Chase Iron Eyes
EXCLUSIVE

Chase Iron Eyes is an American Indian activist, attorney, politician, and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

 

He is a member of the Lakota People’s Law Project and a co-founder of the Native American news website Last Real Indians.

 

In April 2016 he announced his candidacy for the United States House of Representatives for North Dakota’s at-large congressional district. 

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Iron Eyes has used his career as an attorney to advocate for Native American civil rights. He has served as a staff attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP), an initiative founded in 2005 with the purpose of ending the unlawful practice of removing Lakota children from their families and placing them in foster care outside their communities.[12]

 

In the summer of 2016, Iron Eyes and other representatives of LPLP joined with other anti-pipeline protestors near Standing Rock to resist the Dakota Access pipeline.

Iron Eyes has actively engaged in the protection of sacred sites. He was instrumental in raising awareness of Pe’ Sla, a high mountain prairie situated within the heart of the Black Hills, a sacred site related to Lakota creation beliefs where annual ceremonies, village gatherings, and other traditional activities took place, located north of Deerfield Lake and west of Black Elk Peak. This is the area where renowned Lakota visionary Black Elk sought his vision. Another of the sacred sites Iron Eyes has drawn attention to is Bear Butte.

He is also a member of the Bush Foundation’s Native Nation Rebuilders program, a leadership development program designed to foster innovative tribal governance practices to effect positive change. He has continued to voice opposition against the drilling of oil wells within the area.

In 2016, Iron Eyes announced his candidacy as a member of the Democratic Party for the election to represent North Dakota’s at-large congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.