…otherwise known as the ONEIDA BUSINESS COMMITTEE
[NOTE: Some asset links disabled but available upon request]
As Oneida Eye previously reported, on Monday August 17, 2015, the Oneida Business Committee held a Special Meeting which included a continuation of the discussion of the OBC’s false statements made on the record to & about Frank Cornelius Sr. at the July 22, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting:
- July 22, 2015 Oneida Business Committee Regular Meeting audio to stream or download as an MP3 (the action starts at the 30 minute mark)
- July 22, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting Packet
- August 17, 2015 Oneida Business Committee Special Meeting audio to stream or download as an MP3
- August 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting Packet
On the basis of OBC Secretary Lisa Oudenhoven-Summers’ LIE that Frank Cornelius Sr. had never turned in four proposed GTC Resolutions to the OBC Secretary’s office, the OBC had falsely claimed at the July 22, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting that they couldn’t complete legislative, Economic nor legal analysis of Frank’s proposed four GTC Resolutions in order to place his Petition on a General Tribal Council Meeting Agenda.
In reality, the members of two (2) OBC administrations have continued to refuse to place Frank Cornelius Sr. on a GTC Meeting Agenda and allow him to present GTC with his Report on the OBC’s failure to dissolve OSGC as directed by GTC on December 15, 2013.
This despite the fact that GTC also voted at that GTC Meeting to approve Frank Cornelius Sr. as GTC’s representative to “assist and work with the OBC to dissolve Oneida Seven Generation Corporation,” which the previous & current OBC’s have steadfastly and illegally refused to allow Frank to do.
The untrue accusations by the OBC to & about Frank Cornelius Sr. were repeated at the August 12, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting. Oneida Eye will post audio of that meeting when it becomes available.
- August 12, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting Packet
As Oneida Eye reported, the OBC still refused to apologize to Frank Cornelius Sr. at the August 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting for lying to & about Frank on the official record despite the fact that Frank Cornelius Sr. proved that the OBC was lying by providing Oneida Eye with copies of his four proposed GTC Resolutions which are date-stamped June 26, 2015, by the OBC Secretary’s Office:
In fact, Oneida Eye published copies of Frank Cornelius Sr.’s official Report as GTC’s elected representative to “work with and assist the OBC to dissolve Oneida Seven Generation Corporation,” along with copies of his four proposed GTC Resolutions on June 29, 2015.
When the documents provided by Frank Cornelius Sr. proved that OBC Sec. Lisa Summers and the OBC had been lying to & about Frank Cornelius Sr. by falsely claiming that he had not provided the OBC Secretary’s office with copies of his four proposed GTC Resolutions, OBC Sec. Lisa Summers strangely claimed at the August 17 Special OBC Meeting that the original copy of Frank Cornelius’ four Resolutions date stamped June 26, 2015 by the Secretary’s office (which Lisa finally admitted existed) had at some point been given by the Secretary’s office to the office of OBC Chair Cristina Danforth (by which Lisa Summers was implying either the OBC Chair’s Executive Assistant Mary Graves and/or the OBC Chair’s Senior Policy Advisor Jacob Metoxen).
OBC Sec. Lisa Summers then claimed at the August 17 OBC Special Meeting that the OBC Chair’s office had never returned the original, date-stamped copies of Frank’s four proposed GTC Resolutions back to the OBC Secretary’s office, which Lisa Summers then claimed was the reason why her Executive Assistant Lisa Liggins perpetrated the lie contained in OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ Memo dated July 22, 2015 at the July 22, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting which Sec. Lisa Summers did not attend.
However, as Oneida Eye has also reported, OBC Chair Tina Danforth’s Executive Assistant, Mary Frion-Graves, has told Tribe members that – despite what OBC Sec. Lisa Summers claimed on the record at an open & recorded governmental meeting – the OBC Secretary’s office never provided those four proposed GTC Resolutions to OBC Chair Tina Danforth’s office.
Mary Graves noted that the OBC Secretary’s office should have retained the original date-stamped version and should have only provided copies even if what Lisa Summers claims is true, which Mary Graves maintains is untrue and claims that she’s asked and looked for proof of any chain-of-custody records from the OBC Secretary’s office and hasn’t been given any and hasn’t found any.
It was also discovered that, just as he’d told the OBC all along, Frank had provided copies of his same four proposed GTC Resolutions to Fmr. OBC Secretary Patty Hoeft in May 2014 along with a Petition that the OBC illegally refused to place on a GTC Agenda. At that time OBC Sec. Lisa Summers was the Executive Assistant of Fmr. OBC member Melinda Danforth (who is now OBC Vice-Chair), so OBC Sec. Lisa Summers knows full well how long the OBC have been disrespectfully toying with and dishonorably lying to and Frank (and GTC), and Lisa is just unnecessarily dragging it out in violation of Frank Cornelius Sr.’s and the GTC’s rights to due process in a timely manner as protected by the Indian Civil Rights Act.
Now OBC Sec. Lisa Summers has admitted that her office was able to obtain copies of Frank Cornelius Sr.’s four proposed GTC Resolutions date-stamped May 2014 by the OBC Secretary’s office from the Tribe’s Records Managment Dept., which the OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ office could have and should have done in the first place instead of lying to & about Frank Cornelius Sr., an elder and retired Marine, on the record during public governmental meetings.
In addition to sorting out who is lying about Frank Cornelius Sr.’s four proposed GTC Resolutions, Mary Graves has now also informed GTC Members that she questions whether OBC Sec. Lisa Summers followed the required protocol to duly schedule & notice the OBC meeting that OBC Sec. Lisa Summers claimed took place on August 17, 2015, during which the OBC supposedly voted to place a ‘hold’ on the implementation of the amendments to the Oneida Tribal Constitution due to the appeal to the IBIA by GTC member Madelyn Genskow.
As Oneida Eye previously reported, the following Internal Memo was issued by OBC Sec. Lisa Summers on Friday August 21, 2015:
- August 21, 2015 Internal Memorandum to Business Committee Direct Reports, Boards, Committees and Commissions re: Secretarial Election – Constitutional Amendment Implementation on Hold
This memorandum serves as notice to you that implementation of Oneida’s approved Constitutional amendments shall be placed on hold until further notice. …
On July 22, 2015, the OBC was officially notified that an appeal of the BIA’s certification decision was made to the [Interior Board of Indian Appeals/ IBIA] by Tribal member, Madelyn Genskow. This appeal is in the beginning stages. We have not yet received a schedule for this appeal. Our research shows the whole appeal process generally takes two to three years.
On August 17, 2015, the OBC took action to place a hold on the implementation of the constitutional amendments until such time as this appeal is concluded. This hold is effective immediately and means that, due to the appeal, only members age 21 and over will be eligible to attend General Tribal Council (GTC) meetings and vote in Tribal Elections until the appeal of the challenge to the Secretarial Election has been concluded.
Requested Action
Please put a hold on all activity which implements Oneida’s approved constitutional amendments. Once the IBIA process is complete, a notice will be provided to you on when to resume implementation.
However, Mary Graves has claimed that if that OBC meeting was duly & properly noticed and emergency action was taken to pass ‘Emergency Amendments’ at that August 17 OBC meeting (which OBC Chair Cristina Danforth predictably missed due to non-Tribal business travel for her other jobs) then there are at least three documents that should exist which Mary Graves claims to have asked the OBC Secretary’s office for copies of but they failed to provide, as well as searched for and failed to find, and which Mary now claims may not exist in violation of the Oneida Tribe’s Open Records & Open Meetings Law:
- A Request for Special Business Committee Meeting form signed by at least five (5) OBC members who requested the August 17, 2015 Special OBC Meeting be held;
- A Memo announcing the scheduling of the August 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting in accordance with the Open Records & Open Meetings Law;
- A Memo to the OBC Chair stating that the OBC held a Special Meeting on August 17, 2015 in the Chair’s absence and that the OBC took specific actions, including placing a hold on the implementation of Constitutional amendments as voted on in the recent BIA Secretarial Election.
Here are some examples:
- January 29, 2009 Request for OBC Special Meeting
- January 14, 2014 Memo Notice of OBC Special Meeting
The Open Records & Open Meetings Law states at 7.14-4, Emergency Meetings:
Emergency meetings of the Business Committee shall be held upon at least twenty-four (24) hours advance public notice unless, for good cause, such notice is impossible or impractical.
So why wasn’t there any public notice of the Sunday June 28 OBC Emergency Meeting? Did OBC Secretary Lisa Summers forget the Oneida Tribe’s Facebook password? (Unlikely.)
Why wasn’t the OBC Chair’s office ever notified via email about the OBC’s Emergency Meeting? Even if the OBC Chair was out of town the OBC Secretary is nevertheless charged with keeping all of the offices of all the OBC’s officers and members informed as to what Emergency legislation the being passed by the OBC, so there would be no excusable reason to exclude the OBC Chair’s office from an email notification regarding emergency meetings to pass emergency legislation if one was even sent to other OBC members as it should have been.
Likewise, the OBC failed to notify GTC about the June 28, 2015 Emergency Meeting to pass emergency amendments to the Oneida Election Law at the July 6, 2015 GTC Semi-Annual Meeting in order to find out how the supreme governing body wanted to address the ’emergency,’ which turned out to be a phony claim used by OBC Vice-Chair Melinda Danforth (who chaired the June 28 OBC Emergency Meeting in OBC Chair Cristina Danforth’s absence) along with OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House, all in the hopes that by lowering the voting age to 18 years-old they would be able to tip the election scales in favor of their preferred political candidates.
For her part, OBC Chair Cristina Danforth is so utterly clueless about the Oneida Constitution & Laws that she not only didn’t call out OBC Vice-Chair Melinda Danforth and OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House for their unconstitutional & unlawful violations of GTC’s civil rights, Tina actually bemoaned the fact that there so few 18-20 year-old Tribe members attending the GTC Semi-Annual Meeting.
It’s highly likely that younger members of the Tribe, (especially those who read Oneida Eye) know more about the Tribe’s Constitution & Laws than the OBC, and there’s no question that – unlike the OBC, the OBC Chief Counsel, and the Oneida Election Board – many Oneidas of all ages have the wisdom and conscience to ethically decline having anything to do with unconstitutional & illegal Tribal elections, and that is the main reason why voter turnout has been so low in recent Tribal Elections.
In adddition to the missing OBC Special Meeting request form & signature sheet and missing Memos/Notices of the Sunday June 28, 2015 Emergency Meeting time and the emergency actions taken by the OBC, Mary Graves notes that there is absolutely no mention of the OBC taking any kind of emergency action to place a ‘hold’ on the implementation of the Constitutional amendments in the August 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting minutes (including during the OBC’s Executive Session) which were approved by the OBC at the August 26, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting:
So if, as OBC Sec. Lisa Summers claimed in her August 21 Internal Memo, “the OBC took action [on August 17] to place a hold on the implementation of the constitutional amendments,” when exactly on August 17, 2015 did the OBC vote to do that?
And why don’t the documents required by the protocol of the Open Records & Open Meetings Law exist?
Why haven’t those documents been provided to the OBC Chair’s office if they do exist?
WHERE are the minutes from the August 17 OBC Meeting during which the OBC voted to place a ‘hold’ on the implementation of the Constitutional amendments from the Secretarial Election?
GTC member Mike Debraska asked OBC Sec. Lisa Summers to provide him with a copy of those documents at the Wednesday August 26, 2015 OBC Meeting.
As expected, Sec. Lisa Summers failed to be able to produce those documents, and now several Tribe members suspect that OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ August 21, 2015 Internal Memo contains falsehoods, and that if such documents relating to the Open Records & Open Meetings Law ever do show up they will likely have been backdated and forged to create the false appearance that they existed all along.
As Oneida Eye has noted, it is now glaringly obvious that the reason that OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ August 21, 2015 Internal Memo oddly claims that the OBC first received “official” notification of an appeal of the Secretarial Election to the IBIA a month earlier on July 22, 2015, but yet the OBC waited until August 17, 2015 to implement a ‘hold’ on Constitutional amendments until the Secretarial Election appeal process is complete, is due to the fact that the OBC chose to wait to raise the voting age from 18 back to 21 years-old until after the OBC voted at the August 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting to certify the voting results of the unlawfully conducted July 11, 2015 Special Election, because the OBC – with the advice & consultation of OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House – falsely & illegally claimed there existed a ‘threat’ which endangered the “health, safety and general welfare” of the Oneida Tribe which the OBC then baselesly claimed warranted the OBC passing ‘Emergency Amendments’ to the Oneida Election Law in order to deceitfully try to justify the OBC’s illegal JUNE 28, 2015 vote to unlawfully lower the Tribe’s voting age to 18 years-old for both the July 6, 2015 GTC Semi-Annual Meeting and for the July 11, 2015 Special Election, rather than wait for the Secretarial Election appeal process to end.
The OBC and OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House were confronted about that undeniable reality at the August 26, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting where they were asked to try to justify their blatantly unconstitutional & unlawful manipulation of voting age limits in Tribal elections in violation of the Indian Civil Rights Act. They declined and remained stone cold silent.
After all, the OBC had started that same OBC Meeting off by unlawfully administering the Oath of Office to the ‘winners’ of the illegal July 11, 2015 Special Election, asking those Tribe members to raise their right hands and swear to honor, uphold, and defend the very Tribal Constitution & Laws that the OBC and OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House had violated resulting in an illegal Tribal election, an unlawful vote certification, and a sad farce of an oath taking ceremony.
As proven by OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ August 21, 2015 Internal Memo, it was all a giant lie concocted by OBC Vice-Chair Melinda Danforth and OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House, and there was no real threat endangering the health, safety, nor general welfare of the Oneida Tribe, hence no justifiable reason for the OBC to illegally lower the voting age on JUNE 28, 2015, which the OBC then turned around and raised back up at the AUGUST 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting, after illegally holding the JULY 11, 2015 Special Election and illegally certifying the results at the same AUGUST 17, 2015 OBC Special Meeting.
It is impossible to argue against the fact that OBC Vice-Chair Melinda Danforth’s and OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House’s conspiracy to violate GTC’s voting rights as protected under the Indian Civil Rights Act by having the OBC illegally adopt ‘Emergency Amendments’ to the Oneida Election Law which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 did not have an impact on the election results.
One candidate lost their race by just one vote, and other races had narrow results.
Clearly, the OBC should have acknowledged that there was no real threat which would have legitimized the OBC’s ‘Emergency Amendments’ to the Election Law, and the OBC should have presented all of the relevant information to GTC at the July 6, 2015 GTC Meeting – as well as heeded the warning by IBIA appellant Madelyn Genskow – so that GTC could decide how it wanted to proceed as the supreme governing body of the Tribe.
Instead, the OBC & OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House violated GTC’s voting rights by lowering the voting age which inarguably impacted the polling results. Therefore, the results of the July 11, 2015 Special Election should have been nullified.
Nevertheless, at the August 26, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting the OBC swore in the ‘winners’ of that illegitimate July 11, 2015 Special Election proving – yet again – that the OBC simply have no respect for the Oneida Constitution nor Law, but they do have abundant contempt for General Tribal Council, and they seem to be guided in their brazen multiple, ongoing violations of GTC’s civil rights by OBC Chief Counsel Jo Anne House.
As Oneida Eye has reported, GTC member Madelyn Genskow publically informed the OBC on more than one occasion prior to the OBC’s June 28, 2015 Emergency Meeting to pass ‘Emergency Amendments’ to the election law to lower the voting age to 18 that she would fully exhaust the appeals process regarding the Secretarial Election amendments to the Oneida Constitution, including publicly warning the OBC at the microphone during the July 6, 2015 GTC Semi-Annual Meeting that they were being “premature” in passing new laws to change the official name of the Tribe, lower the voting age, and continue to implement the Oneida Judiciary, when each of those amendments to the Constitution were being appealled.
OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ August 21, 2015 Internal Memo proves that Madelyn Genskow was right to warn the OBC, and that the OBC was wrong to pass ‘Emergency Amendments’ to lower the Tribe’s voting age until after the IBIA’s Secretarial Election appeals process is complete, which OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ August 21, 2015 Internal Memo says could take “two to three years.”
What Lisa Summers (or whoever wrote that Internal Memo) fails to mention is that there is another appeals process after the IBIA, and thereafter the federal courts.
It should be mentioned that OBC Chair Exec. Asst. Mary Graves has long complained to Tribe members that the OBC Chair’s office’s hands are often tied by the OBC Secretary’s office’s withholding of and refusal to provide access to important documents, and that the OBC Secretary’s office does not provide the OBC Chair’s office with important documents in a timely manner.
Gee, it’s really too bad that OBC Chair Exec. Asst. Mary Graves doesn’t work for somebody who could exercise the authority to demand that the OBC Secretary fulfill her job duties and her ethical obligation to provide the OBC Chair’s office and the GTC with timely access to accurate government documents in keeping with the OBC Secretary’s Oath of Office.
Gosh, if only OBC Chair Exec. Asst. Mary Graves worked for someone with the ability to call a GTC Special Meeting to inform GTC about the lies, incompetence, and contemptuous actions of the OBC Secretary’s office – which violate the Oneida Constitution & Laws and the Indian Civil Rights Act – and then allow GTC to take corrective action if GTC determines that OBC Sec. Lisa Summers violated her Oath of Office by keeping GTC and the OBC Chair’s office in the dark by failing to perform her professional duties and conspiring to violate the Oneida Tribal Constitution & Laws.
Oh, wait… the Oneida Tribal Constitution does give OBC Chair Cristina Danforth that ability! (Even though the OBC is currently trying to take that authority away unconstitutionally.)
[Predictably, as of Thursday August 27, 2015 – one week after OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ Internal Memo – the OBC still has the incorrect version of the Oneida Constitution posted on the Tribe’s website which says: “All enrolled members of the Oneida Nation who are eighteen (18) years of age or older shall be qualified voters,” despite the fact that (according to OBC Sec. Lisa Summers’ Internal Memo) the OBC voted to revert to the official name ‘Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin’ and raised the voting age back up to 21. Hey, OBC Sec. Lisa Summers!: Stop being an evil nitwit (if that’s even possible); try to find at least half a clue; have the unlawful version of the Oneida Constitution from the Tribe’s website removed; and have the lawful version of the Oneida Constitution posted back on the Tribe’s website. In other words, Lisa: Do your job and quit being a lazy, lying idiot.]
But let’s not kid ourselves.
For as much animosity as some OBC members & their staffs have for each other, they are united in their cultic worship of and support for Oneida Seven Generations Corporation, and they’ve demonstrated they’ll do anything in their power to protect OSGC from GTC. . . health, safety, general welfare, reputation, and resources be damned!
The Oneida Business Committee is both evil and insane:
The OBC is EVIL for trying to get away with what they’re doing at the expense of GTC in order to protect OSGC from GTC.
The OBC is INSANE for thinking they will ever fully succeed.
It’s often said a fish rots from the head, but the OBC and OSGC are rotten in every direction.
B¡tchcraft between OBC members and their staffs is nothing new, and it’s often a red herring.
But the OBC’s & the OBC Chief Counsel’s conspiracy to violate GTC’s civil rights is now undeniable, and intolerable.
UPDATE:
- Audio of the Wednesday August 26, 2015 Oneida Business Committee Regular Meeting (Part 1)
- Continuation of August 26, 2015 OBC Regular Meeting (Part 2; held on August 27)
See also:
UPDATE:
OBC Chair Cristina Danforth’s newly appointed Senior Policy Advisor, Dawn ‘Mitzi’ Moon-Kopetsky, has informed Tribe members that Tina’s outgoing Executive Assistant Mary Graves (who’s moving to an Internal Audit position that some wonder if she’s qualified for) will be temporarily replaced by Lora Skenandore, which would seem to be the elected Oneida Gaming Commissioner who on September 1, 2015, was found guilty of Welfare Fraud.
