Aroostook Band of Mic'mac Indians ... WtH?
All the people I know and trust, the people who lead the Aroostook Band from picnics and rolls construction to the November 26, 1991 date the band obtained Federal status, just got voted off the Council.
I've no idea why anyone would want to put a civil servent in a 8am - 4pm cage, or try to make a federal case (literally) out of a few cell phones (coverage is needed in WDC and the metro corridor, Augusta to Portland, and Aroostook and Washington Counties, and no one vendor does them all), or a 4x4 truck.
The rhetoric of Katie Esping, granted, via the BDN, which selectively quotes, is astonishing:
We really feel we've been victimized as a community. We're making a statement that we will no longer be victimized by the people we trusted in leadership positions. We intend on making sure this never happens again.
The people she's managed to get "voted off" the Council, Chief Billy Phillips, his uncle Vice-Chief Steven Phillips, Band Councilors Blanche Jewell, Victoria Higgins, Mary Sanipass and Donald Silliboy, were all re-elected last May, none for the first time. Esping was elected to the Council in May for the first time. How is a packed rump meeting last week a substitute under the Band's own organic law, for a scheduled, contested, multi-candidate election? What issue is so time-sensitive, so urgent, that it can't be resolved by initiative, or by elections, in the next cycle?
I wish we were back in Maine so we could just point the truck towards the County and go visit Billy and his wife and children.