Cecilia Fire Thunder

South Dakota Little Wound School students hold round table discussions on their vision of the future that Tribal elder Cecilia Fire Thunder facilitated. Cecilia Fire Thunder (born Cecilia Apple; October 24, 1946) is a nurse, community health planner and tribal leader of the Oglala Sioux. On November 2, 2004, she was the first woman elected as president of the Tribe. She served until being impeached on June 29, 2006, several months short of the two-year term. The major controversy was over her effort to build a Planned Parenthood clinic on the reservation after the South Dakota legislature banned most abortions throughout the state. The tribal council impeached her for proceeding without gaining their consensus.

A founder of community-based health clinics while living and working in California for two decades, Fire Thunder was among founders of the Oglala Lakota Women's Society after her return to the reservation in 1986. She serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS) and has worked at a shelter for domestic abuse. She is the coordinator of the Native Women's Society of the Great Plains.

Early life and education Born Cecilia Apple on October 24, 1946, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, she is the third of seven daughters of Stephen and Lollie (Featherman) Apple. Her father was a farmer who worked in agriculture and her mother a culture-keeper; the family spoke Lakota at home. Her grandparents are Frank and Theresa (Garcia) Apple and John and Mary (Ice) Featherman. Her sisters are Shirley Murphy, Mary Hawk, Dinah Apple, Carmine Red Eagle, Joanne Apple, and Wanda Apple (Wanda is deceased).

When Cecilia went to the Catholic Red Cloud Indian School, she had to speak English in class. The school forbid her from speaking Lakota. In 1963 her family moved from the reservation to Los Angeles, California, in a Bureau of Indian Affairs-sponsored urban relocation program. The BIA encouraged Native American migration to cities to take advantage of educational and job opportunities. In 1986, Cecilia returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where she was given the Lakota name of Good Hearted Woman for her services and advocacy for Native American healthcare.

Marriage and family Apple married John Fire Thunder while living in Los Angeles, and they had two sons, In her work for Cangleska, Inc., a domestic violence shelter, she also dealt with women who suffered from abuse related to poverty and alcoholism on the reservation.

A Lakota native speaker, Fire Thunder has also been active in tribal efforts to recover and revive use of the Lakota language among its young people and adults. She sees use of the language as integral to their culture.

Cecilia joined a political conference called the National Congress of American Indians. She joined to talk about the issues they faced as natives and ways to change the current policies.

Tribal presidency On November 2, 2004, Cecilia Fire Thunder was elected as the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation to serve the two-year term. She defeated both Russell Means, notable as an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the incumbent John Yellow Bird Steele.

In March 2006 Fire Thunder announced her intent to create a Planned Parenthood clinic on her own land, within the reservation. She was responding to the state legislature's passage of a law banning virtually all abortions within South Dakota. She believed that her constituents needed full family planning services, and that the sovereign reservation would not be subject to state laws. In 2004 public opinion polls had shown that 68% of people surveyed in South Dakota supported options for abortions in some cases, so the new law generated controversy across the state.

Fire Thunder's plan attracted widespread media coverage and controversy within the reservation. Some tribal members marched in protest in May 2006 against the planned clinic; others objected to the way Fire Thunder had proceeded. At their council meeting on May 31, 2006, the Oglala Sioux tribal Council suspended Fire Thunder from her duties as president, saying she had not gained their consensus before inviting Planned Parenthood to the reservation. In addition, the Council issued a ban on all abortions on tribal land.

A month after the suspension, the tribal council voted on June 29, 2006, to impeach Fire Thunder from her duties as Tribal President. They made six charges against her, notably related to the Planned Parenthood clinic, for which they said she had not gained tribal council consensus. Other charges were that Fire Thunder used the media, the U.S. Post Office and the Oglala Sioux Tribe to solicit funds for the clinic. On June 30, 2006, Alex White Plume, tribal vice-president, assumed the role of President Pro Tem, which he held until the November 2006 election. This story was featured in the 2013 PBS documentary Young Lakota.

The council and succeeding chief never organized to spend the federal grant money to support deputized police to patrol at Whiteclay, and the funds were rescinded in late 2007. During the same period, in 2006 and 2007 tribal activists held blockades on the road inside the reservation to prevent beer from being brought from Whiteclay and continued to demand action by Nebraska.

Fire Thunder challenged the impeachment decision, but was unsuccessful. As of 2010, she is the coordinator of the Native Women's Society of the Great Plains. There was documentation titled “Documents to support complaint calling for the impeachment of OST (Oglala Sioux Tribe) President, Cecelia Fire Thunder" about Cecilia presented by 2 pine Ridge District councilmen. During the trial she was told that she had six charges against her, but the councilmen only voted on one charge and that was what they all talked about during the trial; “[She] invited federal and state law onto our sovereign reservation by challenging the new state abortion law, to begin her own abortion clinic, under the auspices of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.” The letter of suspension that was written educated her about how she could not "... she would not conduct any business in the name of the OST, was banned from discussing her case with media (on or off the reservation), that no further contributions would be accepted, that any monies received for the clinic would be returned, and that she could not travel on behalf of the tribe". This then led the OST Tribal Council to create an ordinance.

The ordinance included:

"ORDINANCE OF THE OGLALA SIOUX TRIBAL COUNCIL PROHIBITING ANY HEALTH

CARE FACILITY LOCATED WITHIN THE EXTERNAL BOUNDARIES OF THE PINE

RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION AS DEFINED UNDER ARTICLE I OF THE OGLALA

SIOUX TRIBE CONSTITUTION FROM PERFORMING AN ABORTION IRRESPECTIVE

OF WHETHER THE HEALTH OF THE PREGNANT MOTHER IS AT RISK OR WHETHER

THE UNBORN CHILD IS CONCEIVED OF [sic] THROUGH RAPE OR INCEST." September 2010, Tribal Leaders Summit, Bismarck, North Dakota - speaking on issues of domestic violence and concentrating resources for children