Oneida Business Committee member BRANDON YELLOWBIRD STEVENS, whom the State of Wisconsin declared to be a HABITUAL CRIMINAL due to felonious burglary…, and domestic abuse…, which included PUNCHING an 8-month pregnant woman in the stomach and SMASHING her head on pavement, made it very clear at the July 24, 2013 Oneida Business Committee Regular Meeting just how power hungry and craven he truly is.
He voiced both his desire to be able to put anything on the GTC Meeting agenda that he wants to, even if it’s an issue that has been shot down by GTC voting against it three times already, as well as his desire to be able to ignore GTC members’ petitions no matter how many signatures are gathered.
The issue at hand? Brandon Stevens wants to steal away GTC members’ $100 meeting stipend or dictate how it can be spent, but he lacked the courage to admit that he was part of the lousy scheme to bypass standard procedures with a stale idea until his Executive Assistant strangely volunteered the information. Oops!
Up to that point it was Council member Melinda Danforth’s Executive Assistant, Lisa Summers, who had been ‘credited’ with the idea, supposedly based on the consensus of the members of Elaine Doxtator’s restricted Facebook page, ‘Oneida Community Chat.’
Portraying herself as just a simple ‘Oneida Tribe Member’ representing Facebook denizens too lazy or scared to actually put together a petition calling for the elimination or restrictive modification of the $100 stipend that many Oneida Tribe members rely on in order to be able to afford to attend GTC meetings and serve dutifully as members of the supreme governing authority, Summers simply submitted a letter asking OBC to put the open-ended request on a future GTC agenda.
However, the relatively modest GTC stipend (compared to the $200-250 stipend that members of the Oneida Seven Generations Corporation Board receive when they meet) often goes toward hiring babysitters, purchasing gas to travel to the Oneida Reservation and return home, or for hotel accommodations if the timing of the meeting requires an overnight stay.
Instead of following the traditional path of finding fifty GTC members willing to sign a petition or taking the matter directly to the Legislative Operating Committee – of which her boss, Melinda Danforth, is the Chair – Lisa Summers sought to circumvent the process with a mere letter to OBC. Conveniently enough, Council member Melinda Danforth wasn’t in attendance at the July 24 OBC open meeting. Hmm.
Tribal Secretary Patty Hoeft noted that, even if OBC were to accept Lisa Summers’ misdirected request, the matter should still be sent to the Legislative Operating Committee for review and discussion before coming back to OBC for consideration of placement on the GTC agenda. Sec. Hoeft also rightly noted that the request was vague and offered a Pandora’s Box of alternatives that would likely result in a GTC meeting as contentious and unproductive as the discussion OBC was having then and there, and she motioned to send the matter to LOC for review in order to simplify the question.
Yet, no other OBC members would second Hoeft’s motion as Vice-Chairperson Greg Matson and Council member Stevens argued that the Legislative Operating Committee’s input wasn’t necessary and that they just wanted to have a “conversation” with GTC but without stating specifically who would present the multi-faceted question to the Tribe’s membership and blatantly ignoring the fact that GTC has already rejected three previous attempts to curtail or place conditions on their meeting stipend.
When Tribe member Leah Sue Dodge asked if she or others could likewise simply make a direct request to OBC that OSGC’s meeting stipend be eliminated she was met with silence, other than for Sec. Hoeft who agreed that Dodge’s question underscored the problem with Summers’ desire to sidestep the established processes.
In a shocking display of power-mad tone-deafness, Council member Brandon Stevens went on to openly complain that he wished that OBC wasn’t required to consider petitions no matter how many GTC members sign them, thereby affirming his contempt for GTC’s supreme role in the Tribal political process.
Which is predictable if you’re familiar with Stevens’ statement at the March 13, 2013 OBC Regular Meeting prior to the May 5, 2013 GTC Meeting regarding Dodge’s eventually successful petition to prohibit OSGC from building dioxin-emitting incinerators on the reservation as can be seen on video on the Tribe’s website (login required):
I guess in preparation for the meeting, y’know, is there some type of administrative analysis to kind of equate to the general membership that we have processes in place, that we have these lines of authority and due diligence that happens when there’s a project that is proposed, and so they have that understanding that they, whoever it is, whoever wants to, hopefully someone else would want to come and put their business on the reservation without having to go through all this, going to the General Tribal Council, that we do have those in place and that that is our stopgap, than just having a bunch of, y’know, Indians, y’know, placing stuff wherever they want. I guess that’s what I would ask for is administrative analysis to say, okay, we have these things and this is what needs to happen. This is what they would have happened in the case that, if it were proposed, this is the process that they would have followed.
After Dodge noted at the July 24, 2013 OBC meeting how odd it was that the request was not coming from just any Tribe member but from the Executive Assistant to Council member Melinda Danforth who is Chair of the LOC and who therefore should be familiar with the necessity of following standard procedures, as well as how odd it was that Summers’ request was on the OBC agenda in Melinda Danforth’s absence, Council member Stevens’ Executive Assistant Rhiannon Metoxen stepped forward to state that the effort to subvert the usual process was supposed to be credited to Brandon Stevens – who is the Vice-Chair of the LOC – but somehow wasn’t placed on the agenda under his sponsorship due to a ‘technical error.’
Riiight.
Metoxen’s comment resulted in the July 24, 2013 OBC meeting attendees reacting like this…
while Brandon Stevens shrugged his shoulders as his face did this:
Eventually the motion was made to force GTC to once again be subjected to asinine attempts to eliminate or otherwise undermine their due compensation without the measure having to go before the Legislative Operating Committee for review and refinement, and the vote was as follows:
Yea: Vice-Chairperson Greg Matson, Council member Paul Ninham, Council Member Brandon Stevens
Nay: Secretary Patty Hoeft
Abstained: Council member David Jordan
So again, OBC member Brandon Stevens has made his agenda clear: He wants to be able to place whatever he wants on GTC’s meeting agenda but doesn’t want ‘a bunch of Indians’ to be able to defend themselves via petitions to put items on their own meeting agenda no matter how many signatures they get.
Council member Melinda Danforth and her Executive Assistant Lisa Summers are apparently more than happy to help and it’s pretty obvious what Melinda’s ultimate goal is: to run for Chairperson in 2014 and have Lisa fill her council slot so they, along with Brandon, can continue to diminish – if not extinguish – the rights and power of GTC to stop them and their cronies (including OSGC) from getting away with whatever they want no matter how badly it harms or impoverishes the majority of Tribe members.
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