On Thursday, your vote will count

Editor:

On Thursday, you'll each have the opportunity to step in the voter's booth and choose one candidate for the Chippewa Cree Business Committee.

You'll choose one person with one vote and one voice for the people, but mostly importantly one with the heart, mind and guts to speak for you, the voter. We've all hit a wall time and time again, trying to find fairness and equality within the current dictatorship. I'm not afraid to speak of these things because we all know it's true. It's so easy for some of their devotees to praise and glorify their names, kiss the ground they walk on, laugh at their jokes, light up their smokes and snake their way into their crowd. It doesn't last forever. On Thursday, your vote truly will count. We've all been on that long, tough road fighting tyranny the past seven years.

With your help and support on Thursday, we can all make that change we need so badly.

People, we need to change the system here and now! Self governance was set in place for you the people, not to line their royal pockets, not for their luxurious mansions, not for their growing cattle and farming operations, their family land assignments, the construction monopoly and surely not for an open, endless council checkbook. Cutting the costs of Coeur d'Alene, Las Vegas, Denver, Fort Hall and Crow Fair junkets alone would save $100K. A 20 percent cut in council pay would bring in another $180K. Information you all have a right to know regarding possible huge council loans and outright donations to voters will never be out in the open for everyone to read, but it's there in their stacks of processed checks and statements from the banks. We'd never see them if we asked, however the Office of the Inspector General and the Freedom of Information Act will not bar you or I from seeing them when the time comes. One week to go and already the tyrannical wheels are turning.

I've asked for a poll watcher to make sure absentee ballots are sealed the way they should be and to monitor the election night counting and posting. The time is now voters. I will be your voice to open the doors for all to see what really is going on! Give me one year of your time to do everything I can to help make the changes you deserve.

With your support, if I'm successful, I'll personally invite all of you to the tribal council meetings, to hear my motions and see what I sponsor on the agenda that will bring light to our questions, to find out for yourselves, how each of the other eight council member stands on our concerns for a better community. We need a change, and we need it right now. Let's all do it together while the time is right.

Stacey Small

Rocky Boy