Melanie Benjamin (Ojibwe leader)
Native American politician
Melanie Benjamin is chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a sovereign, federally-recognized American Indian tribal government in the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation in east-central Minnesota, USA.
Biography
Benjamin was originally elected chief executive of the band in 2000, and re-elected in 2004 and 2008. In October 2008, shortly after the start of her third term, she was removed from office following accusations of misappropriation of tribal funds. She was again elected chief executive in 2012 and in 2016. In 2020, Benjamin was again re-elected by the citizens of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to her sixth consecutive four-year term. In 2018, Benjamin addressed the Band's opioid crisis and provided harsh comments to traditionally Band-supportive groups on their lack of assistance to the Tribe. In January 2024, Benjamin announced that she would not seek a seventh term in office.
“Melanie Benjamin (Ojibwe leader)” enters the record as native American politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Melanie, Benjamin and Ojibwe can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6811250. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Melanie Benjamin (Ojibwe leader)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.