With United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians council elections approaching, the Tribal Council removed Illinois Representative Janelle Adair and Sequoyah Representative Donald Adair, ruling that they did not live in the districts they represented. The council also dropped impeachment articles Donald Adair had filed against Chief Jeff Wacoche, without ruling on the allegations. KGOU reported that both representatives were elected in 2024 and that the council acted on eligibility rather than the substance of the impeachment filing.
The decision has consequences beyond the current council dispute: attorney Klint Cowan, who argued the representatives were ineligible, said they could not run in the upcoming election or finish their two-year terms. The council authorized him to pursue legal action against the tribe’s election board, which had posted a candidate list for the Nov. 2 election, according to KGOU. The reported action targets the board’s candidate list; the available account does not establish how that legal effort will affect the election.
Residency is one of several candidacy requirements
The UKB’s candidate-filing notice says district-representative candidates must be at least 21, have lived in the district they seek to represent and have been an exclusive UKB member for at least a year before filing. The notice sets out the qualifications, but does not by itself resolve the dispute over where either representative lived. The tribe’s filing notice is the published source for those requirements.
A 2018 eligibility dispute offers a limited comparison. UKB’s account of candidate Jeannie Tidwell’s case concerned her Cherokee Nation enrollment and the requirement of exclusive UKB membership—not the district-residency issue at the center of the current council action. The difference matters: the earlier dispute shows that eligibility challenges have involved more than one qualification, but it does not establish a precedent on residency. The UKB’s account of the Tidwell case describes the enrollment issue.
Impeachment allegations remain unresolved
Donald Adair’s articles accused Wacoche of elder abuse, malfeasance, nonfeasance and moral turpitude. Wacoche denied the accusations and described the impeachment effort as a misuse of the process, KOSU reported. The council’s decision to drop the articles after ruling on the representatives’ eligibility did not determine whether those claims were true.
The accusations arose from a July meeting about the tribe’s finances and employee furloughs. The tribe had initially furloughed 32 employees after American Rescue Plan Act funding ran out; six remained furloughed as of the following Wednesday night, while two others took layoffs, according to KOSU’s reporting. Accounts of the confrontation differed, and the council’s eligibility ruling did not resolve that disagreement.
The distinction between removing a council representative and impeaching a chief is also important. The United Keetoowah Band’s constitution requires a two-thirds vote to remove a sitting chief, according to The Journal Record. That threshold concerns removal of the chief; it is not the stated basis for the council’s action against the two representatives. A special hearing on Donald Adair’s impeachment allegations had been scheduled for Nov. 13, the same report said, but the council subsequently dropped the articles without deciding their merits.
