Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Frazier Issues Statement on Government Shutdown

Cheyenne RIver Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier

Published January 9, 2019

EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. — With the partial federal government shutdown now in its third week and the second longest ever, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold C. Fraizer issued the following statement on Tuesday, January 8, 2019:

Yet again the United States government has shutdown services due to the inability of government officials to run it. I have been told that all of this is due to a wall that the President of the United States wants to build. I condemn the actions of the President of the United States and the rederal government.

If the President of the United States wants to build something that would make America great again, then build bridges. Build bridges to span the division that the President’s spoiled child rhetoric has created. Build bridges between people, cultures, societies or nations and if that is too hard then at least build bridges in our aging infrastructure of roads. The President of the United States should quit trying to build a wall that would have been better served at Plymouth Rock in 1492.

The truth of the matter is that the Native American people will suffer during this partial shutdown.

The United States’ treaty obligations to native nations is the first thing to be thrown out the door during this shutdown. Indigenous people are not immigrants to this land. Have we not suffered enough because of the immigrants the United States brought to this land?