Kevin Abourezk
ICT
The Oglala Sioux Tribe, one of the largest tribes in the United States, has decided to leave two national tribal advocacy organizations, asserting those groups no longer represent its interests.
In a statement this week, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out said his tribe had decided to leave the National Congress of American Indians and the Coalition of Large Tribes, which both advocate on behalf of tribes.
“(The tribe) is concerned that NCAI’s structure does not allow for the equitable consideration of the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s interests,” said Star Comes Out. “Until NCAI gives more weight to the population of each Tribe in determining votes, the system cannot be equitable.”
Star Comes Out said NCAI’s unwillingness to change the way it decides which policy positions it takes on behalf of its members prompted his tribe to revoke its membership.
“This inequity has led to NCAI’s advocacy weighing too heavily toward the interests of self-governance Tribes at the expense of Tribes who seek to hold the United States to its obligations under direct services,” he said.
Tribal governments in America can take two approaches to how they handle their affairs. They can either handle their own governance with minimal federal oversight — an approach known as “self-governance” — or they can allow the federal government to administer their programs — an approach known as “direct services.”
The Oglala Sioux Tribe is considered a direct-service tribe and has more than 52,000 enrolled members. Its reservation, Pine Ridge, covers 3,500 square miles in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska.
Reached by ICT on Friday evening, NCAI President Mark Macarro expressed his disappointment at the tribe’s decision to leave the organization, which represents more than 300 of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes.
“NCAI certainly respects the decision of the Oglala Sioux Tribe to leave their seat at the table, and we do look forward to working with them in other capacities,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll one day decide to return to the organization.”
He said he understands the tribe’s concern that it doesn’t have the level of voting power within the NCAI decision-making process that it feels it deserves based on its size.
Currently, NCAI grants tribes between 100 to 180 votes based on their population sizes. The smallest voting tier of 100 votes is for tribes with up to 500 citizens. The largest voting tier of 180 votes is for tribes with 7,500 or more citizens.
Macarro said the voting tiers should be adjusted considering there are many tribes today that have far more than 7,500 citizens.
“I recognize that there are representational inequities in the current voting tiers that we have,” Macarro said. “Those are embodied in our organizational constitution and bylaws. I would expect that there will be a constitutional reform that takes place over the next handful of years or sooner.”
He said a constitutional amendment would require the support of two-thirds of NCAI’s delegate tribes.
Star Comes Out said NCAI’s inequitable voting system also has “diminished the ability of NCAI to promote a collective understanding of Tribes’ rightful place in having a government-to-government relationship with the Federal government.”
“The (Oglala Sioux Tribe) believes that NCAI is no longer a meaningful forum to bring forward the issues most important to (the tribe), namely, to ensure that the United States honors its treaty obligations to treaty tribes, including through direct service obligations,” he said.
In response, Macarro said NCAI will continue to hold “the line on the United States’s trust responsibility to tribal nations and the obligations that are owed to us under the treaties. We remain undeterred in that mission.”
And NCAI will continue to seek consensus among its members when it comes to deciding policy positions, he said.
“The power of NCAI has always been in its unified voice and the positions that are collaboratively arrived at through dialogue with the many voices of leadership in Indian Country,” he said. “When we can hone all those voices to a single unified resolution, that resolution becomes the expression of a national tribal position. That’s where our power has always come from.”
NCAI will host its 82nd annual Convention and Marketplace starting Sunday through Friday, Nov. 21, in Seattle.
“I also look forward to leading the continued efforts of the 300-plus tribes of the organization and their elected representatives as we convene in Seattle next week,” Macarro said.
Star Comes Out said the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s decision to leave the Coalition of Large Tribes, which advocates on behalf of 27 tribes with land bases that exceed 100,000 acres, was also based on the organization’s failure to adequately serve the interests of direct-service tribes.
“This decision is not made lightly,” he said. “The Tribe remains committed to ensuring that the United States fulfills its treaty and trust obligations, including the provision of adequate funding and services for direct service tribes.”
He said the coalition’s lack of communication with the tribe, as well as its seeming decision to align itself with the Trump administration, also contributed to the tribe’s decision to leave.
“Moreover, the Coalition’s messaging and priorities appear increasingly aligned with the current Presidential Administration, whose actions have repeatedly disrespected Tribal sovereignty, undermined treaty rights, and ignored the lived realities of Tribal citizens,” Star Comes Out said. “These actions are not just policy missteps — they are deliberate affronts to the political status and values of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.”
Star Comes Out called on other large land-based tribes to join it in leaving NCAI and the Coalition of Large Tribes.
Reached Friday, OJ Semans, the coalition’s executive director, told ICT that the organization has worked with every presidential administration since its founding in order to serve its members’ interests.
“Our job is not to attack anybody,” he said. “Our job is to work with any administration that comes in for the betterment of Indian Country.”
He said the coalition has criticized every administration for policies that hurt its members’ interests, including the Biden administration, which he said failed tribes in many ways. As an example, he said, Biden could have revoked the Medals of Honor awarded to about 20 soldiers who took part in the Wounded Massacre of 1890 that involved the killing of nearly 300 Lakota people by soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry.
Instead, Biden chose to establish a five-member review panel made up of three U.S. Department of Defense representatives and two Department of the Interior representatives – thus creating what Semans called a “flawed panel” made up of mostly military representatives. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Sept. 25 that the administration had decided not to revoke the Wounded Knee medals, citing the panel’s review work as justification for the decision.
“I take offense with how the (Biden) administration handled the Wounded Knee medals,” Semans said. “I’ve had problems with every administration when it comes to Indian Country. None of them have been fair or honest.”
Nevertheless, he said, the coalition’s job is to attempt to work with federal agencies to improve the lives of Native people. He cited the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to reinstate nearly 750 Indian Health Service employees whose jobs had been cut as a result of mass federal layoffs, a decision Semans credited in part to the coalition’s advocacy work.
He said the coalition wouldn’t have been able to attack the Trump administration while at the same time work to persuade it to reinstate IHS employees.
“If we were to have this big fight with this administration and those federal agencies, those 750 IHS employees that were brought back, it wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “These are historical events that COLT was a part of, and we’re glad that (the Oglala Sioux Tribe) participated in them. We wish them the best.”