Former Treasury Secretary Jacob Black Deer poses outside his old office with his son, Aiden.
Name: Jacob [No Middle Name] Black Deer
Sex: Male
Date, Location of Birth: December 21, 1959 in Eagle Butte, South Dakota
Current Residence::Eagle Butte, South Dakota
Party Affiliation: Republican
Brief Biography: Having been born in the middle of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, nothing more was expected of the young Jacob thank to learn the ways of the Lakota Sioux and work the land as his family had since frist coming to the reservation in the late 1800s. From a young age, however, many in the tribe said that Jacob had been touched by spirits as he was able to perform better in the reservation school than the other members of the tribe his age. And indeed, while Jacob had helped on the farm as much as he was able, when it came time to consider a life outside of the reservation schools, he chose to attend college rather than go back to the land as many of his friends did. He first attended Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, SD, earning an Associate's in Entrepreneurship, where Jacob learned first hand many of the problems of the reservation when it came to the lack of resources hampering creativity on the reservation and in Native American communities around the world. With a two-year degree in hand, Jacob then went to the University of South Dakota in Vermilion where he played on the football team (quarterback for the Coyotes, although the team was never that fantastic).
Jacob soon took a Bachelor's of Business Administration in Finance from USD in 1982 before returning back to his home where poverty still reigned and where many of his friends had spent the last six years working the fields without desire and drive and taking to the fire water that had seemed to doom Native Americans since at least the 1800s. Jacob wanted to change all that, and tried working with tribal groups and outside investors to promote investment in the tribes of the Great Plains- many of those plains failed when the wheelin'-and-dealin' 1980s meant that investors were looking for the quick return on investment that the reservations just could not provide. As such, unemployment on the Cheyenne River reservation was similar to other Lakota areas- upwards of 80%. Jacob had floated the ideas of opening casinos- the money of which could better be put into development in the reservation where so many other crafts-related industries had failed, though nothing had come of that for some time. During his short-lived business days, Jacob feel in love with and married Sarah Lawrence, the daughter of a long line of white farmers from South Dakota, and started a family together, their first son Aiden born in 1985 and their son Nicolas born in 1989.
It was in 1986 that Jacob first gave any serious thought to the Federal government (which, before then, was a target for anger on the reservation) upon the passage of a National American Indian Heritage Week resolution that he thought the proud history of the Lakota and Native Americans the country over were remembered by the pale faces back East. Jacob began to wonder why there weren't more policies designed to offer assistance to Native Americans- not through hand-outs, but through the kind of assistance that could help bring jobs to the reservations and that would, hopefully, devolve power away from the dastardly Department of the Interior and to the reservation systems which already ran their own schools and health systems. He began to talk these ideas up with tribe members in other reservations across the state, which gave him the initial steam he needed to run for Congress in 1988, against then-Representative Tim Johnson. The state, which repeatedly sent Democrats to Congress since Larry Pressler a full decade before, made it difficult for Jacob at the outset, but his moderate nature on agriculture and his small-government approach to job creation and developing industries in South Dakota was a message that was able to take hold in a state suffering greatly from rural flight. Jacob was able to squeeze out a victory then, and his time in the House since then only helped his name recognition and helped his cause to get in a position to do more for the Native Americans that meant so much to him and to his country.
In 1992, after a short term in the House of Representatives, Jacob set his sights on a Senate seat in the newly-created Great Plains region, encompassing the homelands of his ancestors and numeroud other native tribes that still lived in the area and which Jacob felt had no proper representation in Washington. He ran against a moderately-liberal Democrat from Missouri who Jacob defeated by a margin of over 100,000 votes. During his time in the Senate, Jacob working with Republicans and Democrats on a number of initiatives, including an economic roadmap which worked to reduce taxes across the baord and increase the minimum wage and an initiative to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military. He also saw the passage or formation of major policy initiatives of his own, including a sweeping healthcare reform bill with the promise to cover millions of Americans while prohibiting the practice of insurance companies using pre-existing conditions as a basis for denying coverage (the initiative later became law under President Houston), legislation that would establish a national farm insurance program for small and/or family-owned farms, and two initiatives that had been a center of his campaign and his work in Washington: the highly-popular Saving our Cities Grant Program Act, which provides resources and incentives to help declining urban areas provide for more employment opportunities and better education for residents, and the controversial Native American Soveriegnty Act, which finally worked to devolve power away from the Federal government and putting it back into the hands of his tribal brothers and sisters across the country.
Following what many saw as a successful and active career in the Senate, Jacob turned his eyes to the White House, running in that year for the Republican nomination for President. He entered a field that was filled with more moderate Republicans like himself, which led to the primary election victory of conservative John Houston of Florida while Jacob dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday, failing to win any states other than North and South Dakota. Houston's victory in the 1996 general election, however, led Jacob to consider another form of service in Washington, this time as Secretary of the Treasury. He was confirmed to the position by unanimous consent in the Senate and set to work at bringing his work ethic to an office that seemed to have been left more or less abandoned during the Clinton presidency.
As Treasury Secretary, Jacob focused on the expansion of opportunities for U.S. firms, working to pass the neglected North American Free Trade Agreement despite an uninformed and limited opposition. His tenure also saw the negotiation of the more agreeable U.S. - European Uniton Free Trade Agreement and the implementation of programs designed to expand access to the internet and telecommunications systems in underserved areas and the roll-out of President Houston's National Export Initiative, complete with a fully-funded export promotion program to provide new export options for U.S. firms of all shapes and sizes. Black Deer is also proud of his work on the first national budget of the Houston Administration, where the deficit was cut by nearly 25% without an increase in taxes- and without the need for continuing resolutions. Jacob also oversaw the implementation of his own farm insurance legislation.
Jacob served as Secretary of the Treasury until the end of President Houston's second term in 2004, whereupon he returned home to Eagle Butte and worked with tribal leadership, although he never ruled out a return to politics, either to the Senate as apportionment changes led to a new shape and new demographics of his home region or some other elected office. He has also encouraged his son Aiden, now 25, to consider a life of politics of his own as former-Secretary Black Deer looks back on his political years as "the best of his life" where he could do the most for his tribal brethren and the people of the United States.
In 2007, Jacob, working with his former alma mater in Vermillion, South Dakota (even though it is 350 miles away from his home in Eagle Butte) established the Black Deer Institute for Applied Economics focusing on increasing opportunities for students at the University of South Dakota to study public policy with an economics perspective (including development, domestic policy making, and international trade policy), where he continues to offer guest lectures, work with the development of the program, offers special events in both South Dakota and Washington (when he's visiting his son), and contributes to major media outlets.
