PERSON: Chase Iron Eyes

Chase Iron Eyes was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation where he learned the value of education and hard work from his single, working-poor, mother. Chase also learned a great deal about sacrifice from spending his youth around an entrepreneur who worked from sun-up to sun-down running his own local gas-station, growing his own garden, and raising his own livestock. Chase spent several summers hauling and stacking square bales, branding calves, and pumping gas at the local fill-station.<br> <br> Chase has held a job since he was 14 years old. He went to work for a minimum wage of $4.25 per hour because he knew his mother could only afford school clothes for his younger brother that year and the years following.<br> <br> He wants to bridge small-town values with the global impact that North Dakota should have in the United States and in the world. Chase believes whole-heartedly in local talent, entrepreneurship, values, sacrifice, patriotism, common sense and duty to the land and waters of our States and Country. We must leave an economy that our great grandchildren can inherit and make a living from.<br> <br> <br> Chase Iron Eyes is married to Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle and they have three children. Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle was a partner in a private medical practice in Bismarck, ND before the family moved back to the Standing Rock reservation where Dr. Jumping Eagle oversees the delivery of medical care at the Indian Health Service hospital. Dr. Jumping Eagle graduated from Stanford School of Medicine and is board certified in North Dakota.<br> <br> Chase graduated from the University of North Dakota earning a bachelor’s degree in 2000 with a double major in Political Science and Native American Studies. Chase finished his legal training at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2007.<br> <br> Having served as in-house counsel to various Tribal Nations in the Northern Plains since gaining admission to the South Dakota Bar, he went into private practice in 2011. Since moving back to the small town of Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Reservation, he has focused his efforts on helping people recover from the imposed poverty culture and all of its symptoms evident on any reservation in America.<br> <br> This has led him to lead a petition drive to rewrite the Tribal Constitution to empower communities and people to determine their own destiny with self-sufficiency.<br> <br> Chase has also worked hard to create a private homeowner culture on the Reservation.<br> <br> wetplateChase and his wife are well known for their roles in igniting a 2012 movement to reclaim sacred lands, known as PeSla, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.<br> <br> Through a website that Chase founded, Last Real Indians, nearly 1Million dollars was raised and contributed to a group of Sioux Tribal Nations who organized and purchased the sacred site, saving it from a commercial fate at a private land auction.<br> <br> Chase was also instrumental in raising approximately $54,000 to install 20 pellet-burning heating stoves on the Standing Rock Reservation in response to a freezing death of a fellow Tribal member. The project was completed in 2015.<br> <br> Chase also joined forces with many North Dakotans to rally and protest against neo-nazi, White supremacists, who tried to take over the town of Leith, North Dakota in 2013. They proved that there is no room for hate in our state.