Copyright © 2000 NLThomas
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South Dakota - On March 21, the evening CPT s South Dakota delegation arrived at the Pine Ridge Reservation, their Lakota hosts received an urgent phone call: "The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) is coming tomorrow morning to take the records. We've reached a consensus. We're going to lock them out."

Since January 16, a coalition of over 100 Oglala Lakota youth, elders, and grassroots community leaders had occupied the reservation offices in order to safeguard financial records which they say document widespread corruption in the Tribal Council. A BIA contractor completed a preliminary audit in mid-March but the BIA refused to release the report. When the BIA announced that the auditor would arrive to haul off the remainder of the tribe's records so he could complete the job, the group hastily agreed they would block the removal unless they received a guarantee that the results of the audit would not be kept secret.

CPT delegates were invited to join the blockade. Shortly after 9 am a BIA official and the auditor drove up in a U-Haul truck. Elder Marie Randall, sporting a borrowed CPT cap and flanked by a large crowd of supporters, confronted them. Randall made it clear that the BIA had abused the Lakota people too often in the past to be trusted now.

The auditor was obviously disturbed by the face off. He had been told by the BIA that everything was already settled. Addressing Randall politely as Unci (grandmother), he asked to meet with the entire group inside. One by one, the grandmothers stood to make their statements, jumping in mid-sentence from English to Lakota when a foreign tongue could no longer capture the depth of their frustration and grief.

The Tribal Council system was imposed on reservations by the U.S. government in the 1930's and most traditional Lakota have never accepted it as legitimate. "We have had all these laws and paperwork built over us to suppress us," said Randall. "But we are a sovereign nation. We here are the Lakota nation, not that Tribal Council. We are abolishing that government and we have every right to know the results of that audit. We are grandmothers, and we are standing up here so that our Lakota children can remember who they are.

The auditor, a Bolivian indigenous man married to a Lakota woman, was clearly moved by the testimony. His tears, prayers and commitment to conduct an honest audit on behalf of all Lakota won the people s trust and by the end of the day they agreed to a supervised transfer of the remaining records. Not all the issues have been resolved and the occupation of the building continues. But the BIA did release the preliminary audit to the public. The report confirms a pattern of gross mismanagement of funds by the Tribal Council and has been turned over to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office for possible prosecutions.

Members of CPT s March 20-30 South Dakota delegation were: Dorothy Goertz (Hillsboro, KS), John and Carrie Harder (Kitchener, ON), Jacob Liechty (Dublin, Ireland), Carl Meyer (Goshen, IN), Rick Polhamus (Fletcher, OH), and Vern Riediger (Toronto, ON).