Senator Ryan Maher (R-28/Isabel) attacked democracy to protect his drive time last Session by pushing Senate Bill 56, which raised the signature requirement for a petition to call a vote on moving a county seat from 15% to 20% of registered voters at the last general election.
Now Dewey County officials have taken a more reasonable step to quash any further agitation to move the county courthouse from mostly white Timber Lake to mostly Indian Eagle Butte—they are putting up a satellite office in Eagle Butte:
The decision, made by the county commission in February, was in response to a failed effort to move the county seat from Timber Lake (population 579) to Eagle Butte (pop. 3,152). Dewey County is one of a few South Dakota counties that is within a Native American reservation, in this case the Cheyenne River Reservation. The county’s population is 74% Native American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
…Petition organizer Carl Petersen’s drive to move the county seat was mostly focused on historic inequities affecting Native Americans in South Dakota — especially around access to government and voting rights.
“This is the best we can hope for at this point,” said Petersen, a Parade resident, member of the Oohenumpa band of Lakota, and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member.
Petersen said he does not plan to bring another petition forward in the future.
…[Dewey Count Treasurer Colleen] Meier did not know the cost to establish the Eagle Butte satellite office. Maher said the “threat of a multimillion dollar expenditure” to move the county seat is what convinced commissioners to fund it [Makenzie Huber, “Dewey County Opens Satellite Office on Reservation, Staving Off Petition to Move County Seat,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2023.07.28].
Dewey County’s Eagle Butte office at 209 Main Street is open Tuesday through Friday, 8–11 a.m. and 12–4 p.m. The Eagle Butte office handles vehicle title transfers, licenses vehicles, renews vehicle registrations, and issues handicap tags. It will also serve as an early voting center come election season.
Senator Maher’s bill, and the SD legislators’ vote were a blatant racist/ bigoted affront to the Dewey County majority of another ethnicity.
Tiny Timber Lake is also on the fringes of Dewey County, while Eagle Butte is in the approximate center of the county – improving access to voters. Soon the ‘satellite office’ will accomplish more business than the ‘main office’.
Dewey County voters ought to fire up their petition gathering machine.
I’ve always enjoyed visiting with my friends in Eagle Butte who have always had a cynical, and humorous, outlook on the manner in which the white population seeks control through convoluted politics. This is a good first step in bringing some justice to the system. There are other steps to take.
Ah, it’s the old camel’s nose under the tent. “A small, seemingly innocuous act or decision that will lead to much larger, more serious, and less desirable consequences down the line. The term refers to an alleged Arab proverb that if a camel is allowed to get its nose inside of a tent, it will be impossible to prevent the rest of it from entering.” Yes, it is long past time for Dewey County to move to Eagle Butte. The next stop is Gann Valley closure. 14 or so people at this county seat and is a long way from anything. Time to put the move on that place too.
Jerry–During the Dam building period at Little Bend, Gann Valley boomed….hundreds of trailers..lots of construction workers. A regular boom town. Like Pickstown, it has shriveled away. It was always the county seat as they certainly didn’t want the county seat in Fort Thompson.
Oglala Lakota County used to be Shannon County until, I think, 2015 or 2016. OL County contracts with Fall River County for Auditor, Director of Equalization, States Attorney, Treasurer, and Registrar of Deeds services. Maybe more.
I naively asked a neighbor who retired from the FRC Treasurer’s office why OLC didn’t perform these functions itself, and her racist husband immediately went off a rant about how “them Indians are stupid and steal everything!” She was embarrassed; I was embarrassed for her, and the conversation died a quick death.
I feel homicidal when I see Indians in the FRC courthouse dealing with snotty, White entitled county employees making comments about how they (the Indians) can afford to, say, title their vehicles. “Wherd’ja get this money from, Rodney? Isn’t your mom in Yankton?”
Insurance agent Ryan Maher is an Earth hater state senator from Isabel, South Dakota who is greased by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Qochtopus. Maher’s political party is all about South Dakota being a perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area where socialized agriculture, socialized livestock grazing, socialized coal, socialized military insurance, socialized timber harvest and a virtual medical industry triopoly are simply ways of life.
Maher’s far white wing of the Republican Party wants a not so civil race war because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.
The Wanblee district should be in Oglala Lakota County then Jackson should be rolled into Stanley, Haakon, Jones and Lyman Counties. Mellette, Bennett, Todd, Gregory and Tripp should be one county. Dewey, Ziebach and Corson should be a county. Butte, Harding and Perkins should be one. Lawrence and Meade should be one; Fall River and Custer should be one.