(WatchDogReport.org) – Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is now prohibited from entering almost 20% of her state after the decisions of seven indigenous tribes to ban her from their reservations.
The bans follow the governor’s controversial comments about Native Americans. Noem angered Native communities earlier in 2024 when she suggested that tribal leaders benefited personally from the operations of drug cartels. She also said the children of indigenous communities had no hope because of absentee parents.
The bans add to mounting controversies surrounding Noem that raise questions about her viability as Donald Trump’s potential Vice-President pick leading up to the November election. The governor has also been slated for confessing in her book to killing her dog and goat when they misbehaved.
Noem also faces criticism for her questionable claims of having met with multiple world leaders. The French government denied she was invited to a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron on Veterans Day, which, in her book, she claims to have canceled following his allegedly “pro-Hamas” comments. Noem has already omitted a passage from her book in which she claimed to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. In reality, as she later confessed, the meeting never happened.
The 52-year-old governor has a history of antagonizing the indigenous community; in 2019, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council banished her after she signed anti-riot legislation to counter protests led by Native Americans against the Keystone XL pipeline. She was banished again earlier in 2024 when she connected crime on the Pine Ridge reservation to illegal immigration. Noem dismissed tribal concerns about a fireworks display over Mount Rushmore in 2020, and also had disagreements with tribal leaders regarding visitor checkpoints they set up at their reservations during the national health crisis.
There are two remaining tribes that have not yet banned Noem from their reservations. Noem has claimed that, despite the responses from the tribal leaders, she has the support of many living on the reservations who call on her for help. Though he has not yet commented on the bans as of this writing, Noem stressed the need for the leaders of the tribes to ban cartels and accept her offer of assistance to help restore order. She added that President Joe Biden’s administration had failed in its tasks and let down the communities.
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