Former South Dakotan John Hinderaker issues a heavy rebuttal (read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) to what he calls NPR's "disgraceful" three-part investigation of South Dakota's treatment of Native Americans in its foster care system. Hinderaker challenges the math and the motives of the reporters, accusing them of "slandering the red states."
Meanwhile, Hinderaker appears to slander a whole lot of red folks himself:
Apart from all of NPR's specific misrepresentations and errors, a broader and more important point looms over the series on South Dakota's Indians. There is, indeed, a terrible problem, but NPR didn't have the courage to identify it honestly. Unemployment on South Dakota's reservations runs around 80%. There are hardly any jobs, other than manning convenience stores. Tribal leaders have estimated that the alcoholism rate also runs around 80%. Think about it: who would want to live in a place where there are virtually no jobs? Only those who are content with dependency and happy to live on welfare. There are plenty of hard-working, ambitious Indians, but few of them live on reservations [John Hinderaker, "Slandering the Red States Part V: Why Won't NPR Tell the Real Story? Help Me Ask!" Powerline, 2011.11.17].
Hmm... so now we can indict the entire reservation system and call for complete assimilation of the Lakota by claiming that everyone still living on the rez is a lazy welfare boozehound. Clever.
Related: A prominent subject of the NPR report, the Children's Home Society, announced a new capital campaign this week. KELO journalists appear not to have asked CHS anything about the possible impact of NPR's negative coverage of their participation in South Dakota's non-compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Just try to imagine a time when South Dakota DSS goes into Minnesota to seize a child: now imagine that happening 600 times.
Pray for lawsuits to break South Dakota into 25 counties and make the reservations counties in a non-contiguous 51st State.
How UNENLIGHTENED THIS HINDERACKER IS! You are unworthy of more of a response.
The Republicans who are big on personal responsibility are real quick to blame the other guy no matter how bad they have been treated.
Roger, both Republicans and Democrats get it wrong only in different ways. I traveled to all 66 counties in South Dakota and the Great Sioux reservation, including a vast amount of states, and with my own eyes confirmed this reality. The Three Branches of U.S. Government, government departments, media and education contributed to deception of an entire continent (and the world) concerning tribal identity, then and now. Hinderaker is just one more voice that invokes the deception. Reach into the archive to see that Senator Daschle is also deceived, which he perpetuated as Majority Leader. Tribal members call each other colonized when they want to offend one another and yet outsiders can't tell the difference. One very nice way to help these people is to invite them to a community such as Pine Ridge and let them hear various views of why the people didn't choose to become the poorest and of the poor and learn how that title was foisted upon them through the short list I previously indicated. If it does any good. I say this because it didn't for Daschle.
Nothing has changed since Columbus captured the first Native Americans and hauled them off to be slaves. For much of the right wing, we are returning to our future.
David, as a right winger, I don't see slavery coming through the right wing. We need to step away from a bureaucratic government and return to a Constitutional one. Brown vs. Board was a step in the right direction. Plessy type decisions are doomed, eventually.
So it's fine for the government to 'give' land and 'allow' a reservation to be created, but it's the peoples fault the land is so unproductive that it can't be lived off and leads to poverty... Does it matter where this occurs... this isn't solving any of the issues
A non-contiguous state: Larry, I can't recall if we hashed this out previously, but tell me: is that administratively workable? There's no Constitutional provision requiring contiguity, is there?
Re: non-contiguous states-- I don't have a dog in that fight, but Massachusetts used to be non-contiguous, before the upper part of it was broken off to become Maine. And of course there's the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to a certain extent.
Whenever the argument is made that SD is a beneficiary state vs a donor state when it comes to Federal income, or that South Dakota has the poorest county in the nation, many are quick to argue "yeah, but that's just because of the reservations." Point being, the rez is already a separate state in the minds of a great many non-tribal South Dakotans.
I'll ask Whalen to explain how this essentially "Jim Crow" social attitude expresses itself in the Great Sioux nation. From my observer perspective, I don't really see the various tribes actually thinking of themselves as a single state. That may be more of a Larry Kurtz idea than a Lakota one.
What a foolish man. And the comments on his own blog that follow it are also very sad, very uninformed and totally lacking in creativity. It's a shame that people cry out to hear the same half-story again and again, rather than exploring complex issues that have had dire social and cultural consequences.
My there are an awful lot of opinions on how the reservations should be managed. Lets just put that one thing to rest right now. You cant manage something that isn't yours. I have lived here my whole life and I don’t remember ever having a single native tell me that they wanted to have someone else manage them.
It would help if we started to deal with facts instead of rumors about life here. To do that we need to go back to the beginning, back to the time of the treaties. At that time the government didn’t want to “just get along with the Indians,†they wanted them out of their hair. That is why they told the elders that they were putting them on land that they could call nations, even though it never really happened. Lets face it the land wasn’t given, it was already theirs in the first place.
That land was never meant to take care of a population the size of todays, and in fact wasn’t meant to take care of the population of that time without assistance from the feds. In the beginning the treaties were meant to keep the natives as dependents and second class citizens, and for many years that was the case.
At that time there were only full bloods and half bloods that were considered true natives but somewhere along the line that all changed. Now the number of Indians that have 100% native blood are few and far between. A few years ago that number was at less then fifty, and only four under the age of fifty here on the Pine Ridge. We even have blond hair blue eyed natives and that is just something you never used to see. My point is that even as the percentage of native blood got smaller the number of people that wanted to be called natives continued to grow. If the tribes didn’t have all of these people with so little native blood to take care of their problems would be a lot easier to handle.
Again there is plenty of blame to go around out here. The governments both federal and state needs to take some of that responsibility, so do the churches that at one time or another tried to enforce their dominance here. And now we come to the tribes themselves. White people aren't the only ones that can be corrupted. Sense the beginning there have been people on the councils that were in it for themselves their friends and their families and not for the good of their people. Now the reservations are feeling the full effect of the decisions made by those individuals. Many of those decisions are the reasons for the poor conditions that our native populations live in today. The tribes have let many opportunities slip through their fingers because what they wanted and what the people wanted were two different things.
If the reservations were run differently we wouldn’t even be having this conversation about CHS and SS. That problem would have taken care of itself. Again lets go to the facts.
We as a nationâ€The US†cant even fix our own problems let alone the native nations. And why would they trust us to do so anyway? The state we are a part of uses the reservations to pad their statistics when it suites them and completely leaves them out when it doesn’t. Point in fact, the low unemployment that this state has doesn’t include the reservations, and the crime statistics are two separate things. But when it comes to total population, you guessed it the reservations count. We aren't opposed to the money that the government throws at the schools off of the reservation because of the number of native students that go there. There are some school board members that consider the first two weeks of school the most important of the year because that is when the native students are counted.
No Larry the noncontiguous state thing would never work. Lakota Nakota and Dakota sound alike but are as diverse as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. And no, money wont fix what is broken here. Only a change of attitudes will do that. And yes I do have a plan that would jump start the economy at least on the Pine Ridge. If anyone wants to hear it just let me know and I would be glad to share it with you.
Johnny Cash had it half right, Life aint easy for a tribe named Sioux.
From inside the reservation looking out I am “The Osmosis Indianâ€. No that’s not right I'm The Blindman
Geez Fleming, you need to help me write a book to explain this.
Reservation border towns and other conference locations benefit from federal funds sent to tribes. Tribal agencies contribute to the state through federal funding although they don't have a squadron of B1B Bombers or a fleet of combine tractors. It varies but many tribal economies are driven by federal programming and a lot less by private business. Nearly every tribal policy is governed by dependency on federal whim. The financial culture of many tribes pertaining to job creation is to contract or request a grant from the federal government to create more government jobs. There is risk in creating more government jobs than creating a atmosphere that attracts private business or spawns local business creation.
Circa 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act. The nine (9) tribal agencies in South Dakota and the Great Sioux Reservation have differing Constitutions but the constant in those documents is approval by the Secretary of Interior is required. In essence many neo-tribal agencies are charters of the United States.
Prior to the March 2, 1889 federal act the Great Sioux Reservation was one single territory under treaty. The reservation was split up so South Dakota can become a larger state on November 2, 1889, including West River in the metes and bounds. See Article 22 of the South Dakota Constitution to see why. Although Lakota bands remain in the thought that they are one nation, but because of federal laws they now struggle with this identity and act as separate federally approved quasi-sovereigns.
There are at least four (4) main governing thoughts among some Lakota people: 1. Traditional, prior to the Great Sioux Reservation, 2. Reservation, maintaining the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, 3. Indian Reorganization Act, the current constitutional and quasi-sovereign separate state and 4. Self-Determination with Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs oversight. Not to mention Executive Orders, Congressional Acts and Judicial Case Laws.
Prior to the Great Sioux Reservation period tribal unemployment was at zero (0) percent because everyone pitched in. Now tribes are nearer to 80 percent unemployment thought to me mostly because of Big Government experimentation. Tribal people are citizens throughout each of the four ranges of history indicated above. This contributes to the present distortion of tribal identity and disagreements between tribal bands associated with the Lakota Nation. This distortion reaches to the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, which is the truer tribal nation for our dialects and spiritual thought.
Another inconvenience to maintaining a tribal identity is associated with federal Blood Quantum, establishing blood percent to be a Federal Indian. And I can go on.
I suppose Jim Crow social attitude depends on how you interpret the U.S. Constitution as applied to Indians. Federalist Papers, Article 75 suggests that Indians are a separate sovereign, although not actually stated as such. But that didn't prevent the U.S. from making and enforcing laws upon Indians. Sorry for the length.
Great recap Bruce. Thanks! You too, Dithmer. Every once in a while we get a chance to hear how it really is. It's a story that can't be told too many times. Thanks again, guys.
Mr. Fleming is right: Messrs. Whalen and Dithmer are adding some serious value to this post. (And gentlemen, I set no length limits on comments. When you have so much to say, you are welcome to do so.)
Bill D., if you have an economic revitalization plan for Pine Ridge, the floor is yours! Send that idea to me, and I'll give you a full guest post all your own!
I am curious to see what Bill D. has in mind.
Back to the ICWA story. I think NPR needs to respond to questions. This issue needs to be sorted out and it will be helpful to understand NPR's intent behind its contribution.
There are a lot of agencies involved and from my personal experience this isn't a seamless process and is also easy for a whole lot of blame assignment in defending personal integrity. There is a lot of conflicting interpretation of legal language which is increased by the variety of tribal, state and federal laws, respectively.
We can all do better whatever that is for individual cases.
Cory I tried to send this another way yesterday but we are having electrical problems out here and it might not have gone through.
I know it has been cussed and discussed many times on these blogs what should be done to help kick start our reservation systems. IMHO it will require a change in the way the people on the different reservations look at their future and also the future of the people that live around them. It will require that while they are a nation within a nation they are still a part of the world economy and should use the things that nature has given them instead of fighting against it. It will require that those in a position of power think outside the box and make bold decisions that will not help them directly but will help all the members of their tribes.
I have been working on this plan for nearly ten years but have stopped short of mentioning it until two things happened. First we needed technology to catch up with the plans. And second we needed the mood on the reservation to change and enough pressure put on those elected officials to effect the changes needed to give a project the opportunity for success.
Well for what its worth here it is.
The Pine Ridge is a unique place. it has a lot of badlands, given to the tribe because they were so worthless. There is a place just south of Kadoka that at one time there was a lot of talk about a casino. That idea was shot down not by those in charge but by investors that thought the tribe wanted to much control of the project. In reality it was the right place, but the wrong project at the wrong time.
This property is uniquely situated to take advantage of green technology for a very large Eco resort. First it sits on stable ground that has artisan water eighteen hundred feet below that is between 95 and 97 degrees with a very low sulfur content that comes to within twenty feet of the surface requiring very little pumping. Second the tribe owns the land. Third through the use of solar and wind it would be self sufficient, the wind test have already been done for this area. And lastly it is twelve miles from I90 and for the most part would be invisible from highway 73 that runs close by. It is also within a quarter mile of the pipeline that waters the reservation.
You might ask how the tribe will pay for such a thing. Well that is the simple part. It is done all over the world and if just a few minds were changed here it would work without risking any capitol that the tribe doesn’t have. I hate Trump with a passion but he has one thing right. Never use your own money if you can get someone else's. Here is how it would work.
Find the right partner. For this you would need people already in the resort business. It shouldn’t be that hard if you give them the right incentives.
1. Give them a twenty year lease for one dollar.
2. Give them the tax breaks that are unique to the tribe and the land the business would be placed on. Remember South Dakota has no personal income tax or corporate income tax either. The reservation also sets right smack on an empowerment zone. All of this comes together to form the perfect storm as far as finances go.
3.Give the people with the money the power to build the business without any interference from the tribe of any kind. That would mean not having to hire any tribal members while construction was being done.
4. After completion the resort must hire at least 80% of it employees from the tribal rolls, and 20% of management must also be from the rolls as well. Again with no interference from the tribe at any time when it comes to hiring and firing personal.
5. With the twenty year lease write into the contract that they could get an extension if certain conditions were met with those conditions clearly put down on paper.For the next twenty years if the business made x amount profit some of that money would go to the tribe, if not the same contract would be given.
6.Legalize alcohol if not for the whole reservation for that one resort. Yes it can be done.
By using the artisan water, solar, and wind energy along with the new technology using the unique qualities of the badlands soil for outside containment and putting in a large anhydrous battery for storage of that energy the future cost would be almost maintenance only. Just imagine, LED, induction, and digital technologies to make the whole resort self sufficient.
It would really be easier for me to draw the complex in 3-D then to tell you how it would be built but I'm going to try anyway. Here we go.
Nine three hundred foot four story monolithic domes set in a circle representing the nine districts on the res. These domes would be connected to one in the middle of the same size by glass walkways. The outside domes would have all together 1000 rooms using the first three stories of those domes. On the top floors would either be nightclubs, restaurants, or some other form of entertainment. On the bottom every dome would have their own pool, workout rooms and all that goes with that kind of thing.
The middle dome would be the convention center with the ability to run two separate conventions at the same time. That would mean all the meeting rooms that would be needed, catering facilities, and a museum. It would also have the size to handle big name acts. On the third floor would be the all important casino.
There would also need several smaller domes for admittance and , maintenance.
The whole complex would be surrounded by an 18 hole golf course with terraces and tiles emptying into containment ponds, and recharging what water is lost through evaporation from the artisan well.
To the west of the main complex through the gap in the badlands is enough tribal ground for at least ten miles of both zip lines and a tramway. All of this can be connected by using the one million plus old tires that this reservation has laying around. Ground up and laid with the same technology that is being used on highways today. Without the heavy traffic that running and biking trail would last for many lifetimes.
When your car or bus gets to the parking lot there would be no more fuel vehicles allowed. That would mean an all electric fleet for maintenance and transport.
You ask how is the tribe going to make any money on this enterprise? Well lets see. There will be hundreds of employees getting a living wage. Along with the prestige of having a world class Eco resort will come more money for other uses. It will spawn new business from mom and pop operations, to a new transit system. Eco tours, rock hunting, hiking, biking, movies, and more. All of this with world wide advertising that would otherwise not be possible without the resort. Just think, no money invested but a lot of money in return. How's that for an investment?
I'm white so I don’t have a dog in this fight but I do have a lot of native friends that are ready for a change on the reservation. The question remains is the tribe ready for the economic prosperity that something like this would bring?
The Blindman
I understand an east side badlands casino is still on the table but haven't heard a plan like Bill's anywhere. Then again I don't discuss casino much.
In any case, there is an economic boom waiting to develop for a tribal agency with possibly a domino effect for several others. It will catch worldwide attention when that happens, and I think it will, and given due praise for being a contributor to the overall economy.
Bill, I received that plan both ways and was taking time to digest it. That's a big vision! It certainly beats just building another casino with a big Super 8 next to it. You would create a unique resort, something worth coming to see even if you don't spend a dime on gambling.