Native American Press/Ojibwe News

The tribal patriot

5/2/03
Butch Brun was a patriot in every sense of the word. He was deeply concerned about the well-being of the tribe, and we of Red Lake should appreciate that he set aside his well-earned retirement, came back into office, and devoted the last months of his life to at least setting us on the right course.

Butch, thanks for giving us stability and unity so we could come together, and work out our problems at Red Lake.

I think that Butch really felt obligated to run for chairman because there weren’t many people around who could have won the election last year. He ran for office not because he wanted to be chairman, but because he was a patriot committed to Red Lake, and because he was talked into doing it by a lot of people who knew that Butch was probably the only person whose leadership could bring us back together as ‘we the people’ after the divisiveness caused by the River Road development and the recall of the former treasurer.

As chairman, he created an environment so that all of us, with diverse opinions and backgrounds, tribal members and others, could work together in an atmosphere of commitment to helping deal with the problems and issues of the tribe. He led us in setting aside our differences, and in focusing on the extremely serious problems that confront us at Red Lake.

Butch was humble, practical, a common-man type of person who had a good down-to-earth business sense about doing things. He had to work hard to earn his living, and he expected others to do likewise when they worked for the tribe.

Butch was a kind and honorable man. He appreciated the value of dollar and the value of an honest days work, and with his leadership he brought unity into the council and to the band.

His sixteen years on the Jourdain council gave him good insights into the workings of the council, and he understood the issues affecting the band. He was committed to fairness and honesty, and he disagreed with much of what was going on in Jourdain’s administration. He vigorously worked for change, for openness in government, and was always a genuine representative of the people, someone on the tribal council who anyone could talk to.

When he was elected to the chairmanship in 1990, he actively worked to change the tightly centralized polices of the former chairman. Butch was concerned about rights, about open government, and about accountability. There were numerous occasions that he saw to it that important information was disseminated to the people of the tribe, information that heretofore had been kept secret by other officials.

We will miss him, and we can only thank him for coming back, for running for office, and for getting us headed in the right direction

Butch Brun came out of retirement to help us clean up a mess that would have never happened in his administration. It’s pretty obvious that we wouldn’t be dealing today with the financial problems of the water park / motel development, if he had been in office four years ago, because it was his policy and philosophy was that you could only grow and develop based on paying for it, having the means to pay, and he would have never allowed the tribe to go into the debt that we currently have.

Butch, thanks for leading us in the right direction.

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