{"id":38886,"date":"2025-06-28T05:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T10:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/voters-seldom-know-the-man-theyve-elected\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T05:15:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T10:15:17","slug":"voters-seldom-know-the-man-theyve-elected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/voters-seldom-know-the-man-theyve-elected\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters seldom know the man they\u2019ve elected"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/div>
\"Francis<\/a><\/p>\n

Francis Whitebird<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

RAPID CITY\u2014Back in the old days, before the people laid down their arms at Fort Robinson in 1877, leadership wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Francis Whitebird\u2014Sicangu Lakota, Vietnam combat medic, Harvard graduate, and the foremost expert on 19th-century Lakota language\u2014explains 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.<\/p>\n

Whitebird says the tiospaye held together under a set of \u201cunwritten laws,\u201d codes of mutual respect and responsibility. That all broke down when the tiospaye were uprooted and corralled onto reservations. The old order didn\u2019t survive the new borders.<\/p>\n

So what made a man a leader? Francis lays it out plain: \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

One tribal campaign poster once featured a legendary chief with the caption: \u201cWould you vote for this man\u2019s grandson?\u201d That kind of thinking\u2014treating leadership like a family heirloom\u2014is 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\u2019s Rules of Order and titles like \u201cpresident\u201d and \u201cchairman.\u201d That\u2019s not how it used to be. <\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

Whitebird doesn\u2019t mince words: \u201cNowadays you hear people, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m a descendant of Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull. I\u2019m a descendant of some chief.\u2019 So, when I give a speech, I say I am not a descendant of any chief.\u201d<\/p>\n

He points out that Sitting Bull was an orphan, not born into power. People didn\u2019t follow him because of his bloodline\u2014they 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014no criminal charges, no aggravated assault. The boys listened, or they\u2019d spend a night in jail. That\u2019s how order was kept: through family, through reason, through community.<\/p>\n

Warrior societies were another source of leadership. But even there, you couldn\u2019t sign up\u2014you had to be invited. It was an honor, not a job application.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf some man wanted to follow Sitting Bull,\u201d Whitebird said, \u201cthey just upped their tipi and moved in with his.\u201d These weren\u2019t relatives\u2014they 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\u2019t argue. You just left. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t fly today. Now, a person declares they\u2019re running for office. That alone breaks the old rule\u2014you\u2019re not supposed to ask for power. You\u2019re 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\u2019s still in power because the ballot says so, not because the people do.<\/p>\n

Whitebird tells a story about his great grandfather\u2014Left 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\u2019t like your tribe\u2019s leader? You found another. Francis said sometimes you followed a friend. Sometimes a woman. But you had that choice. Leaders didn\u2019t cling to power\u2014 they had to hold it gently, by the grace of those who followed them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese days, things have changed,\u201d Whitebird says. \u201cThere\u2019s money involved. And elected leadership doesn\u2019t come from the people in the old way. The system is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t claim to know how to fix it. But he does say people ought to study what came before. \u201cPeople need to read those books by Luther Standing Bear\u2014How to Make a Chief.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Fort Robinson, the chiefs weren\u2019t followed\u2014they 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\u2019t even know the man they elected.<\/p>\n

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)<\/span> <\/p>\n

The post Voters seldom know the man they\u2019ve elected<\/a> first appeared on Native Sun News Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>

Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/div>

Francis Whitebird RAPID CITY\u2014Back in the old days, before the people laid down their arms at Fort Robinson in 1877, leadership wasn\u2019t 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 <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a>
Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> June 28, 2025<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1541,"featured_media":38888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5627],"tags":[6657],"class_list":["post-38886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resource-directory-blog","tag-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}