Lakota candidates are cooperating to promote their bids for office and get out the Native vote. Chas Jewett formed the political action committee Lakota Forward in 2024, but the PAC didn’t report raising any money until this year. Lakota Forward’s pre-general report, filed on deadline yesterday, shows $4,250 donated by five sources, including Jewett’s own House campaign committee:
- Tom Katus, Rapid City: $1,000
- Bruce Teague, Cambridge, MA: $250
- SD Democratic Party, Sioux Falls: $1,000
- Democracy in Action PAC, Rapid City: $1,000
- ChasJewettfor28A, Eagle Butte: $1,000
South Dakota, like the United States right now, has no campaign finance cops, but for form’s sake, Lakota Forward should amend its pre-general filing to list those donors separately: Katus and Teague under “Individuals”, SD Dems under “Political Parties”, DIA under “In-State Political Action Committees”, and Jewett’s campaign kitty under “Candidate Committees”.
Lakota Forward reports no expenditures yet, so the PAC has $4,250 to spend in these last two weeks. Of course, the PAC itself acknowledges that the poverty, incarceration, poor education, and systemic racism suppressing the vote in Indian Country will take more than two weeks and four figures to fix. The PAC notes that Lakota voters faced assaults on their voting rights long before the Klan swapped white hoods for red MAGA hats:
One of our organizers stood outside Tom Daschle’s office the night before the 2004 election and watched a mob gather accusing Daschle of stealing votes in Oglala County. That same night, a federal judge ordered Republican poll watchers in Charles Mix County to stop following Native voters out of the polls and writing down their license plates.
This is the racialization of the ballot box. When our people vote in numbers, the vote itself gets treated as suspect. The protections we relied on are gone now. The Supreme Court ended federal approval in 2013 and gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act this year [Lakota Forward, “Why This Work Is Hard,” retrieved 2026.10.20].
Lakota Forward cites the Legislature’s 2025 House Bill 1066 and 2025 House Bill 1208, tightening residency requirements for voter registration, and 2026 Senate Bill 175, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, as the latest barriers to Native voting:
The Legislature’s Republican supermajority has made tightening voting rules a priority.
Since July 2025, a resident is someone who keeps a fixed, permanent dwelling where they live and usually sleep for thirty consecutive days. This year, new voters must show documentary proof of citizenship or vote in federal races only. A citizenship amendment is on this November’s ballot.
Whatever the intent, the effect is to dampen turnout, and it lands hardest on us. Our houseless relatives move around a lot, like our ancestors did. Some carry too much trauma to keep a home. They are South Dakotans, and they deserve a vote. A tribal ID counts as proof of citizenship, and we make sure our people know that [Lakota Forward, retrieved 2026.10.20].
We know the intent: the Republicans in Pierre and in the White(-Supremacist) House want to keep non-white people from voting and winning elections. Lakota Forward faces a hard battle to overcome that racism and claim Indian Country’s place at the governing table.