FDL chair is censured

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribal Executive Committee voted 7-5 Monday to censure Kevin Dupuis Sr., chairperson of the Fond du Lac Reservation Business Committee. Other than the disapproval implied by the censure, the vote came with no consequences from the committee. There seemed to be consensus among many of those voting both ways that the issue would be better addressed by Fond du Lac Band members.

The tribal committee, or TEC, comprises the chairperson and secretary/treasurer of each of the six Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Reservations and is the governing body for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe as a whole.

“Let’s let Fond du Lac Band handle, address and correct this,” said Leech Lake TEC member Archie LaRose. “There’s a lack of evidence, minutes and documents. How can we as a governing body make a fair decision today?”

Fond du Lac secretary/treasurer Ferdinand Martineau made the motion at the Jan. 28 TEC meeting to censure Dupuis for violating a reservation ordinance that prohibits weapons in tribal public buildings.

According to a copy of the Fond du Lac police report, a loaded handgun was discovered in a bathroom near the business committee offices. When a police officer called Dupuis to inform him of the situation, the chairman told the officer it was his gun and later came to pick it up. No charges were filed, but Martineau told the TEC he considers it “a dereliction or neglect of duty,” and was therefore requesting censure by the TEC.

According to an online copy of Fond du Lac ordinances, the firearms ordinance was passed in 2003 and prohibits firearms within public facilities on the Fond du Lac Reservation. The only exceptions to the law are firearms lawfully possessed by on-duty law enforcement officers and people transporting money under contract with the band.

Rebuttal

On Monday, the TEC met at Black Bear Casino and Resort to hear Dupuis give his side of the story. The motion to censure was the only item on the agenda. Dupuis was the only person allowed to give evidence or call witnesses. Martineau could not provide any testimony or documents beyond what he filed in January.

Dupuis has openly admitted the gun was his from the start, but insists that the other RBC members gave him permission to carry a weapon after members were threatened. Brookston RBC member Roger Smith provided testimony that both he and Dupuis were given permission to carry handguns because Dupuis had a conceal and carry license and Smith was a licensed peace officer. Smith said there had been “threats against the lives” of RBC members.

Miyah Danielson, executive director of Fond du Lac tribal programs, also recalled the meeting in which permission to carry a weapon was given. She said the discussions took place after a shooting on the reservation resulted in the tribal center being locked down.

“I’m not sure when it was, but it (the meeting) did happen. I was there,” Danielson told a TEC member later in the hearing.

But there are no records of that meeting, Martineau said, and the reservation weapons ordinance, No. 04-03, was never amended to show any changes.

The lack of records was also an issue. In the January hearing, Dupuis said the RBC minutes have not been updated in three years.

“For me to make a decision, I need to have documents in front of me,” said Mille Lacs TEC member Melanie Benjamin. “I can’t base a decision … on hearsay.”

“If there are no minutes, no proof of meetings, then ‘he said, she said’ is where we are at,” Dupuis said, pointing out that he was allowed to call witnesses in his defense.

Dupuis presented several arguments against the censure motion.

Dupuis noted a 1986 challenge to the authority of the reservation chair, when the TEC ruled that the authority lies with the [elected] body, in this case the Reservation Business Council. “I would never have” gone into any reservation buildings while carrying a gun, he said, “if I didn’t have RBC authority to do so.”

In addition to arguing that he was given permission by the RBC and that the RBC had the right to do that, Dupuis said the TEC is not allowed to censure based on a Fond du Lac law.

“When I went after Ferdinand Martineau and Karen Diver, the TEC said you can’t use the bylaws of a tribe in a censorship,” he said, a comment that was greeted with applause from the audience at Monday’s hearing, held in the casino’s convention center.

He also argued that Martineau’s accusation that it was a “dereliction of duty” to violate the weapons ordinance should also apply to other ordinances that RBC members regularly ignore, including passing items via email consensus instead of in meetings and failing to maintain official records.

Smith brought up a time when a rule that the chairman and secretary/treasurer sign every contract was not followed.

“What happened there? Nothing,” Smith said. “The chair at the time said it was a mistake, addressed the people and there was no censorship, petition or removal.”

Process

The Minnesota Chippewa constitution and bylaws state that after considering the accused member’s response, the tribal executive committee shall “by official action, either (1) exonerate the member or (2) censure the member and refer the matter to the band represented by the member for a hearing.”

Voting in favor of censure were Ferdinand Martineau, Michael Fairbanks, Melanie Benjamin, Catherine Chavers, April McCormick, Sheldon Boyd and Bobby Deschampe. Voting against were Kevin Dupuis, David Morrison, Faron Jackson, Alan Roy and Archie LaRose.

Several of those who voted in favor of censure seemed to do so as a way of turning things over to the Fond du Lac Band versus rebuking or even removing Dupuis from office.

When it came time to vote, Melanie Benjamin was the first to give a reason for her vote: “I send it back to Fond du Lac with a ‘yes’ vote,” she said of her vote to censure.

TEC president Catherine Chavers, of the Bois Forte Reservation, cast a similar vote.

“I believe this is a Fond du Lac issue that needs to go back to Fond du Lac, so I’m going to vote ‘yes,’” she said.

With the censure verdict passing, the Fond du Lac RBC must schedule its own hearing, open only to band members, with rules following a process laid out in the Minnesota Chippewa constitution and bylaws.

Minnesota Chippewa Tribe executive director Gary Frazer said the RBC has three options after its hearing: exonerate, remove or recall. It would require a four of five votes on the RBC to remove, and three of five votes to schedule a recall election within 30 days of the hearing date. Dupuis, as RBC chair, would also be allowed to vote.

Fond du Lac officials did not respond by press time to an email from the Pine Knot News asking for comments and information regarding the next steps in the censure process.