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Little Shell leaders say new election likely

BILLINGS — Leaders of Montana's Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians said Monday they expect a new election will be held next year to end a dispute over a 2009 vote that split the landless tribe into opposing factions.

Notably absent from the ballot could be Chairman John Sinclair of Havre. Sinclair said Monday he likely will not run again after the turmoil that surrounded his last election.

"At this point, I don't expect to run. Let's have an election and get it over with," he said.

A three-judge panel of tribal law experts met Saturday in Great Falls to hear arguments over the legitimacy of the 2009 re-election of Sinclair to the Little Shell's seven-member council.

A dissenting group, the Little Shell Alliance, rejected that election as illegitimate and last year held its own election, naming John Gilbert of Great Falls as tribal chairman.

The panel could either accept one of the prior elections as legitimate or call for a new one. Gilbert and Sinclair both said Monday that they would follow whatever decision is reached.

A decision is expected by the end of the year.

"Once these judges render this decision, we're all going to abide by it and move forward. Everybody wants to move forward and start the healing process," Gilbert said.

The judges' panel also has been asked to decide whether it was appropriate for Sinclair's council to disenroll some Little Shell members before the 2009 election. Gilbert and his allies want that action declared invalid.

Sinclair on Monday acknowledged mistakes had been made when some members were disenrolled and others disqualified. But he said the Little Shell Alliance election also was flawed, leaving a new election as the only viable option going forward.

The tribe's 4,300 members trace their ancestry to the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians, who in the 1800s were under the leadership of Chief Little Shell when they were offered an unfair land deal that resulted in the band leaving North Dakota.

They have since struggled to stay together through more than a century of poverty and dislocation and are now scattered across the Northern Plains and central Canada.

Without a formal system of tribal judges, the opposing factions within the Little Shell struggled for much of the last two years to come up with a way to resolve their differences.

During that time, the Little Shell lost $617,000 in potential stimulus money that was to be funneled to the tribe through the state. State officials cited problems with the Little Shell's accounting practices and the lack of a unified government.

Also lost was the renewal of a tobacco prevention grant from the state that had funded at least two tribal employees.

When members of the Little Shell Alliance at one point asked the office of Gov. Brian Schweitzer to intervene in their internal dispute, state officials said they could not get involved out of respect for the tribe's sovereignty.

The three-judge panel was established with assistance from the Native American Rights Fund and mediator David Raasch, a tribal elder with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans of Wisconsin.

The judges included Ernest St. Germaine, a reserve judge in the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association, Abby Abinanti, chief judge for the Yurok Tribe of California, and B. J. Jones, director of the Tribal Judicial Institute at the University of North Dakota and a judge with the Turtle Mountain Chippewa.

"The fact that the Little Shell do not have a tribal court contributed to this," Raasch said. "There was nowhere else for them to turn."

The Little Shell Tribe is recognized by the state of Montana but not the federal government, which last year turned down the Little Shell's 31-year petition for acknowledgment. The tribe's internal political split had complicated the attempt to secure federal acknowledgement from the Department of Interior. Federal recognition could bring grants and assistance for tribal housing and other needs.

Legislation pending before Congress would force the federal government to recognize the tribe.

 

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