Ex-Sioux leader: Women’s rights critical
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BY MELISSA LEE / Lincoln Journal Star
Rare is the woman willing to talk publicly about stretch marks and menopause.
Rarer still is the woman willing to crack jokes about such topics.
And then there’s Cecilia Fire Thunder, proud owner of a doubly stretched stomach (two sons means double the joy) and grateful to be post-menopausal (no more cramps!).
Ethnic Studies Week at UNL will feature a series of speakers and brown bag lunches. For a full calendar of events, visit UNL’s Web site at www.unl.edu and click on “UNL Today.”
Blushing? Why?
“Women should be taught to respect their bodies,” Fire Thunder, ousted leader of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, said Monday in an address kicking off Ethnic Studies Week at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“For too long, the voices of women have been silenced.”
Women should take pride in puberty and pregnancy, she said, because there are few things more honorable than bringing a child into the world.
But, diving headfirst into the controversial topic that led to her impeachment last summer, Fire Thunder added: “I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”
The small crowd at UNL’s Culture Center applauded.
It was not the response she’d received from Oglala Sioux Tribal Councilmen one year ago.
After South Dakota lawmakers in February 2006 passed a ban on virtually all abortions, then-president Fire Thunder — the tribe’s first-ever female leader — fired back, announcing plans to build an abortion clinic on sovereign tribal land.
Her argument: Abstinence-only education doesn’t work and government regulation of women’s bodies is wrong.
That didn’t sit well with councilmen, who felt she hadn’t sufficiently consulted them before moving forward with plans for a clinic. They also asserted she’d improperly used the tribe’s name to solicit funds for the project.
In addition, Fire Thunder had previously been accused of disrespecting tribal elders and improperly seeking a multimillion-dollar federal loan to keep the tribal government from shutting down.
In June, councilmen voted to impeach her, less than two years after she was elected.
That fall, South Dakota voters rejected the sweeping abortion ban. Lawmakers have re-introduced a new, less restrictive ban this legislative session that would allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
The 60-year-old Fire Thunder, meanwhile, says she has no regrets despite the significant public criticism that’s been directed at her.
In fact, she says she’s stronger for it.
“Even though I stood in the middle of all this controversy, it never hurt me,” she said. “I knew who I was...
“I didn’t take it personally. Is that cool or what?”
Fire Thunder said she’s fighting the impeachment decision and that she’ll do her best to build some kind of reproductive-rights clinic on tribal land, a clinic that could provide contraceptives and sex education to young people.
She maintains her impeachment constituted a violation of her First Amendment right to free speech.
Still, she says she doesn’t resent her fellow tribal members, even though they “shot me off my horse.”
“I forgave them. I could not carry that in my heart,” she said, emotional for the first and only time.
UNL student Orlando Cariaga applauded Fire Thunder’s call for better sex education for youths.
“That’s a really good idea,” said Cariaga, a senior sociology major and president of UNITE, a Native student organization.
“She’s overall just a good person.”
Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.
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