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Open Letter: The Siletz Tribal Council Will Vote To Overturn Our Election on March 19thThe political machine run by Tribal Chairman Dee Pigsley and her niece, General Manager Brenda Bremner, is about to overturn our recent election, without even informing tribal members. On February 7th Lisa Brown was swept into office with a stunning 401 votes, finishing a whopping 20% ahead of all of the candidates endorsed by Chairman Pigsley. There was a near-record voter turnout this year and Lisa Brown's vote total was the fifth-highest in our tribe's history. But, in a stunningly naked power grab, Dee Pigsley's Tribal Council majority moved immediately to expel Lisa Brown at her very first regular Tribal Council meeting. There will be a hearing on March 19th . At that time they will vote to expel Lisa Brown. After expulsion Lisa Brown will be barred from ever running for Tribal Council again. This is how the Pigsley-Bremner machine deals with elections that don't go it's way. Chairman Pigsley is seeking to undo the 2009 election and forever bar a formidable opponent from ever serving on the Tribal Council again. Delores Pigsley's allies on the tribal council are determined to restore their weakening power structure by vetoing the voters' choice for tribal council this year. They've engineered charges against Lisa Brown in an attempt to eject her from the Tribal Council in order to install an appointee who will hand-picked by Pigsley. The Tribal Council has given no notice of their expulsion plan to tribal members. Nothing was reported about this in the March issue of Siletz News, even though the motion to expel Brown occurred back on February 21st. As of this writing[3-11-09], there is no mention on the official tribal web site about it. The Calendar of Events doesn't list the Special Tribal Council Meeting in which the hearing will take place. Chairman Pigsley intends to expel Lisa Brown from the Tribal Council before most tribal members can even become aware of it. It's no wonder that the Tribal Chairman wants to keep this news from the membership until the expulsion is a done deal. She knows the membership will see through her transparent power play. The trumped-up charges against Lisa Brown are barely worthy of being dignified with a defense. The charges were spearheaded by the same crowd that was trying to silence Lisa Brown before the election. In the December issue of the Siletz News there was a series of letters to the editor demanding that tribal members be allowed less time to voice their concerns at our General Council meetings. They made these demands because Lisa Brown and I were effective in shedding light on the lawlessness and financial incompetence of our tribal government during these meetings. In fact, we were heckled by many of the same people who wrote those letters during the meetings whenever the Tribal Chairman became embarrassed or uneasy about the points we raised. The letters were written by Joanne Miller (recent Tribal Council member and staunch political ally of Dee Pigsley, also the mother of Tribal Council member Robert Kentta), Cat Tufts (the tribal attorney working directly under Brenda Bremner), Donna Woods (sister of Chairman Pigsley), Rose Bremner (sister of Chairman Pigsley and mother of Brenda Bremner), as well as other close relatives. Clearly this is not a random sampling of tribal members. These are the immediate family and the closest political allies of Dee Pigsley and Brenda Bremner. They got their way at the General Council meeting on February 7th when, for the first time in tribal history, the room packed with Pigsley's supporters limited tribal members to only 15 minutes speaking time. But while they were busy muzzling Lisa Brown in the General Council Meeting, she clobbered them in the election, finishing miles ahead of all of Chairman Pigsley's endorsed candidates. That demonstrates once and for all that the crowd which dominates our General Council meetings does not represent tribal members at large. And now, immediately after the election, the very same gang has spearheaded the charges against Lisa Brown. Joanne Miller and Cat Tufts again led the effort, joined this time by Laura Bremner (sister of Brenda Bremner, niece of Dee Pigsley) and, of course, more close relatives and loyal staff. Our elections don't matter to these people: They cannot allow Lisa Brown to serve on Tribal Council because she will tell members the simple truth about what Tribal Council does. (Oh, and don't be surprised to see Joanne Miller on Chairman Pigsley's short list of replacements for Lisa Brown.) The main charge against Lisa Brown stems from an offhand comment made before she even took office. The morning after she was elected, hours before she was sworn into office, Lisa posted a rambling comment on Siletz.Net, thanking tribal members who elect her. Here is the paragraph they plan to expel her for:
Jim Kikumoto submitted his resignation one week later. You're supposed to believe he walked away from his very high paying job as General Manager of our casino over this comment. In fact, in the week before the election Kikumoto told people that he would resign if Lisa Brown was elected! Tribal Council member Lillie Butler told council that she had heard this directly from casino employees who witnessed Kikumoto's comments. Chairman Pigsley dismissed this testimony as irrelevant. It was a setup: They cut a deal with Kikumoto to in order to bury Lisa Brown. Lisa Brown cannot even speak directly about the charges because the Tribal Council is imposing a blanket of secrecy over the entire affair. They held the discussions of this mostly in executive session to keep tribal members from hearing any details, but the outlines have become pretty clear. You can bet the farm that Dee Pigsley arranged a Golden Parachute for Jim Kikumoto. Kikumoto had almost a year left on his contract. I'm sure he didn't walk away from a year's salary over a comment. Two weeks after his resignation Dee Pigsley's majority voted to accept the terms of a resignation agreement – but that's all they'll say publicly. The deal was cut in secret and even the people who voted against it aren't allowed to tell you why. The Tribal Council majority want it to appear that they had to agree to the golden parachute to save the tribe from the consequences of Lisa Brown's comment. That's nonsense. Lisa's comment was unfortunate and ill-considered, but it is not grounds for expulsion and it didn't put the tribe's assets in any jeopardy. Our law clearly states:
Lisa Brown had not taken her oath of office when she made the remarks in question. As a simple matter of law, she was not a member of the Tribal Council, nor was she, in any sense, the supervisor of Jim Kikumoto. The tribe could certainly not be held liable for anything she said as a private citizen. Not that there would be a credible case against Brown or the tribe, even if she had been a Tribal Council member at the time she wrote the comment, but the fact is that she was not on the Tribal Council and Kikumoto would be sent packing if he tried to pursue a grievance about it in a court of law. This whole tempest in a teapot was used to smear Lisa Brown and to give Jim Kikumoto a lucrative resignation package – a golden parachute. I don't know what the terms were, but I'm guessing that the deal Dee Pigsley got him over this affair cost the tribe at least a quarter of a million dollars. And that price was cheap to Pigsley, because she intended to hang it on Lisa Brown. There are other charges against Lisa Brown. They say she's a racist, which is ludicrous to anyone who knows her. They say she interfered with casino operations because she chatted, as she often has in the past, with casino employees. They say she jeopardized tribal assets, but she wasn't the one who voted to approve the pay-off to Jim Kikumoto and no one has endangered tribal assets more than our present Tribal Council majority, headed by Dee Pigsley and vice-chaired by Bud Lane. No Tribal Council member loyal to Dee Pigsley would ever face charges like this. Dee Pigsley was running the Tribal Council when they caused us to be cited by the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) with a Notice of Violation (NOV) for abusing comps. This was considered a serious offense, but no one talked about expelling the members of the Tribal Council who abused the casino comping system. They were never sanctioned by the tribe in any way. Lisa Brown's activities haven't so much as gotten us a warning from the NIGC, but now the same people who caused us to get an NOV want to use the gaming laws as an excuse in an effort to destroy Lisa Brown. Could they be any more blatant in their hypocrisy? As for putting tribal assets a risk, this same Tribal Council “lost” the charter for the Siletz Tribal Business Corporation for four years and acted as it's Board of Directors – conducting millions of dollars worth of business over a period of years - without legal authority. All of that money was put at risk because the Tribal Council had no legal authority to act as the STBC Board. The Tribal Council even amended the STBC Charter during this period without noticing that they were not legally on the Board of Directors, nor did their crack team of lawyers, headed up by Craig Dorsay. But since Dee Pigsley was running the show she characterized this as nothing more than a clerical error. The standard they are holding Lisa Brown to is laughable in light of their own record. They would have you believe that Lisa Brown is public enemy number one. They would try to sell you on the idea that she is the worst political criminal in our tribe's history. So infamous that she must be drummed out of the Tribal Council chambers within weeks of being elected – and banned forever from even running again But the membership isn't going to buy it once they know the facts. Unfortunately, the news is slow in coming to so many of us who live away from Siletz. And that's what they're counting on. By the time you read about the expulsion in any of the official tribal publications, it will be old news. You'll be told to simply move along and that it was a unpleasant moment in history. That they didn't want to expel, but had no choice. The truth is that Dee Pigsley, Bud Lane, Robert Kentta, Tina Retasket, and Jessie Davis are putting their own political interests ahead of the tribe's interest. The March 19th hearing will not be any sort of trial, it will be a Kangaroo Court conducted by Dee Pigsley. There will be no rules of evidence and the vague charges themselves will be shrouded in secrecy. Lisa Brown will have no chance to even question her accusers. The truth will not matter because the hearing is only a formality. The situation is very simple. Dee Pigsley needs just 6 votes on the Tribal Council to expel Lisa Brown. Chairman Pigsley already has 5 of those votes in her pocket. Dee Pigsley, Bud Lane, Robert Kentta, Tina Retasket and Jessie Davis will all vote to expel Lisa Brown regardless of what happens between now and the vote. They cannot afford to have Lisa Brown on the Tribal Council because she won't play ball with them. Don't waste your time complaining to these Tribal Council members because their votes are set in stone on this matter. Reggie Butler and Lillie Butler will vote against expelling Lisa Brown – they know what this is really about because they were removed from Tribal Council ten years ago, the last time Dee Pigsley's power was threatened. Loraine Butler holds the key – she is the swing vote. Loraine Butler's vote will decide whether we get to elect our Tribal Council or whether the Pigsley/Bremner political machine has veto power over our choice.The only way to prevent Lisa Brown from being expelled from the Tribal Council is to convince Loraine Butler that she must not vote to overturn our election. Here is Loraine Butler's contact information: Loraine Butler (Home) 541-444-2031 WHAT CAN YOU DO? Contact Tribal Council member Loraine Butler and urge her not to overturn our election by voting to expel Lisa Brown. The other votes are set in stone and all the power is in Loraine's hands to decide whether we elect our Tribal Council or whether Dee Pigsley has veto power over our choice. When the Tribal Council voted to proceed with expulsion Loraine Butler wisely asked if there were any other sanctions short of expulsion that could be considered in Lisa Brown's case. Of course there are, and of course expulsion is wildly excessive for any supposed infraction by Lisa Brown. Contact your family and friends in the tribe and let them know what's going on before it is too late. Show them this letter if you can. Urge them to contact Loraine Butler on behalf of Lisa Brown. Follow all the story on www.siletz.net. I can provide many more details there than I can in this letter. I will report all developments and more information becomes available. Urge other tribal members to follow the story on Siletz.Net. NEVER FORGET! The Pigsley/Bremner political machine may well get away with this. Never forget what they have done. If there is anything you can do to help in some other way you can contact me through Siletz.net, email me directly at areswarren@gmail.com, or call me at 775-901-2256. You can also email Lisa Brown at nadosh2@yahoo.com or call her at 541-444-1290 to offer your support. Lynette Warren
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