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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is now banned from some parts of her home state after tribes voted to legally bar her from reservation land, after she made comments linking tribal leaders to drug cartels.
Three tribes this year have barred Noem, who’s on former President Donald Trump’s vice president short list, from visiting their lands, with the latest action from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe announced on Wednesday. In February, the Oglala Sioux Tribe voted to bar Noem, and earlier this month, the Cheyenne River Sioux also voted to bar her as well. In all, Noem now is legally barred from entering about 10% of lands in the state she governs.
She argued during recent community forums that those leaders were more focused on profiting from those cartels than parenting their children on Native American reservations.
“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from cartels being there and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said last month at a community forum in Winner, South Dakota, according to the Associated Press.
Multiple tribes demanded that Noem apologize. She has not, but she has issued a statement urging tribes to “banish the cartels from tribal lands.”
“Governor Kristi Noem’s wild and irresponsible attempt to connect tribal leaders and parents with Mexican drug cartels is a sad reflection of her fear-based politics that do nothing to bring people together to solve problems,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council Janet Alkire said in a statement. “Rather than make uninformed and unsubstantiated claims, Noem should work with tribal leaders to increase funding and resources for tribal law enforcement and education.”
Noem’s office argued that banning her from parts of South Dakota won’t solve the problems she had been referring to in her comments at the community forums.
“Banishing Governor Noem does nothing to solve the problem,” Noem spokesman Ian Fury said in a statement. “She calls on all our tribal leaders to banish the cartels from tribal lands.”
In a previous statement to CNN, Noem said “Mexican cartels” had impacted South Dakota and that the state was also the “victim of inaction by the federal government” on those cartels.
Noem has made a point of warning about border security and Mexican cartels in recent public comments. In a January speech to a joint session of state legislators Noem described the flood of migrants coming through the Southern border as an “invasion” in a war zone and said she was willing to send razor wire and state personnel to the US-Mexico border in Texas to supplement officials there.
“We can load that up, and we can send it there very quickly,” Noem said. “We’re currently exploring various legal options on how we can support Texas and force the federal government to do their job.”
The hawkish border security comments will only fuel more speculation that Noem is gunning for consideration as Trump’s running mate. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has made border security and vows to reduce illegal migration a major pillar of his candidacy.
On Thursday, Noem and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley announced a new certification program meant to help more quickly train tribal law enforcement. In a letter to the chief of police of the Oglala Sioux Tribe law enforcement, the two South Dakota officials wrote, “People in tribal communities continue to suffer because of the well-documented shortage of tribal law enforcement officers. This hurts all of South Dakota’s nine reservations, so we are taking the lead on training more officers as quickly as possible.”
