Voters seldom know the man they’ve elected

RAPID CITY—Back in the old days, before the people laid down their arms at Fort Robinson in 1877, leadership wasn’t a matter of ballots or bureaucracy. It was survival. Threats were real and constant, and if your leadership was weak, there was no second chance, no do-over election to set things right.

Francis Whitebird—Sicangu Lakota, Vietnam combat medic, Harvard graduate, and the foremost expert on 19th-century Lakota language—explains how leaders were never voted in. They rose up through example. People followed them because of who they were, not because their name was printed on a ballot. Leadership was earned through character, courage, and conduct.

Whitebird says the tiospaye held together under a set of “unwritten laws,” codes of mutual respect and responsibility. That all broke down when the tiospaye were uprooted and corralled onto reservations. The old order didn’t survive the new borders.

So what made a man a leader? Francis lays it out plain: “When you go out to do battle, you cannot show fear, and you have to have leadership, because protection of the family is primary. Two, he has to provide, he has to be a good hunter, he has to go out kill game and take care of the ones that need. So, that people will see he is taking care of them. Three, the way he carries himself, it is a very close communal life and so everybody had to obey unwritten laws. That means taking care of the young people, not making fun of them, not getting into fights. The last thing, he has to have the ability to express himself.”

One tribal campaign poster once featured a legendary chief with the caption: “Would you vote for this man’s grandson?” That kind of thinking—treating leadership like a family heirloom—is a product of the reservation era, not traditional life. After the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, tribes were handed governments that looked nothing like the ones they had known. They were modeled after the BIA, complete with Robert’s Rules of Order and titles like “president” and “chairman.” That’s not how it used to be.

Are the people elected through this foreign process really reflections of our traditional values? Or are they just the ones who best learned how to mirror the values of their BIA bosses?

Whitebird doesn’t mince words: “Nowadays you hear people, ‘Oh, I’m a descendant of Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull. I’m a descendant of some chief.’ So, when I give a speech, I say I am not a descendant of any chief.”

He points out that Sitting Bull was an orphan, not born into power. People didn’t follow him because of his bloodline—they followed him because they believed in him. No elections. No official titles. If people believed in you, they moved their lodge next to yours. If not, they moved away.

Whitebird shared a story about one of his grandfathers, a judge in the early reservation days. Two young men were threatening to kill each other. The judge called in the boys and their grandfathers. The elders talked it out and settled it—no criminal charges, no aggravated assault. The boys listened, or they’d spend a night in jail. That’s how order was kept: through family, through reason, through community.

Warrior societies were another source of leadership. But even there, you couldn’t sign up—you had to be invited. It was an honor, not a job application.

“If some man wanted to follow Sitting Bull,” Whitebird said, “they just upped their tipi and moved in with his.” These weren’t relatives—they were people who believed in the man. Crazy Horse was called strange, but maybe he just had a vision people respected. He had the traits. He helped people. He gave sound advice. If your own leader was lazy or selfish, you didn’t argue. You just left.

That doesn’t fly today. Now, a person declares they’re running for office. That alone breaks the old rule—you’re not supposed to ask for power. You’re supposed to be chosen. Back then, people knew their leader personally. They knew how he treated people. If he was rude or ignored them, they walked away. Now? You might have his cell number and still get ghosted. But he’s still in power because the ballot says so, not because the people do.

Whitebird tells a story about his great grandfather—Left Hand Bull. As a young man, he packed up and joined Crazy Horse. He belonged to the Owl Feather Warbonnet tiospaye. People moved around back then. You didn’t like your tribe’s leader? You found another. Francis said sometimes you followed a friend. Sometimes a woman. But you had that choice. Leaders didn’t cling to power— they had to hold it gently, by the grace of those who followed them.

“These days, things have changed,” Whitebird says. “There’s money involved. And elected leadership doesn’t come from the people in the old way. The system is different.”

He doesn’t claim to know how to fix it. But he does say people ought to study what came before. “People need to read those books by Luther Standing Bear—How to Make a Chief.”

After Fort Robinson, the chiefs weren’t followed—they were assigned. First by the cavalry. Then by the BIA. Then by a piece of paper from the IRA. And most of the time, the voters didn’t even know the man they elected.

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)

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