Kalle Benallie
ICT
Tina Abrams became the first woman to be elected as president of the Seneca Nation since 1848.
“Our people went to the polls to choose a leader you believe in, a leader you can trust to lead our nation with strength, honesty, vision and conviction,” Abrams said. “I am honored beyond words to stand before you today as your choice, your president, and as the first woman in history of the nation to receive and accept that responsibility.”
Abrams won with 1,040 votes against Odie Porter and Rickey Armstrong. She will serve a two-year term. She succeeds J. Conrad Seneca, who was elected in 2024.
The Seneca Nation of Indians is one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The nation has three territories in western New York: Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Oil Spring. They also operate and reside in Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
This is the nation’s first time women will make up the executive branch. Lenith Waterman will serve as treasurer and Bethany Johnson as clerk for two-year terms. Seneca women could not vote in the nation’s elections until 1964.
Credit: Seneca Nation Clerk Bethany Johnson, left, Seneca Nation President Tina Abrams and Seneca Nation Treasurer Lenith Waterman, right, on Nov. 10, 2026. (Photo courtesy of the Seneca Media & Communications Center)
“Throughout this year’s campaign, the Seneca people made it clear that our voice – the voice of the people – needed to heard by our leaders and within our government. Tonight, our voice was heard loud and clear across our territories and we made history,” Scott Snyder, Seneca Party Chairman from the Cattaraugus Territory, said in a press release.
The president-elect’s grandfather and father served in the Seneca Nation Council, too.
“Now, the same little girl from Cattaraugus who used to go to meetings with her father and fall asleep in the council house; a proud mother and grandmother who raised her family here in Allegany; and a longtime voice for the Seneca people on council, will lead our Nation for the next two years,” she said.
Abrams has been a member of the Seneca Nation Council since 2012 and was the first woman appointed as co-chair of the council in 2012. She serves as chairperson of the Seneca Nation’s Veteran’s Powwow and is a member of the Remember the Removal Committee, which recognizes the forced removal of hundreds of Seneca families from their ancestral homelands by the United States government in 1966 for the construction of the Kinzua Dam.
She is a board member of the Cattaraugus County Planning Board since 2002 and the Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center Board of Directors since 2021.
In 2026 she was selected by New York State Senator George Borrello for the 2026 Woman of Distinction honoree for the 57th Senate District. She was the first Indigenous woman to be selected. In 2025, she was honored as one of the “Living Trailblazing Women” by the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women.
She also was the first Seneca Nation citizen to receive the Brooks Patterson Community Leadership Award from the Cattaraugus County Planning Board.
“I’m eager and excited to write this new important chapter of the Seneca Nation history with you. I’m proud to stand before you. I’m proud to represent 8,500 people,” Abrams said.
