A South Dakota tribe is banning Gov. Kristi Noem from its reservation over her recent remarks about an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border, in which she said she was considering sending razor wire and security personnel there.
The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Frank Star Comes Out, issued the decision about not allowing her on the Pine Ridge Reservation in a four-page response to the GOP governor’s remarks about the southern border.
“Due to the safety of the Oyate, effective immediately, you are hereby Banished from the homelands of the Ogala Sioux Tribe!” he wrote in a letter Friday.
The tribe said in 2019 that Noem wasn’t welcome on the land, the eighth-largest reservation in the country, because she supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
The statement from the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s president, who said he was an honorably discharged U.S. combat veteran, said Noem’s “use of the term ‘invasion’ as a justification to send S.D. National Guard troops to Texas” is “misplaced.”
“The truth of the matter is that Governor Noem wants the use of the so-called ‘invasion’ of the southern border as a Republican ‘crisis’ issue to help get former President Donald Trump to use it as a campaign issue to get re-elected as President, and in turn increase her chances of being selected by Trump to be his running mate as Vice-President,” the tribe’s president said.
Frank Star Comes Out wrote that he believes that “many of the people coming to the southern border of the United States in search of jobs and a better life are Indian people” from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico “and don’t deserve to be dehumanized and mistreated.”
“They don’t need to be put in cages, separated from their children like during the Trump administration, or be cut up by razor wire furnished by, of all places, South Dakota,” he wrote.
Noem responded to him in a statement Saturday saying, “It is unfortunate that President Star Comes Out chose to bring politics into a discussion regarding the effects of our federal government’s failure to enforce federal laws at the southern border and on tribal lands. My focus continues to be on working together to solve those problems.”