This is one of those stories where the allegations are just jaw-dropping. The Associated Press has the story. The ACLU‘s news release about it contains a quote from a woman who says, “They treat us just like guinea pigs when it comes to Indian Health Services.”

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union said Monday that it filed a federal lawsuit against the Indian Health Service to obtain information about whether pregnant women on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation are being pressured to have labor induced against their wishes.

Robert Doody, executive director of the ACLU of South Dakota, said there is no obstetric care available on the reservation and many women are being told they must have their labor induced on a particular day without being given information about the risks and benefits of induction.

For nearly a decade, women on the Cheyenne River reservation have had to travel at least 90 miles to St. Mary’s Healthcare Center in Pierre to have their babies, he said.

“There is no opportunity to give natural birth on the Cheyenne River reservation,” Doody said Monday. “They have to go to St. Mary’s and be induced, or they have to face the possibility of severe complications.”

National IHS spokesman Thomas Sweeney said Monday that he could not comment on a pending lawsuit.

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Tags: ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, Cheyenne River Sioux, Indian Health Service, induced labor, natural birth, Robert Doody, St. Mary's Healthcare

We wrote recently, here, about a national magazine taking note of the sad fact that fry bread isn’t exactly the healthiest food out there.

So unhealthy, in fact, that just in time for powwow season, Health magazine named it one of the 50 fattiest foods in the country.

Pause for deep sigh.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota, where fry bread is the official state food, came back with this story about reactions to that report – and some solutions to its findings.

Stop eating fry bread? Not gonna happen, say a lot of the people who talked to Bryann Becker for the story.

Instead, says Jace DeCory, an instructor with the American Indian Studies Program at Black Hills State University in Spearfish and a member of the Lakota Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, people should just take smaller pieces, and eat it less often.

Which means that on those rare occasions when they treat themselves, it’ll taste that much more delicious.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Cheyenne River Sioux, Fry bread, Gwen Florio, Health magazine, Native American news, powwows

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

MITCHELL, S.D. – The Davison County state’s attorney says its up to alcohol retailers to decide whether military and tribal identification is acceptable to prove age by those buying alcohol.

State’s attorney Pat Smith’s comments follow a letter sent earlier in May from a Mitchell police officer to alcohol retailers saying military and Cheyenne River Sioux tribal IDs are no longer valid forms of ID for alcohol purchases.

But Smith says a retailer must “act as a reasonable and prudent person” when deciding who can legally buy alcohol.

Smith says he recently sent a letter clarifying the rules on alcohol sales to all alcohol retailers in Mitchell.

Tags: buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Gwen Florio, liquor sales, Native American news, South Dakota, tribal identification

Arthur Jewett’s family has waited a long time to properly bury the Cheyenne River Sioux soldier who was killed during the Korean War, but whose remains were only recently returned. (See previous post, here.) Today, the Associated Press has this update. Here’s the story in its entirety:

WHITE HORSE, S.D. (AP) — Memorial Day will be different this year for family members of Arthur Jewett who finally will have a grave site to decorate.

Jewett, an Army sergeant from White Horse, was killed during the Korean War in 1950 but was listed as missing in action until his remains were recovered in 2002 from a mass grave in North Korea. The remains were returned to South Dakota last September and buried.

“It’s great when everything turned out real nice. I mean, (we) brought him home, buried him right alongside his brother, twin brother,” said Louie Jewett, another brother.

Jewett said that in past years when family members gathered around Memorial Day to decorate graves, Arthur’s decoration always went around a memorial plaque beneath a flag pole.

He said when it comes time to decorate the stone that now sits above his brother’s grave, he expects there to be some mixed emotions.

“I’m glad that everything turned out the way it did and my family is glad,” he said. “Yet at the same time, it’s going to be sad, but that’s the way it goes.”

Tags: Arthur Jewett, buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Gwen Florio, Korean War, Memorial Day, Native American news, Native American veterans

Mark Trahant is a Kaiser Media Fellow examining the Indian Health Service and its relevance to the national health care reform debate. He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Comment here.

DETROIT – It’s hard to communicate the failure of public policy in this great American city (especially in a few hundred words). A drive around town highlights the consequences from decades of neglect: Abandoned and burned out homes, office buildings as ruins (and dangerous playgrounds), near-permanent unemployment, and thousands of empty lots capped with mounds. These mounds are burial sites of sorts because when a building was destroyed the rubble was left in a pile until time and grass shaped each into a small hill.

Yet the geography of despair includes many seeds of hope.

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Tags: American Indian Health and Family Services, buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Community Health Awareness Group, Detroit, Detroit Archdiocese, Earthworks Urban Farm, Federally Qualified Health Center, Gwen Florio, Health care reform, Henry Ford, HIV, Indian Country, Indian Health Care Improvement Act, Indian Health Service, Kaiser Family Foundation, Mark Trahant, Minnecoujou Lakota, Native American news, The Heidelberg Project

Remember this photo, from January? It’s of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one of several reservations in the Midwest and Southwest where winter storms stranded people for days. The situation became so bad — and got so little publicity — that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann actually made a plea (watch the video, here) on his show for aid, saying that U.S. aid organizations needed to pay attention to crises in their own backyard. Well, months after the fact, aid slowly continues to trickle in. Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

PIERRE (AP) – Officials with the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation have been presented with $4,000 in donations to be used toward recovering from a crippling winter storm.

So far, the South Dakota Community Foundation has collected $270,000 in donations for a relief fund set up for the reservation. The Bush Foundation and the Northwest Area Foundation have given some matching money.
A portion of the donations were handed over to the reservation on Thursday.

The money is intended to help the tribe recover from an ice storm and blizzard in late January that paralyzed the reservation, knocking out power and water to thousands.

Foundation President Bob Sutton says a large portion of the relief fund will be used to equip emergency shelters.

Tags: buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Gwen Florio, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Native American news, South Dakota Community Foundation, Winter storms

It’s interesting that Mark Trahant, in his weekly health care column, writes about Facebook today. (See previous post.)

The social networking site is also being used to protest the multi-billion-dollar Cobell v. Salazar settlement for Indian people owed decades’ worth of royalties from the federal government.

The Facebook page is called “Reject The Cobell V. Salazar Agreement,” and only has 114 members so far. Its mission statement:

This Group was inspired by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s Elders Council deciding to unanimously REJECT the paltry sum so disrespectfully offered by the US Government.

As Sitting Bull Said: “You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee.”

The Facebook group speaks to the dissatisfaction some people feel with the settlement – more than $3 billion, as opposed to more than $100 billion that some estimate Indian people are actually owed.

Plaintiff Elouise Cobell, who is Blackfeet from Browning, Mont., says she accepted the settlement, announced last fall, because it’s quite a step up from the originally proposed $455 million and also because many of the 50,000 people who will directly benefit are elderly, and could die if further legal wrangling were to continue.

She’s touring reservations in North and South Dakota this week to answer people’s questions about the settlement. (See previous post.)

And, she also writes a weekly Ask Elouise column to address issues concerning the settlement. Check it out here.

Meanwhile, Congress has yet to approve funds mandated by the settlement, and recently delayed that approval – for the second time – until next month.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet, buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Cobell v. Salazar, Elouise Cobell, Facebook, Gwen Florio, Indian trust case, Native American news, Sitting Bull

Out of the mouths of babes … OK, in this case, college students. Anyhow, major props to the students journalists at the University of South Dakota, who in this Volante editorial chide the delayed an inadequate response to the terrible sufferings on several western Indian reservations after this winter’s severe storms.

As the students say, “We just don’t pay attention.”

They wrote:

A south Dakota Rural Electric Association crew tries to dig out downed lines near the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation last month. (AP)

As of Feb. 9, the reservation only received $8,000 in donations and power was still down. The disaster may have happened right after Haiti, but isn’t South Dakota generous enough to give more than $8,000 to our own neighbors? Yes we are, the problem is that we didn’t even know it was happening.

It wasn’t until the issue was highlighted on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” that donations started coming in. Within 48 hours, more than $250,000 had been raised. All it took to get help was one minute of airtime, more than two weeks after the disaster.

The fact that it took a national news program to get our attention about such a dire local issue is inexcusable, both for the media and for ourselves.

We can’t say it any better than that. Thanks to the Volante for paying attention.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Countdown with Keith Olbermann", buffalo post, Cheyenne River Sioux, Disaster aid, Indian reservations, Keith Olbermann, Native American news

“Tiring” – Mona Longbrake’s description of yet another day without power since Jan. 22, after snow and ice storms struck the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota – seems astoundingly tactful.

Had we been in Longbrake’s shoes, we’d have had to type a bunch of those symbols – you know, %&$#@!! – that signify far stronger language.

Longbrake is among an estimate 1,700 people on the reservation who still lack power, according to this update by Wayne Ortman of the Associated Press. Tribal Chairman Joseph Brings Plenty says it could be as much as three weeks before it’s fully restored.

The South Dakota National Guard is bringing in generators, as well as helping to distribute food and water. Meanwhile, schools remain closed.

“You get by as best you can,” says Longbrake, whose family is breaking through the ice on a nearby pond to get water to flush their toilet. “You make do.

Facebook has a site where people can help with relief efforts.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cheyenne River Reservation, Cheyenne River Sioux, Native American news, Winter storms