Brandon Ecoffey, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota who is the son of a prominent Bureau of Indian Affairs official, was sentenced to five years for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Brandon Ecoffey, 25, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He admitted that he helped Lawrence Vigil, the reputed leader of a drug ring on the reservation, sell drugs to his people.

“It was my responsibility to do something right … (to) improve the lives of those that surround me,” Ecoffey said at his sentencing hearing, The Rapid City Journal reported. “To my people, I promise that I’m going to make it up to them.”

Robert Ecoffey, Brandon's father, serves as the BIA superintendent at Pine Ridge. Before that, he was head of law enforcement services for the BIA.

“I let my boy slide through," he said at the hearing, the Journal reported.

Ecoffey is a 2006 graduate of Dartmouth College.

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BIA superintendent's son sentenced for drug conspiracy (The Rapid City Journal 11/17)