Laurelle Sheppard is a former law-enforcement officer and the director of a victim-advocacy nonprofit, running for the Hard Rock–Pinyon–Forest Lake–Black Mesa Navajo Nation Council seat. Her interview with Cal Nez drew on a career in public safety and victim services. Below are the main topics from the interview — the key question Cal asked on each, short summaries of Sheppard's answers in our own words, and follow-ups a voter might still want answered.
Watch or read the full interview, and see the scorecard, on Laurelle Sheppard’s profile. This page is a nonpartisan summary; the Diné Civic Center does not endorse any candidate.
Sheppard began in law enforcement — the Maricopa County jail at 18, then a BIA federal officer at Hopi Agency, working from the Grand Canyon to D.C. as VAWA was signed — and now directs a victim-advocacy nonprofit that oversees the Nation's offices.
Sheppard built a crime-victim advocacy program from federal funding into roughly five on-Nation offices providing thousands of services a year, hiring from the community and Navajo speakers — and she criticizes grant-cycle programs that vanish before people can use them, pushing instead for sustainability.
For nearly eight years she's assisted council subcommittees — now the Missing and Murdered Diné Relatives Task Force, earlier the sexual-assault-prevention subcommittee — working on Title 17 and law-enforcement enhancements that are victim-centered and trauma-informed.
Sheppard created “Healing Through Weaving,” a culturally grounded support group that uses the loom and weaving teachings as a path to healing, and she wants services shaped to each community rather than imposed from outside.
Sheppard says veterans are initially a federal responsibility — disability, healthcare, hard-to-access benefits — but the Nation must also care for its own. Her top veteran need is housing assistance (water, electricity, a home), then access to healthcare; she'd also advocate for cultural and ceremonial healing the government can't see, and prepare for an influx of elder veterans.
From her law-enforcement background, Sheppard explains that 638 policing means funding goes to the tribe to manage and police on its own rather than through the federal government — and she's candid about where her expertise on exact requirements ends.
Topics a voter in this district might still want to hear about:
Not a judgment of this candidate — just what a specific, substantive answer includes, so you can weigh any candidate’s response: