
Dakota Treaty Territory
What can possibly be worse than having your voice silenced?
Victims/Survivors of sexual assault are, overwhelmingly, not believed by society as a whole. Beginning with themselves, they cannot believe something like rape even happened to them, most often by someone they know or thought they knew, or more tragically committed by a close friend, relative or by a spiritual leader, Priest or Nun.
All forms of sexual violence, in any society, is atrocious. The most horrendous acts occur when an innocent, precious child is “sexually” groomed and victimized during their formative years (0-5). These childhood assaults become their learned behavior, essentially traumatically ingrained into a child’s psyche and future personality.
We hear whispers of sexually abused and exploited children in our reservation communities, where, in pre-schools, daycare or head-start these very young sacred beings mimic sexual abuse onto other children. In reality these children are “unknowingly” sexually abusing other children, a behavior normalized into them by the adult pedophile that molested them.
For many healthy adults this behavior is very hard to imagine. Shocking… to say the very least. But consider this. Of the handful of instances brought to my attention, of which all occurred on two South Dakota Indian Reservation communities located across the river from each other, none of these toddler-aged children were offered counseling services. No agency employee or mandatory reporter ever alerted the Department of Child Protective Services. The family of these children were never criminally investigated by the Tribal Law Enforcement, the FBI or the local ICWA Department.
Normalized
When a person is born, raised, and is currently living in a community where everyone is either related through marriage or blood, everyone pretty much knows what is going on and who is doing what.
Nothing can remain a secret in these Indian Reservation communities. The children do not lie in their words or in their actions. They are the true reflection of their parents or parent, their homes and their communities.
If a child has been exposed to sexual perversion from birth and is raised in an environment where sexual abuse has been normalized within their family for generations, there is no understanding of what is morally and ethically or even culturally acceptable or unacceptable behavior by the child. This learned anti-social behavior always follows them into their adulthood.
Through the genocidal practices and policies of the United States Government, in collusion with the Christian Churches and their Priests, these pedophilic practices and spiritual molestation of our pure Native Culture and Traditions effectively erased the identity of our people today.
Long ago Chief Crazy Horse warned the people that if we didn’t teach our children their culture and language, in seven generations, it would become completely lost. Since then, because of these indoctrination policies, our traditional religion has reached its historical fruition.
The question always still remains: How do we stop this generational sexual abuse of our children?
This sick pedophilia, passed down from the Black Robes, is a harsh reminder of one of the horrors inflicted upon our ancestors, the very same ancestors who were the innocent babies and toddlers of 127 years ago. They were the first generation involuntarily herded, by force, into assimilation at the Carlisle Institute. This deeply rooted perverted deviant behavior has been ingrained into the historical psychological fabric of our grandmothers and grandfathers of every generation since and passed down to our generations today.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded by US Army Officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879 at a former military installation, became a model for other Indian Boarding Schools established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Pratt said in a speech in 1892, “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”
Colonel Pratt also professed “Assimilation through total immersion.” He conducted a social experiment on Apache prisoners of war at a Military Fort in Florida. He cut their long hair, put them in uniforms, forced them to learn English, and subjected them to strict military protocols.
Imagine if you will, the nightmare that these small Native children lived through on daily basis. What they had to endure and how they mentally had to survive it. My maternal grandfather was 5 years old in 1890 when he was taken to Carlisle. His name was Omaha Boy and once he reached Carlisle, Colonel Pratt Americanized him and all the other Native children who were forced to be there by first giving them Christian names and then by psychologically and physically raping and torturing them.
Click to access 26939_Briefs.pdf
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865
Christian Indoctrination and Brainwashing
“St. Joseph’s Indian School is an American Indian boarding school, located in Chamberlain, South Dakota, United States. It was founded in 1927 by Henry Hogebach, a Roman Catholic priest from Germany. The school is owned and operated by the Priests of the Sacred Heart, who are not Native Americans.
St. Joseph’s Indian School is a Native American Nonprofit Organization dedicated to improving the quality of life of Lakota Sioux children and families. Our mission is to educate Native American youth for life — mind, body, heart and spirit. This mission drives our organization to educate and provide housing for over 200 Lakota Sioux children each year.
Child poverty and abuse are serious issues on Indian reservations. By supporting St. Joseph’s Indian School, you are helping Native American children in need reestablish pride in the Lakota (Sioux) culture by learning the Lakota language, studying Native American culture and healing the broken family circle from which they come. Our organization provides an opportunity for Lakota (Sioux) children to escape extreme poverty and abuse when they attend St. Joseph’s Indian School.” – St. Joseph Indian School
My maternal grandmother attended St. Joseph Indian School. Her name was Mato Winyan (Bear Woman) and she was born in 1917, my mother also attended St. Joseph’s, she was born in 1949.
I was born in 1969, and I also attended St. Joseph. Today I can only imagine the horrors they suffered in comparison to the horrors that I suffered at St Joseph during the 1970’s.
From what I have been told by Grandmother, many Native families had no choice but to place their children in the boarding schools. Welfare and TANF /SNAP did not exist back then. The people relied completely upon themselves to survive in the reservation communities with very little resources, jobs, and hardly any USDA commodity food ration for the families. These poor souls were forced to give their children to the Missionary Boarding Schools or watch them starve to death in front of them.
I remember the hunger pains of my childhood very clearly. Even when I was at St Joseph Indian School, I was starving. The Nuns or matrons as they called themselves and Father Bill (Father William Pitcavage) would withhold evening meals from me. Only if I as a “good girl” was I allowed the privilege to have the cookies and fruits my grandmother sent to me monthly.
But being “good” to the Matron Susan was more than I could bear. I starved during my time at St. Joseph and I was sexually abused, as well as spiritually tormented by these pedophiles. And of course, as a child, you cannot name these things because you do not understand what is happening or even why.
My young mind could not comprehend the idea that I was going to burn in hell because I was a sinner or that I was filthy Indian in their Christian eyes. I couldn’t understand why I and other girls that, only through Father Bill’s “cleansing”, or what I now understand was sexual molestation and rape, would I, we be “pure” enough to enter their heaven and stand next to Jesus Christ. This school taught us that we had to be raped before we could be saved.
Oh the horrors we children suffered at the hands of those god fearing Christians at that school. They beat us with their bibles and their switches and they beat us again with their perverted pedophilia. They weren’t concerned about their “Sins” when they were thumping that bible in one hand while holding their penis or vaginas in the other.
Of all the memories that I have of St Joseph Indian School I can honestly say that I hate Jesus the most.
Those Nuns and Priests said that if I prayed hard to Jesus he would deliver me from their inflicted pain and suffering. In the long run it didn’t work. Father Bill still raped me, and other little girls. Sister Susan still suckled my privates as well as other children in the name of Jesus Christ
They justified their child molestation with their Christian values because, according to their perverted view of their Christian reality, their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ allowed them to do so.
Legislatively Silenced
Not only did Jesus Christ let me and other children down at St. Joseph Indian School so did the justice system. I learned later in life that St. Joseph also has deep pockets and have many friends in high political seats in the South Dakota political arena.
Steve Smith (Chamberlain), an attorney representing St. Joseph authored House Bill 1104 due to one of the landslide child sexual abuse lawsuits filed in 1992 by Robert Koenig of Sioux Falls, on behalf of tribal membership.
(http://www.bishopaccountability.org/news2010/03_04/2010_03_08_Harriman_LawmakersWant.htm)
Smith admitted that opponents (representing the St. Joseph child rape victims) to the legislation had little opportunity to organize against his legislative proposals. “Nobody knew I was doing this,” he said. Smith said he thought long and hard before advancing what became HB 1104. “It was personally and professionally trying,… I hate con men,” he said. “That’s what this (Bill) is pointed at.”
After reading the article, I wondered… was Steve Smith struggling with his conscience when he stated that it was personally and professionally challenging? Or maybe his actions were motivated by the very secretive nature in which he introduced this bill with the help of his political co-conspirators.
Either way he and those State Senators from District 21 who sponsored his Bill were trying to expeditiously hide a horrible and embarrassing truth at St. Joseph’s. Child Rape happened and was perpetrated by Christian Priests and Nuns. The sponsors of this Bill were from the District 21 delegation – Reps. Thomas Deadrick, R-Platte, and Kent Juhnke, R-Vivian, and Sen. Cooper Garnos, R-Presho, a stones throw away from St. Joseph Indian School.
If their values are rooted in their Christian beliefs then how would it look to the world if the Priests and Nuns, in their own community, were exposed for raping toddlers and adolescent children under the guise of Christianity? Changing the State laws to exonerate Catholic pedophiles by enacting a Statute of Limitations on Child Rape committed by their own spiritual leaders isn’t a Christian Value. If anything, the political actions they took exposed their guilty conscience.
Smith said he asked them to carry the legislation because he lives in the district. Ill bet my life that is not the only reason he asked them to carry this Bill. He knew what he had to hide and besides to him the victims were just a bunch of filthy Indian kids anyway.
Hiding a guilty conscience is one thing but covering up a pedophile problem at a catholic boarding school is another issue all together. The facts are obvious that a white man in a priest robe and a white woman in a nuns dress raped children and rather than advocating for justice of those children who were raped and the legislation passed by South Dakota leadership disenfranchised the victims from seeking justice.
It was also obvious that Steve Smith had St Joseph’s best financial interests in mind when he secretly crafted this piece of racist legislation aimed at silencing Native Children, now adult survivors of child sexual assault and abuse at the hands of Nuns and Priests who worked at St. Joseph since its inception in 1927.
This legislation in itself is a racial hate crime. It segregates the Natives from having equal justice under the law in South Dakota courts because of the embarrassment that those involved and the State of South Dakota would have to face once the horrible truth was revealed in lawsuits against St. Joseph school and its Christian rapists.
Smith calling the pursuit of justice for child rape victims “con men” is putting the blame back on the child rape victims.
South Dakota Senate, like the South of the Jim Crow era, always had issues with any outsider calling them on their anti-Christian behavior. South Dakota Legislators of course voted for the legislation because of their racial and dehumanized perception of the Native people of South Dakota.
It seems that if the elected officials of South Dakota can be easily pushed into passing this type of unholy legislation they sure don’t respect their “Christian Values and Teachings” enough to understand the role they played in its demonic inception. It sure isn’t Jesus Christ they are praying to or passing legislation for, must be the other guy they are protecting.
It is obvious by the actions and the immediacy of Steve Smith and St Joseph Indian School to expedite a lobbying effort at the State level and conspire to silence the tens of thousands of Native Children’s voices who have suffered generations of Christian sexual abuse and forced spiritual abortion and sterilization that this was a cover up.
Not to mention the collateral loss of Native cultural traditions due to the Christian Indoctrination of “kill the Indian” philosophy. What they forgot to mention was the “Rape the Children” policies of their Church.
Hard Journey Through Hell
I remember escaping from St Joseph when the leaves fell to the ground. I was seven. I made it all the way to the marina and hid under the bridge until nightfall.
Some older girls rolled in to my hiding spot and smoked a “cig” asking me if I was going back to the dorms? They were my older sisters friends, Rhonda Yellow Hammer and Pauline Star Boy.
I don’t know if they came looking for me or if they were running too, but they put their arms around me to keep me warm while we sat under the bridge. I would run away several more times and eventually I was “checked out for good” from St Joseph Indian School when I was ten years old.
A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind. What a child is taught and experiences at an early age is what a child becomes, essentially.
In healing our spiritual self, we must take responsibility for our own actions as adults but most importantly we must confront what and how we were raised. We must face our demons.
If the core of a human being is formed during the moment we enter this world until we reach 5 years of age, it is safe to say we are “hard wired” by learned behaviors during this time, a proven fact.
I was severely sexually abused, emotionally neglected, psychologically abused, malnourished, undernourished and spiritually tormented by my adult “care takers” and as I grew older I became more violent and angry. I was the walking Native statistic, literally.
The continued sexual violence and the physical violence that I suffered at the hands of Father Bill and the Nuns while at St Joseph has been the cause of great hardship in my life.
I was an unwed teenage mother. I was addicted to drugs and alcohol most of my young adult life. I’ve been involved in violently abusive relationships, which caused the loss of life of my baby girl. The mental isolation and anguish alone rooted in the St. Josephs Indian School of Rape have caused me to lose my mind on several occasions, I swear.
No help and no hope. I was wounded and I was hurting. I hurt others, intentionally and most often unintentionally, through my addictive actions, anger and drunkenness.
Through the fog of addiction and blitz, I found myself returning to my homelands in Lower Brule, SD. In seeking refuge, and shelter from a very cruel world, little did I know I would encounter a fresh new Reservation Hell.
During one of my many nights of running back and forth between Fort Thompson or Fort and Brule (Indian Reservations located on either sides of the Missouri River and connected by the Big Bend Damn) I stopped by to visit my dear childhood friend, my brother Willie Eagle Thunder to check on him. His younger siblings are in fact my relatives through their father (a tribal political conspirator) and my mother who are in fact related, they are first cousins.
Families and Politics
As I climbed the stairs to Willies two story house I heard loud music coming from an open entry. I pushed passed the door to see Willie sitting in a chair passed out cold, his head resting on the kitchen table and his sister Monica laying on the floor also passed out.
There was someone on the sofa but I could not see their face. Suddenly someone was behind me grabbing my collar and pushing me against the wall. I maneuvered myself around and saw a pimple faced, drunk, punk, slobbering on him self. With slurred and stuttering speech he said, “I ain’t scared of you bitch! I’ll fuck you up. I ain’t scared of you!” The typical talk of insecure men.
Don’t get me wrong I was scared. He was at least 100 pounds and 2 feet taller than I was and he was drunk.
I was afraid he would rape me, or worse. I always carry a pocket blade and I pulled it out and flicked it open telling him to let go of me. He started jerking me around and screamed in my face. He raised his hand to strike me and I reached around and stuck him in his left buttock quickly. He finally let go of me and screamed “Oh you stabbed me in my ass!” and ran, double time, down the stairs. I ran after him and jumped in my War Pony (Car) and hauled ass.
I was arrested later that morning and charged in tribal court with assault. I posted a $200.00 cash bond and left the Rez and never looked back.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the pimple face punk was a nephew to the Chairman of our Tribe, who died recently under accusations of embezzlement from a tribal organization and felony tax evasion.
This chairman hated me. They sent the U.S. Marshalls after me and locked me up for assault with intent and assault with a deadly weapon. I was looking at 15 years to life.
I was innocent. I was appointed a public defender. His name was…. Steve Smith. I was really scared now.
During my pre trial services I was given a psych evaluation, standard procedure. During which my very violent history and drug and alcohol addiction, as well as my loss of custody of my children due to my drug alcohol abuse and mental state, was revealed, everything that I had become in life up to that moment. All while I sat across from Steve Smith, who represented me against the FEDS and tribes trumped up bullshit, double jeopardy, politically prejudiced charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, for defending myself against a perverted rapist.
I wondered and to this day still wonder how many other tribal members Steve Smith has represented throughout his Public “Pretender” years?
The tens of thousands of distorted Native souls who pass through the ” JUST US” system, which is really another money machine for the Racist State of South Dakota made possible by the very distorted, impoverished, segregated, discriminated, subjugated, falsely prosecuted, and unjustly designed system created to imprison Natives who stand before this rigged system that, in many cases, tribal leaders endorse to get rid of their targeted trouble makers and political enemies.
Steve Smith knows the truth. He and his coconspirators are the authors of this system legislated to oppress Natives, young, old, dead, and alive.
Revisiting the Truth
A few years ago I visited St. Joseph with my husband and was amazed to see how the campus had grown. The multi-million dollar infrastructure was impressive. I noticed several new buildings and a print shop, where they, no doubt, print all their poverty porn, solicitous materials featuring a pitiful Lakota child with a made up story of how bad their lives were before St. Joseph rescued them.
Yes, St Joseph Indian School has done extremely well in raising hundreds of millions for salaries and profit.
The Akta Lakota Museum, located on St Joseph campus, was the former elementary school where I attended K-3rd grades. It was like a dream walking through that museum. I saw my grandmother Marion Buck’s full regalia sitting upright on a buggy. They even had the lockers we were assigned. I remember as a child I could not reach the top of my locker. I was too short but I was able to stand up inside the locker and close the door.
Standing there as an adult looking down at these itty bitty lockers, which only stood about 3 feet high, put into perspective just how young and tiny and defenseless I was against the full grown adult men and women who were entrusted with my care and education. It also put into perspective just how defenseless I was against these pedophiles that worked here.
As I walked on, into the area which would have been my former class room, I remembered being taken to the coat room on several occasions by my teacher Shelly Barnes, who more than once, forcefully shoved bar soap into my mouth. I can still taste the blood and soap.
I chuckled as I recalled her lily white face turn bright red when my five year old self called her a honky bitch as she drug me by my hair to the coat closet. I didn’t get dinner on those nights. What I did get was a beating or a rape from Father Bill or Matron Susan. It appears to me now that they instigated bad behavior to justify an excuse to rape. They could always blame it on Jesus Christ.
As my husband and I exited the museum I grabbed a few brochures from the counter. Outside there was an open field, which led to the Missouri River and I wanted to show my husband where I hid as a child on the riverbanks of Chalk Hills.
As we walked towards the river, to the left was a “healing garden” in the shape of a medicine wheel. We entered the dead garden and I looked out across the river. It seemed so long ago, almost another lifetime ago that I was a child there at that school and survived those horrors.
I cannot explain the feelings that overwhelmed me, like a shock wave coming from the earth up into the soles of my feet and reverberating through my body and the noise in my head was so loud, like a guttural howl.
I felt myself swaying and my husband steadied me as I stood there, shaking and crying. I was recalling, in that childhood lifetime long ago, the many times I tried to escape those horrors inflicted upon me at that school by St Joseph Christian Representative’s Father Bill and Sister Susan.
The drugs and alcohol, the violent relationships, the suicide attempts, the sexual exploitation, my multi personality identity crisis, no self-esteem, or self-love all began here at St. Josephs Indian School.
A pitiful lost childhood soul who called out to Jesus Christ on more than one occasion and received only “his word” from the Sister and the Father of St Joseph, who sought to redeem me through their “cleansing” and “purging” of my adolescent demons that they created. No matter how many times Father Bill raped me or how many times Sister Susan suckled me, Jesus never saved me. Their Catholic “pedophilia” techniques never worked.
Collusion by Mutual Agenda
Over time St Joseph Indian School did grow into this hundredfold million-dollar racket that exists today.
(https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/11/25/st-joseph-s-halts-fundraising-scheme-but-admits-no-wrongdoing/)
With the help of some politically savvy god fearing, bigot state Senators they pushed to purge past sins to continue business as usual.
With a very well thought out, cunningly premeditated strategy coupled with a cowardice piece of racist legislation they covered up the child rapes.
Their actions were intentionally designed to SILENCE the ten’s of thousands of Native Children who were sexually and physically violated while in the care of St Joseph Representatives.
This very same St. Joseph Indian School system that lobbied to hide their sexual crimes against Native children, now, seek to exploit Native children for perverted profit.
Today St. Joe’s collects hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year from the exploitation of our Lakota heritage, our culture, our traditions, our language, our suffering, our hardships and our poverty.
They refined the agenda of the Indian Boarding School System to cash in on the fact that suffering sells, especially that of the Native children. The Native Children then and now have become their poster child and branding tool to raise money. Now that’s a racket.
To add insult to the many generational injuries inflicted by the Priests and Nuns of St Joseph, Trisha Burke, a non-Native appointed her self as our Native voice. According to her Blog: https://blog.nativehope.com/authorn/turkey,
“Native Hope’s vision continues to focus on empowering Native Americans and being an extension of their voice, their culture, and their convictions”
The brochure I picked up while visiting St Joseph was about Native Hope.
For appearances sake the brochure “looked and presented itself as Native”. In my ignorance I too believed it was an authentic Native/Tribal organization, which provided these desperately needed services for our young reservation community tribal members. That’s the intention of a liar. They fool you into believing in their lie.
As I looked into Native Hope further I was outraged to discover that the, so-called “services”, were in fact founded by a non-Native representative of St Joseph!
I emailed Native Hope and received this reply from a Trisha Burke:
“St. Joseph’s Indian School is one of our partners of our organizations. So glad that you were able to experience a valuable visit to Akta Lakota Museum.
Have you joined our email list?
http://pages.nativehope.com/stay-connected-0
Stay connected and feel free to email or call us with any questions.
Best,
Trisha and the Native Hope team
Trisha Burke
Creative Content Specialist
Native Hope
PO Box 600 • 112 South Main Street
Chamberlain, SD 57325
(605)234-3560
trisha.burke@nativehope.com
Visit us online at http://www.nativehope.com<http://www.nativehope.com/>”
Since my inquiry, I’ve received no less than 5 emails a month from Native Hope begging for money, pimping that disgusting poverty porn brochure. Here is another recent email I have received:
“Hi Kelly,
We at Native Hope are focused on some extremely urgent issues plaguing Native American youth living on reservations today. The truth can be unsettling, but it needs to be told. Most importantly, real people desperately need help.
Our goal is not just to see Native American culture preserved, but honored, embraced, and thriving.
If you’re asking yourself, “Why give to Native Hope?” or wondering if your limited contribution would make a difference, we’ve answered these questions for you in our blog. We invite you to read more here.
Think about this: A gift of $10, $50, or $100 adds up, and your ongoing contribution allows our education and cultural programs to open the door to a bright and promising future for a generation of Native American youth.
We firmly believe in the power of collaboration. We cannot accomplish our goals without people like you joining with us to bring about lasting change.”
I am upset and disgusted in so many ways with this, where do I begin?
First and foremost St Joseph, as a five year old child, I was placed in your care and protection but your Priests and Nuns raped and physically abused me and many of my young relatives while I was there. We were left broken, used, abused, spiritually corrupted and void. We had no self-identity and no self-love. I tried to commit suicide when I was twelve because of it.
Many of my childhood friends never made it to their teenage years. They did commit suicide because of the sick abuse that originated at St. Joseph. They couldn’t live with what happened to them, they couldn’t face those memories or carry them any longer.
Many grew up to become sexual perverts themselves, raping their own children and grandchildren. While others grew up to become drug and meth addicts, drunks, prostitutes, and some became homosexual.
There are those who were killed due to drug and alcohol violence or have killed a loved one or their own children.
Many are in prison now serving life sentences for rape and or murder. Many have been raped and murdered. Many will never see freedom.
St. Josephs Indian School shares responsibility in these crimes. They have blood on their hands. The violence perpetrated upon the school children came to the surface as these children got older.
Many of my childhood friends are dead today due to the very circumstances that you solicit money for which ironically began at St. Josephs Indian School.
It’s like child rapists raising money on behalf of the children they raped and soliciting money for the generational side affects caused by the child rape and abuse that they perpetrated to begin with.
All those points made on that brochure are rooted in the pedophilia that was hidden behind the closed doors and racist legislation that protects St. Joseph’s Indian School.
Those two beautiful Lakota girls, Pauline with her big beautiful eyes and Rhonda with her long legs and big hair, those “Big Girls” who I looked up to, who held me and comforted my 7 year-old self under that bridge, are dead today due to Drugs and alcohol violence. I guess they couldn’t come to terms with what happened to them at that school and turned to addiction to self medicate their unresolved self fate.
St. Joseph Indian School… YOU taught us to hate our selves, our bodies, and not to trust our hearts, our minds, or our spirits.
St. Joseph Indian School … YOU secretly colluded with Steve Smith to draft Legislation that killed our Voice and our liberty, denying us Justice so as to capitalize on the pain of us Native Children, that were raped and abused in your care.
St. Joseph Indian School … you stole EVERYTHING that made us WAKANYEJA (Sacred Beings). This Indian Boarding School violently and perversely removed the very essence of life that every human being needs to survive and thrive in the universe from us Native Children.
And now, St. Joseph Indian School, after taking so much from Native Children you have the audacity to solicit funds for circumstances that you directly had a hand in creating. Your mission now is to teach us how to be and have Native Hope? Where was your Native Hope when my childhood friends and I were getting raped and physically abused by your Priests and Nuns?
Of course for a small donation, which we reservation Indians know never reaches any Native children not in your “Care”, everything can be right as rain again?
Your Native Hope gives financial hope to only a select few. We all know WHO the reservation families, state and tribal political hounds are that involved in this filthy for profit exploitation of Native Children.
This organization should be challenged and forced by legal action to discontinue promoting their false claims in soliciting funds for our Native Children.
The Great Plains Tribes need to take responsibility for their tribal member Children and share in the hundreds of millions of dollars raised on behalf of our young tribal membership.
We have many young educated teachers, doctors and lawyers, health care practitioners and foster parents waiting for an opportunity to help our Native Children and be the Positive Native Role Models that they need to survive.
Why must we continue to sit on the sidelines and allow white people to dictate how we raise our children or how we view ourselves? Why don’t our elected tribal leaders challenge the states “imaginary” authority over our Sovereign Nations and our Native Children?
Most importantly, WHY don’t the tribes own and operate the campus facility known as St. Joseph Indian School? After all, the Hundreds of Millions of dollars in donations, which were solicited on behalf of my mother, my grandmothers, grandfathers, nieces, nephews, your children, grandchildren and myself were raised on our behalf and through our suffering. I don’t see any white kids in their brochures.
St Joseph exploited us, and our ancestors, sexually and financially over these past 90 years. It is time for our Tribal Governments and the survivors of St. Joseph Indian School abuses to seek legal relief from this continued abuse and exploitation by St. Joseph Indian School and their many representatives.
If the State of South Dakota won’t give us justice maybe its time for the tribes to drag this school into federal court. Maybe we victims who were raped at St. Joseph Indian School should tell our stories and drag St. Joseph Indian School into the court of public opinion.
Nothing can justify the past horrors. Nor the current horrific realities our Native Children exist in due to child sexual abuse. We deserve the opportunity to heal ourselves and seek closure through the pursuit of justice just as we all need to embrace our ceremonies and our old ways again and give up Christianity and all the liars and abusers who rape and assault in Jesus’s name.
We do not need any white woman, man, or white run organization telling us how we can heal ourselves, when after all it was they who caused our mental illnesses, wasn’t it?
http://religiondispatches.org/confronting-the-abusive-legacy-of-native-american-boarding-schools/
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native
South Dakota House “Satan Protection” Bill 1104
March 8, 2010
“In an effort to close the door on what he sees as frivolous class-action lawsuits, Chamberlain lawyer Steve Smith crafted a piece of legislation passed by the South Dakota Legislature that opponents say unfairly limits the ability of child sexual abuse victims to recover damages from the institutions that employed their abusers.
But in the end, Smith comes back to what he sees as out-of-state lawyers’ efforts to create unfounded class-action lawsuits.
“I hate con men,” he said. “That’s what this is pointed at.”
The true cons are St Joseph and Native Hope.
As Native Peoples born and raised in the very politically segregated and racist State of South Dakota, we understand we can never ever truly receive a fair trial or any sliver of equality in any of the States Courts or local Federal Courts.
Therefore we cannot expect a South Dakota Attorney to represent us fully and honestly, due to this historical racism and the defacto-segregated justice system that currently exists.
Just as children who are raised in sexual abuse and violence grow up to become child predators or violent themselves, so do children who are raised in racism and violence become violent racists themselves.
The out of state lawyers that Steve Smith spoke of and called “Con Men” believed in the validity of our cases and sought justice for several thousands Native victims.
Steve Smith and his coconspirators realized this overwhelming truth and knew what would be exposed through our cases. They feared another multi million-dollar loss for St. Joseph Indian School because they were successfully sued before for sexual abuse of Native Children. The schools pedophilia problem needed to be hidden for good.
St. Joseph Indian School and Steve Smith concocted a premeditated, most evil and heinous act by restricting justice to the most innocent of victims: helpless children.
This racist piece of crap legislation should be challenged, rescinded, or confronted in the highest court and branded as the greatest continued example of injustice and collusion between Church and State to diminish the rights of all Children who were sexually assaulted while in the care of a school system.
All victims young and old, dead and alive, survivors or sufferers need their tribal leaders to step up and defend their sacred rights. If there was any time that a stand should be made to defend the future children of our tribes, that time is now.
WE DESERVE AND DEMAND JUSTICE!!
Long Live the Fighters!