She's Back. Cecelia Fire Thunder comes back from the political grave more often than Dracula did.
*Update* Dammit I blinked

Pursuant to a court order, Cecelia Fire Thunder is back in office again after a tribal judge restored her job pending a hearing. Bill Harlan of the Rapid City Journal reports on this comeback queen:
"This is about process," Fire Thunder said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon from the president's office at tribal headquarters. "No matter what the issue is, you've got to follow procedure."

The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council suspended Fire Thunder in May, then impeached her in June in a controversy about a proposed abortion clinic on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

In April, after Gov. Mike Rounds signed South Dakota's new abortion ban, Fire Thunder told reporters she wanted to establish a women's clinic on the reservation. The clinic, she said, would be exempt from the state's new abortion ban. (The abortion ban later was referred to a statewide vote in November.)

Abortion opponents on Pine Ridge protested Fire Thunder's proposal, and the tribal council banned abortions on the reservation on the same day it suspended the president.

Now, the impeachment goes to a hearing in tribal court at 1 p.m. Friday, July 28, in Pine Ridge.

Meanwhile, Fire Thunder is back at work. The tribe's vice president, Alex White Plume, had been appointed president, and Fire Thunder said he shook her hand and welcomed her back Monday.
Read it all here.

Apparently, I spoke too soon. :
No sooner had a tribal judge reinstated Cecelia Fire Thunder as president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe than the same judge revoked the reinstatement. Will Peters, a tribal council member who had voted to impeach Fire Thunder last month, announced Tuesday morning that tribal Chief Judge Lisa Adam had rescinded her own temporary reinstatement of Fire Thunder.

"Now, the official word is the president has not been reinstated," Peters said Tuesday morning.

The fight began over Fire Thunder's controversial proposal that a proposed reservation women's clinic might be exempt from South Dakota's new abortion ban. Abortion opponents on the reservation protested the proposal, and on June 29, the tribal council voted 9-5 to impeach her.

Fire Thunder and her attorney, Robert Grey Eagle, had argued that the impeachment was invalid because it was not approved by a full two-thirds of the 18-member tribal council. "The law is the law," Fire Thunder said Tuesday morning. "They have to follow it, and I have to follow it."


Don't go to sleep. She may rise and be reinstated again!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Your link to the RCJ goes to a story about the Thorne Divide wildfires.
PP said…
OOps. They changed stories. I'll fix later.
Anonymous said…
Boy - that sure didn't last long...
Anonymous said…
everyone take notice: it's not the Evil White Man wreaking havoc in Pine Ridge. It is the Sioux themselves. Pine Ridge is basically ungovernable. A prairie version of Haiti.

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