GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Can No Longer Enter 20% Of Her State After Being Banned By Two More Native American Tribes

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been forbidden to enter 20% of her state after being banned from two more Native American tribes in the past week.

In early February, the Oglala Sioux tribe banned Noem from the Pine Ridge Reservation after she said she wanted to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to help keep migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. She also mentioned that cartels had been infiltrating this state’s reservations.

The tribe’s president, Frank Star Comes Out, responded negatively to the GOP South Dakota governor’s remarks in a statement addressed to her.

Noem replied to Star Comes Out, saying she had better results working with the Trump administration.

In response to her remarks connecting tribal leaders to Mexican drug cartels, three more tribes banned Noem – the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe, the fifth tribe to ban the governor located in the northeast part of South Dakota, made this decision last week due to statements and actions by Noem which the tribe called “injurious to the parents of tribal children.”

The vote of the sixth tribe, the Yankton Sioux Tribe in southeastern South Dakota, is still debating a Noem ban.

Courtney Sully, the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s tribal secretary, said the tribe has not “officially” banned Noem yet. 

Noem went to X to reply to the bans.

“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,” she wrote in an X post. “We can only do this through partnerships because the Biden Administration is failing to do their job.”

In late April, the Rosebud Sioux tribal council issued a statement citing numerous reason for their ban of the governor.

The council’s press release emphasized its dissatisfaction with her actions as governor. The council said they would only recognize Noem if she publicly apologized to the Oceti Sakowin and created a thorough plan for empowering the Lakota people through policy and legislation.

Noem has had a rough month. Last week, she was widely mocked for recounting a story of killing her dog in a new memoir.