Editor Levi Rickert welcomes Four Directions’ co-founder OJ Seamans, Sr. to Native Bidaské. (Photo: Native News Online - YouTube)

OJ Seanans, Sr. (Sicangu Oyate) joined Native Native News Online’s publisher and editor Levi Rickert (Potawatomi) on Friday’s edition of Native Bidaské. The two discusssed the importance of the Native vote in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections on November 8, 2022

Semans, a citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, was part of the formation of Four Directions Inc. after he led the historic Native vote project in South Dakota’s 2002 U.S. Senate Race. In 2005, he testified in front of the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act before the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized in 2006. He did this two more times in 2006 and then in 2014. 

“A lot of people do not understand that even though we are the minority of the minority in this country, we are minorities with nations within a nation, and that makes us powerful in of itself.”

Neely Bardwell (descendant of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indian) is a contributing writer for Native News Online covering politics, policy and environmental issues. Bardwell graduated from...