Republican Governor Kristi Noem was banished by two more South Dakota tribes last week over comments she made about tribal leaders benefitting from drug cartels. The new bans against the politician make her unable to access nearly 20 percent of the state's territory, the Associated Press reported.
On Friday, the Yankton Sioux Tribe voted to ban the Republican governor from their land in southeastern South Dakota. The decision followed a similar one made by the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe only days before. Noem was already banned from the land of the following four tribes over her comments: Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock Sioux.
In March, Noem said during a forum: "We've got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that's why they attack me every day. But I'm going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say, 'Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared'."
Tribals leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty.
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) May 9, 2024
We can only do this through partnerships because the Biden Administration is failing to do their… https://t.co/QrR1LpxxdX
Newsweek contacted Noem's office for comment by email on Monday morning.
In a post published on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week, Noem responded to the bans, writing: "Tribal leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty."
The dispute with tribal leaders comes on the back of an ongoing controversy around Noem admitting to killing her own dog in her new memoir, titled No Going Back. In the book, the governor describes fatally shooting her poorly trained 14-month-old dog, Cricket, who she said had "ruined" a hunt with her unruly behavior and had killed a farmer's chicken. "I hated that dog," she writes in the memoir, as reported by the New York Magazine.
Addressing the controversy around her memoir during an interview with Sean Hannity on May 1, the governor said that media reports left out "some or most of the facts" of the story and claimed she killed the dog to make sure her kids were safe.
"At the time, I had small children and a lot of small kiddos who worked around our business and people, and I wanted to make sure that they were safe," she said.
On X, Noem she wrote: "We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years."
In the book, she also admitted to killing a goat at the same time as Cricket.
Noem was being discussed as one of Donald Trump's potential running mates in the 2024 presidential election, but it's likely that these latest controversies will harm her chances of being picked by the former president.
Correction: 5/18/24, 10:38 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe.
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
