By Cherokee One Feather Editorial Board
The Attorney General submitted proposed legislation to withhold internal audit and ethics report findings from the community.
An ordinance change two years ago, requested by the Cherokee One Feather, standardized the communication of findings made by our internal auditors. The practice before had been for the Cherokee One Feather to submit a specific request and receive specific documentation, leaving the possibility of reports slipping by unnoticed. The institution of the current law requires the One Feather to receive the reports as they are handed down by the Audit and Ethics division and board, after review and warranted redaction by the Attorney General.
Proposed Ordinance 107 (2026) seeks to remove language that provides transparency to the community and would remove the requirement to provide the audit and investigative findings of our internal auditors to the very stakeholders to whom they belong.
We see this as overreach by the Attorney General. His office already has a right of redaction written into Cherokee Code Section 117, and specifically in the section he seeks to delete, that allows him and his office to redact information from the concluded findings before being sent to the Cherokee One Feather.
Neither the One Feather nor the EBCI Office of Internal Audit & Ethics was contacted by the Attorney General’s Office prior to this proposed ordinance being submitted.
The Attorney General’s proposed language change would block this community information from being shared with tribal members. The Cherokee One Feather maintains an archive of reporting from various entities within the tribe on the website including audit and ethics reports and findings.
Our government is famous for saying that it stands behind its commitment to transparency to the members of our tribe. This move to shield community information from release is the opposite of transparency. We ask the tribal community to voice your concern to your Dinilawigi representatives, Ugvwiyuhi Michell Hicks, and Taline Ugvwiyu Alan B. Ensley, and ask them to oppose this new threat to withhold information from the tribal community.
