Below is a highlight and, well… a weird-light from the September 25, 2013 Oneida Business Committee Regular Meeting.
First is the part where the BC voted to repost a vacancy on the Board of Oneida Seven Generations Corporation after Tribal Chairperson Ed Delgado objected to the consideration of applications by two Oneida Tribe members.
None of the BC members seem to remember the name of one of the rejected applicants, which is strange, but one of the applicants was formerly…
- Oneida Tribal Chief Counsel
- Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, Dept. of the Interior
- Godfrey & Kahn Attorney/Shareholder
- Professor of Practice, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
…named by the Chair as Atty. Carl J. Artman, who recently registered Artman Law, LLC, with the Wisconsin Dept. of Financial Institutions.
Oneida Eye has previously discussed how Atty. Carl Artman was involved in Airadigm Communications which lost the Oneida Tribe millions of dollars.
Oneida Eye has also discussed the odd discrepancy between OSGC’s 2011 & 2012 Fiscal Year-end Reports that Atty. Carl Artman served as an “Independent Tribal Vendor” as OSGC’s “Attorney” versus Atty. Artman’s peculiar claim to an Oneida Eye editor at the May 5, 2013 General Tribal Council Meeting that he hadn’t worked for OSGC for at least two years, which raises the question: Who Is OSGC’s Attorney?
Watch as Chairperson Delgado asks current Tribal Chief Counsel Jo Anne House (who happens to be Atty. Artman’s first cousin) if the Chair is allowed to discuss his reasons for nixing Atty. Artman’s application to join the OSGC Board after being asked to do so by other Council Members:
Council member Paul Ninham seems upset after the BC’s vote and gets up and leaves.
Given the possibility that any and all members of the OSGC Board might be held liable for acts of misconduct & negligence it might have been fun to watch Atty. Artman have to go to court as a fellow defendant.
Next comes the weirdness.
During the Business Committee’s discussion of Frank Cornelius’ most recent Petition to require the BC to allow GTC to vote whether to dissolve OSGC within 20 days of the BC’s receipt of his latest petition, Tribal Governmental Division Director Don White goes to the mic and says something very strange:
I think it’s important to mention the Wellness Initiative that the Business Committee is conducting. Melinda was there, Greg was there, David was there. We’re developing a Wellness Index and that would be at the root of what we’re seeing in terms of any non-productive behavior by, um, tribal members and community, too. So, I would encourage everyone to take a look at that and have participated and have input into it, too, because if we can address this whole issue of wellness and associative behaviors towards it that’s going to move us really far into who we can be as Oneidas.
Wut?
What the hell is a ‘Wellness Index’ and where the hell was it when Tribally-chartered corporation Oneida Seven Generations Corporation proposed building dioxin-emiting incinerators on the Oneida reservation and the Business Committee gave their support for BC Resolution 12-08-10-B and doubled-down on that treacherous & treasonous genocide-friendly Resolution on April 11, 2013 despite the anti-dioxin precedent of BC Resolution 11-08-00-B?
What would the ‘Wellness Index’ say about the Oneida Land Commission granting OSGC’s requests for rezoning a wetlands area to an industrial zone and a Conditional Use Permit to build a plastics incinerator less than a mile from Tribal schools, offices, neighborhoods, businesses and planned recreational areas, even though OSGC later admitted they hadn’t done their due diligence and that the area rezoned wasn’t appropriate for their project?
Thankfully the General Tribal Council decided on May 5, 2013 that based on its own ‘Wellness Index’ OSGC’s incinerator plans were sickening and unacceptable and voted to forbid OSGC to build any kind of incinerator anywhere on the Oneida reservation and the CUP issued by the Land Commission has expired.
Where was any ‘Wellness Index’ when Oneida-Kodiak Construction, LLC, improperly installed doors in the new Anna John Resident Centered Care Community causing costly and unnecessary delays for Oneida elders seeking admission in the new facility, seeking access to in-house rehabilitative services and seeking to be able to participate in a congregate meal program?
Where was Don White’s ‘Wellness Index’ when the Chairperson and his staff member were subjected to vicious lies spread on Facebook by Council Member Melinda Danforth’s Executive Assistant Lisa Summers and treated as a source of online amusement by Oneida Police Commissioner Bernie John-Stevens?
How would Don White’s ‘Wellness Index’ regard over 600 Oneidas signing certified scumbag Brian Doxtator’s meritless removal petition against Chairperson Delgado for helping the poor, assisting the ill and honoring the good?
What does the ‘Wellness Index’ have to say about Tribal Trust/Enrollment Committee Chair Carole Liggins (with help from her good friend Brian Doxtator) openly trying to disenfranchise Oneida voters by submitting a petition to destroy the Southeast Oneida Tribal Services’ polling site?
Just how does the ‘Wellness Index’ score the Radisson Hotel & Casino being used to facilitate a conference by a support group for convicted murderer Leonard Peltier featuring speakers linked to the murder of Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash and others?
Note that, during the discussion of Chairperson Delgado’s rejection of Atty. Carl J. Artman’s application to join the OSGC Board (see video above), Frank Cornelius asked the BC to clarify whether OSGC Board member Nathan King indicated at the August 28, 2013 BC Regular Meeting that OSGC was no longer involved in trying to sell their incinerator plans to other tribes and nobody on the BC could answer Frank.
How might buying into experimental toxic incinerator plans that the Oneida General Tribal Council rejected – but Don White supported – affect the ‘Wellness Index’ of other tribes which OSGC admitted it plans to target?
When a delusional dumbass like Vice-Chair Greg Matson slanderously accuses Oneida Eye editors of being “Terrorists…acting in ways of espionage”, and then repeats the same stupid sh¡t on camera at a BC Meeting, and then goes on to take a stand against freedom of the press in the Tribe’s newspaper while attempting to implicate Oneida Eye as a danger to the community – thereby potentially endangering people’s lives – even while Greg refuses to answer honest questions as to whether his Executive Assistant, Chaz Wheelock, is prohibited from entering the Oneida Indian Nation’s reservation in New York due to concerns he might have been involved in arson, does the ‘Wellness Index’ go up or down?
UPDATE: Hat tip to a loyal Oneida Eye reader:
Wellness Index, 3rd edition: A Self-Assessment of Health and Vitality (click on the cover to find the following):
- Section 1, #42: “I avoid exposure to sprays, chemical fumes, or exhaust gases.”
- Section 2, #8: “I avoid polluted environments and minimize my contribution to air pollution.”
Well then….
