Tribal Citizens / No Faith in Their Government

Sault Ste. Marie, Mi...Years ago the huge country of China was ruled by the 'gang of four." It was during the Chinese cultural revolution and the Maoist were on the tear.

The Sault Tribe doesn't have a group on the tear, but it does have a 'gang of six' or seven ruling it. It is one of the frustrating realities of its government and how it works...or doesn't work, whatever the case may be.

Seven directors, usually four or five from the Sault (unit one), and two or three from the outer units (Hessel and St. Ignace), join together and trade favors and rule by way of a simple majority. Just as often as not, the remaining five or six directors are left out in the cold...excluded from having access to insider information.

In that 'the gang' gets away with blatantly ignoring the constitution and referendums and in that it controls the judiciary and the election committee and the tribal newspaper and its websites and radio programs and the hiring and firing of everybody and everything else...citizens are left with is a government which dominates them.

A government that serves itself first and those it purportedly represents second. A government which refuses to police itself and allows blatant corruption to continue unchecked. That allows directors to break tribal election laws and steal money from it and get away with it. To routinely break their oath of office to the point where the oath doesn't mean a thing anymore...to get off with it completely and without even the slightest of consequences.

The situation is so dire that citizens are lucky to experience democracy even once every four years...as even the election process itself is so corrupt that many creditable individuals have absolutely no faith in it

Thank you, Charles Forgrave