Fremont County woman runs against U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney

Fremont County woman runs against U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney
 
By Katie Roenigk
The Ranger
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
RIVERTON – Democrat Lynnette Grey Bull of Fort Washakie isn’t running for Congress to “take on” Wyoming’s current U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney – but there is a lot that sets the two apart.
For example, Grey Bull said, Cheney uses her current position in Congress to keep “promises to multi-billion-dollar corporations.”
Grey Bull, by contrast, has “promises to uphold to the working class and everyday citizens” of Wyoming. 
“I’m always looking at the best interests of the people,” Grey Bull said. “(I know) their hardships and their sufferings and the things that they suffer in disadvantaged communities – because I too live in a disadvantaged community.”
Grey Bull, an enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, has lived in Fremont County – specifically in Fort Washakie on the Wind River Indian Reservation – since 2017.
Since then, she has worked with Wyoming government leaders to help address the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women in the state. 
She also serves as vice president of the Global Indigenous Council advocacy organization, and she founded the action and awareness movement Not Our Native Daughters.
When she lived in Arizona, Grey Bull chaired the Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs and participated in the Arizona Governor’s Human Trafficking Task Force. She also spent four years working as a consultant and advisor for the Department of Justice AMBER Alert Program – a position that allowed her to build “great relationships” with law enforcement officers throughout the country.
“I have the highest respect for our men in blue,” Grey Bull said. “They put their lives on the line every single day.”
She was responding to comments from Cheney about the “rioting and mob violence” taking place “in a number of Democrat-controlled cities” throughout the nation.
“This must stop,” Cheney wrote in an e-mail to The Ranger. “We must ensure we elect leaders who will defend our history, secure our communities, and stand with our brave law enforcement officers.”
The protests began in May after police were filmed killing an unarmed and restrained black man in Minneapolis. 
Since then, organizations protesting the disproportionate killing of black men by law enforcement have called for cities throughout the country to defund their police departments and reform the local emergency response system.
Grey Bull spoke against the violent protests Cheney mentioned, but she also expressed empathy for people who gather peacefully to express their opinions.
“We should be more concerned about why they are protesting – why do they feel they have to go to extremes (to) make their voices heard?” she asked. “I come more from an angle of trying to understand than to kind of demonize people or a group or a movement.”
The same philosophy applies to law enforcement, Grey Bull said.
“I don’t support the message that one bad cop makes every cop bad,” she said. “I think any time you do any type of blanket statement like that it only hurts the community – it doesn’t promote community well-being.”
Grey Bull says she has “a lot of law enforcement friends.” 
But she also has three black children.
“It absolutely terrifies me that this is something I have to worry about as a mother,” Grey Bull said. “I see that there needs to be some type of address, or some angle, towards what is happening towards young black men.”
During the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many U.S. citizens have faced unemployment, eviction, and homelessness – adversities Grey Bull also has suffered in her life.
She pointed out that Cheney recently opposed a bill to expand a moratorium on certain evictions and foreclosures during the pandemic.
“I don’t understand that,” Grey Bull said, again inviting Cheney to a debate on the reservation, or a conversation at Grey Bull’s home.  “Help me understand your position. Help me understand how you advocate and fight for Wyomingites.”
Grey Bull said she is equipped to represent Wyoming residents because she is a “working class citizen” who shares the beliefs and values of the people of the state – even though she is a Democrat.
“People have contacted me that are Republican that said that they believe in my campaign – they believe in the issues I stand for,” Grey Bull said.  “Those types of words encourage me.”
She says she is known for bringing together people with disparate opinions to solve problems, and she plans to continue facilitating that kind of cooperative progress in Congress. 
“I can work … across the political aisle to discuss the issues at hand and bring it back to the focus of the people,” Grey Bull said. “I truly believe all policy should lead right back to the people.”
Grey Bull’s website says she has spent her life working in outreach, advocacy and community improvement, providing outreach to the homeless in L.A.’s Skid Row and through her work with the United Way of Arizona’s Project Homeless Connect, as well as with a Native American outreach food box program delivering supplies to tribal nations across the country.
From 2006 until 2010, she was part a mentorship program helping female inmates at a federal prison in Florence, Arizona, successfully transition back into society.
In 2013 she began her work combating child sex trafficking in Native American communities – an effort that prompted her to begin lobbying for federal bills in the U.S. Congress. 
In 2016, she submitted congressional testimony on tribal suicide rates, and she contributed to a 2017 report on human trafficking in Indian Country that was submitted to the United Nations during a special session on global child sex trafficking. 
She also testified in support of the Tribal Heritage Protection Act and the Grizzly Bear Protection Act – another issue about which Grey Bull and Cheney disagree.
Cheney said the “court-ordered re-listing of the grizzly was not based on science or facts, but was rather the result of excessive litigation pursued by radical environmentalists intent on destroying our Western way of life.”
Grey Bull’s other work in Fremont County includes service with the Wind River Early Childhood Intervention Program. In 2018, she was the Wind River Reservation/Fremont County field organizer for the Wyoming Democratic Party, working primarily on native voting rights and access and the election of Wyoming Rep. Andi Clifford, D-Ethete. She is a tribal liaison for the Wyoming Outdoors Council and a Red Desert Tribal Advocate for Citizens for the Red Desert Coalition. 
She currently serves as director of the Wind River/Department of Interior Land Buyback Program for Tribal Nations, where she manages a staff of seven who work on the distribution of the $1.9 billion settlement for the mismanagement of tribal land, making land offerings to tribal land owners.
She was born in California, and she attended Pasadena City College and Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. 
For more information visit greybullforwy.com.