Native American leaders are furious with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after she abruptly replaced the first-ever Native American commissioner of the Department of Water and Power (DWP) with a “queer” white male.
Mayor Bass removed Cynthia Ruiz, who had only been in office a year, and is well-liked by stakeholders, with George McGraw, a “a leading queer voice in social entrepreneurship, environmental justice, and water.”
The Los Angeles Times reported:
“We are in shock that Cynthia, the first Native American to serve on that commission, was replaced by a white man when she was not even a full year into her four-year term,” said Teri Red Owl, executive director of the Owens Valley Water Commission.
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Ruiz worked to support the sale of 10 acres of DWP land to the Bishop Paiute Tribe for use as a tribal cemetery, moving the project past bureaucratic hurdles toward a purchase agreement under consideration by tribal leaders.
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Ruiz’s duties included introducing the newly elected Bass to crowds gathered at Native American events such as a winter solstice ceremony held in a glade of century-old oaks at the Chatsworth Nature Preserve on Dec. 21, 2022.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Ruiz shared a photo of herself with Mayor Bass in which she hailed “women change makers,” declaring: “In Los Angeles we are going through a transformation & Women are rising to their Power.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.