t yet banned her.
Noem reinforced the divisions between the tribes and the rest of the state in March when she said publicly that tribal leaders were catering to drug cartels on their reservations while neglecting the needs of children and the poor.
“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said at a forum. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say, ’Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.' ”
Noem's spokesman didn't respond Saturday to email questions about the bans. But previously she has said she believes many people who live on the reservations still support her even though she is clearly not getting along with tribal leaders.
Noem addressed the issue in a post on X on Thursday along while posting a link to a YouTube channel about law enforcement’s video about drugs on the reservations.
“Tribals leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said. “We can only do this through partnerships because the Biden Administration is failing to do their job.”
The tribes have clashed with Noem in the past, including over the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock and during the COVID-19 pandemic when they set up coronavirus checkpoints at reservation borders to keep out unnecessary visitors. She was temporarily banned from the Oglala Sioux reservation in 2019 after the protest dispute.
And there is a long history of rocky relations between Native Americans in the state and the government dating back to 1890, when soldiers shot and killed hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at the Wounded Knee massacre as part of a campaign to stop a religious practice known as the Ghost Dance.
Political observer Cal Jillson, who is based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said this tribal dispute feels a little different because Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit.”
“I’m sure that Gov. Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.
Noem appears to be getting tired of answering questions about her decision to kill Cricket after the dog attacked a family’s chickens during a stop on the way home from a hunting trip and then tried to bite the governor. Noem also drew criticism for including an anecdote she has since asked her publisher to pull from the book that described “staring down” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a private meeting that experts said was implausible.
After those controversies, she canceled several interviews that were planned as part of the book tour. With all the questions about “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," no one is even asking anymore about Noem's decision to appear in an infomercial-style video lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas who gave her veneers.
Jillson said it all probably hurts her chances with Trump, who has been auditioning a long list of potential vice-president candidates.
“I think that the chaos that Trump revels in is the chaos he creates. Chaos created by somebody else simply detracts attention from himself,” Jillson said.
University of South Dakota political science professor Michael Card said that if it isn’t the vice-president slot, it’s not clear what is in Noem’s political future because she is prevented from running for another term as governor. Noem is in her second term as governor.
She could go after U.S. Senator Mike Rounds' seat or try to return to the House of Representatives, Card said.
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This story was first published on May 11, 2024. It was updated on May 13, 2024, to correct the name of a tribe to Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, instead of Sisseton-Wahpeton Ovate.
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This story was also updated on May 14, 2024 to correct that Noem has not been banned by the Yankton Sioux Tribe. That tribe’s leadership committee recommended that Noem should be banned from the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s reservation, but the tribe’s general council must vote on that recommendation before Noem would be banned.