SAME OFFICE, SAME PATTERN: A YEAR OF WATCHING WHO GETS FIRED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

A Kituwah Punk Commentary

April 2025. I’m sitting at my desk in the media office, and I get told to take a story down. Not edit it. Take it down. Two days later they want my login credentials. A month after that, I don’t have a job anymore. They called it reorganization. I called it what it was.

I didn’t know then that I wasn’t the only one.

Same month, a deputy comptroller named Ryan Harp sends an email to the whole Council. In it, he flags delayed benefits, broken financial controls, and what he calls an office that runs on politics instead of policy. Those were concerns I’d already raised with Council myself. Four days after his email, a protective order is filed against him. He’s gone soon after. No public reason has ever been given for his termination.

A year goes by. I keep doing the work anyway, because that’s the job.

April 2026. An accounting employee is terminated. In her own written account afterward, she says she had to route tens of thousands of dollars a week from the General Fund to cover ARP and other grant accounts that didn’t have enough to pay their bills or make payroll.

We’ve got six ARPA employees still not placed as of this week. I know one of them personally — a single mother trying to figure out how she’s going to buy school supplies this fall. I know the accountant too. Nobody in that meeting room said either of their names. But they’re the reason any of this matters.

June 6, 2026. At a regular Council meeting, Treasurer Sonja Gourd tells Council the accounting department is rebuilding after years of software failures, staff turnover, and departments not submitting required reports. Chief Wacoche presses her at the same meeting, on the record, saying the tribe has at least $16.6 million in draw-downs owed and $29.8 million in accounts needing reconciliation, and that she hasn’t given Council an accurate monthly report in six years.

July 13th, 2026. A council member stands up in front of furloughed employees and apologizes to them. Says the council failed them. According to his own sworn petition and two witnesses who were in the room, the Chief responds by cussing him out and telling him to step outside. Lighthorse officers escort the Chief from his own meeting.

Two days later, on July 15th, Council votes to suspend the Treasurer, no pay, pending impeachment. Same meeting where the comptroller stands up and says the tribe’s cash ran out because ARPA money dried up and the federal reimbursements never caught up.

Nobody mentions what happened on the 13th. Not once.

I asked the Chief directly whether any of this happened. He didn’t respond.

I’ve been watching this happen for a year now. Same pattern, different names. Somebody tells the truth about money. Somebody gets fired, or sued, or shut down. And the people still standing get to decide who answers for what.

Troy Littledeer is an award-winning journalist and the 2025 Indigenous Journalists Association Tim Giago Free Press Award recipient and a 2019 Oklahoma Press Association award winner for photography. His reporting experience includes the Stilwell Democrat Journal, NDNSPORTS.COM, the Cherokee Phoenix, and Osage News, with contributions to The Times of London. His work focuses on accountability, tribal governance, public records, and federal Indian law. Away from the newsroom, he’s a lifelong sports fan, a devoted music enthusiast, and an unapologetic Marvel and science fiction aficionado. He is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma.