Tribes on Warpath as L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Replaces Cherokee with ‘Queer’ White Male on Water Board

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.