MAGA Gov. Kristi Noem was banished from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in her own state of South Dakota on Thursday, the fourth Lakota tribe to bar her from its lands in recent months.
If she sets foot on any of the tribal land she’s been banned from, she could face removal, detention, and arrest, Lakota Law Project Director Chase Iron Eyes told The Daily Beast.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council issued the most recent ban over inflammatory statements Noem has made—including the claim that tribal leaders were operating with Mexican drug cartels—and her “uninvited presence” at a quarterly meeting between the tribes and the U.S. Forest Service in March. In a statement, the Rosebud Council cited years of hostility from Noem’s administration.
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“This banning is not based solely on recent allegations made against the Oceti Sakowin, Tribal Leaders, and Native American Students, but also from an ongoing strained relationship with Governor Noem since she took office in 2019,” the council said.
In recent years, Noem has clashed with the tribes over her support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which cuts through land considered sacred by the Sioux; her removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state educational standards; and her alleged withholding of millions of dollars in federal Emergency Rental Assistance funding from the tribes.
In 2024, the Rosebud Council said, Noem began a “slanderous campaign” against the tribes that included the cartel collusion accusation in March. At the time, Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Scott Herman slammed Noem’s statements as “malicious and defamatory” and demanded her apology.
Now, the tribe says it will only acknowledge Noem if she apologizes and presents a plan of action for supporting the Lakota through policy and legislation.
“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relations with Tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as Governor blatantly show otherwise,” the Rosebud Council said in their statement. The council added that Noem’s “recent racial disparaging allegations” only hastened the deterioration between state-tribe relations.
“Her disingenuous nature towards Native Americans to further her federal political ambitions is an attack on Tribal sovereignty that the Rosebud Sioux Tribe will not tolerate,” they continued, indicating Noem’s status as a shortlisted VP option for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Ian Fury, spokesman for the Republican governor, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. Days earlier, in response to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s banishment of Noem, he doubled down on the governor’s claim about tribe-cartel cooperation.
“Banishing Governor Noem does nothing to solve the problem. She calls on all our tribal leaders to banish the cartels from tribal lands,” Fury said then.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe joined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the Oglala Sioux Tribe in banning the South Dakota governor.
“Noem is now an illegal in 14 percent of land within her claimed ‘state boundaries’ now that the Oglala, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock & Rosebud Sioux Tribal nations have banished her,” Chase Iron Eyes, the Lakota Law Project director, said.
