Say Anything Blog

Let me tell you a story about a guy who likes to write about politics.  One day this guy visited a community where there was rampant crime, poverty, substance abuse and generally poor living conditions.  This guy decided that someone should call attention to these conditions so that something could be done to change them.  So he wrote a column about it, describing the conditions for his readers, and published it on his website and for a local political magazine he has the privilege to write for.

Unfortunately the local politicians didn’t like what this guy had to say.  They found his words and opinions to be inconvenient, so they got together and banned him from their community.

Sound like a believable story?  Wondering where it could happen?  Maybe some province in the middle east?  Or Cuba?  Or an eastern-European nation that hasn’t entirely forgotten its socialist roots?  Would you believe me if I told you that it happened right here in North Dakota, and that the guy it happened to was me?

On May 11th, 2007 the Turtle Mountain Indian reservation’s tribal council banished me from their reservation because of a column I wrote for the Dakota Beacon magazine (and my own political blog) called “The Appalling State Of Our Indian Reservations.”  To do this, they used a bit of tribal law called the “exclusion code” which they created ostensibly to ban criminals like drug dealers and sex offenders from their reservation.

Now it’s apparently going to be used to ban those with political opinions they don’t like.

But when I say they “used” that code to ban me, I mean that very loosely as they didn’t bother to follow many of the requirements set out in their own law.  Section 39.0110 of their tribal code requires that notice of any banishment hearing be delivered “by personal service, or if such service is not reasonably possible, by registered mail, return receipt requested” to the person to be banned.  I received no such notice.  That section also requires that any banishment hearing be held by an Exclusion Order Board which is appointed by the tribal council.  No such board was convened to my knowledge.  Further, that section requires that the person to be banned be afforded an opportunity to attend the hearing, present evidence and speak on his/her own behalf.  No such opportunity was afforded to me.

I was, to sum it up, banned from the Indian reservation without any level of due process (something that by itself is unconstitutional in my humble opinion) and without the tribe following it’s own laws as written.  Vice Chairman Ted Henry states in Susanne Nadeu’s column about this issue in the May 16th Grand Forks Herald that I won’t be allowed back on his reservation, so clearly Mr. Henry feels as though the council fulfilled it’s obligations under the law.

It didn’t.  Even a legal novice can see this.

But the larger issue here is the fact that the Turtle Mountain tribal council is now banning people with political opinions they don’t like from the reservation.  If the tribe is willing to do that to someone who doesn’t even live on their reservation and isn’t a member of their tribe can you imagine what they’d do to someone who spoke out and does live on the reservation?  And is a member of their tribe?  Someone who they have a great deal more power over than someone like me?  It makes you wonder if there aren’t lots of people living on their reservation who have opinions similar to mine but are afraid to voice them for fear of losing their tribal jobs.  Or having their business run off the reservation.  Or, worst of it all, getting banned from their home as though they were a drug dealer or a sex criminal.

It’s a bit chilling, isn’t it?  And to think that this is happening in a community in America, where things like free speech and a free press are guaranteed in the Constitution.  I’ll grant that politics can be polarizing, and that not everyone is going to agree with my stated opinions, but is banishment an appropriate reaction to someone you disagree with?  I don’t think so.

And what’s more, Tribal Vice Chairman Henry and others have claimed in news articles and elsewhere that this banning was put in place for my protection. 

I think that tells us more about the state of affairs on the reservation than anything I could write in a political op/ed.