*The original announcement of Ray’s candidacy was on July 27, 2022 on Facebook and this was the following content
I’m ecstatic to announce my running for one of the four council member seats in the 2022 Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indian’s Tribal election!
Running for council has been on my mind since I was in gradeschool. It is one of the most visible, praised, and critiqued ways fellow tribal members can give back to the Tribe. It’s a job that requires continual engagement with the community, a large breadth of knowledge ranging from treaties all the way to the newest technologies, and public accountability at the Tribal and nation-to-nation level.
With the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Standing Rock and many other protests to protect Native Land throughout the world, recent Supreme Court decisions taking away abortion rights and limiting Tribal sovereignty, the human-caused climate change and its affects on animal and plant relatives, the full brunt of a global pandemic harming Indigenous folks, and the continued theft of our Indigenous children, ways of knowing, and cultural practices, I can no longer offer support from the side.
“Making kin, not capital” is the phrase I will use to define what I aim to accomplish as a tribal council member. I am interested in representing anti-colonial and decolonial issues and practices, and in strengthening and building new relationships to Lac du Flambeau tribal members so we can continue to resist settler-colonial practices and center our Ojibwe ways of knowing. I am NOT interested in building social and physical capital, especially at the expense of my relatives, both human and non-human.
I hope to be transparent about this process. Though I am an expert in certain Western academic fields, I know that my fellow Tribal citizens have many more experiences and knowledges that can only be learned by spending their time interacting with and living on our Lands. I aim to respect and center peoples’ respective expertise, mentor our LdF youth, and pass on the knowledge of this process to future generations of engaged tribal citizens.
If you would like to know more about my history and key issues I hope to address, please check out my campaign website page. This blog page will be the main area for topics and points I want to address as a Tribal Council candidate. Stay tuned for more posts!