We are now five months away from the 2018 Brothertown Indian Nation elections. If you plan to run, now is the time to begin formulating your campaign and announce your candidacy. You should contact the office or a member of the Elections Committee to announce. The deadline to get your name in is the March, 2018 Council meeting (meetings are typically held the 3rd Saturday of the month). Announcements can be made from the floor that day. The positions up for election are Vice-Chair (currently held by Robert Fowler), two Council seats (currently held by Roger Straw and Linda Shady) and one Peacemaker position (held by Renee Gralewicz who stepped in to fill the recent vacancy left by Caroline Andler).
Today, the first candidate has publicly announced his candidacy. Seth Elsen, grandson of Ranona Elsen who was very active with the Tribe in the 1980’s and instrumental in getting our original petition together, is a descendant of the Mohegan Brueshels. Despite college and graduate school, and being newly married (2016), Seth has been actively involved with the Tribe over the past decade. He has served on the Envision and 2013 grant committees and has been instrumental in helping to organize the well-attended annual Pacific Northwest gatherings. More recently, Seth has taken over the responsibility of the Brothertown Indian Nation Quarterly Report.
By all indications, Seth seems to be taking his candidacy very seriously. He has a blog site and Facebook presence wherein he identifies several key issues that he says are important to him and that he plans to work with Council to accomplish. One of these issues is the transparency of the workings of our Tribal government. As a resident of the state of Washington and through his contact with hundreds of other displaced Brothertown, he is well aware of the importance of communication for our people. Transparency, he believes, will help to unite the Tribe, encourage more active participation, and strengthen our community. He also plans to assist in expanding volunteer opportunities so that out-of state members can be more actively involved no matter where they live. To learn more about Seth and his campaign, please check out his website at https://sethelsen.wordpress.com/ and/or follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BrothertownSeth/.
If you are planning to run for a position in the 2018 elections and would like to have your candidacy information posted to this blog, please send an email to BrothertownCitizen at aol.com.
The Life of the Brothertown Indians 