RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA –– The Native American community generates a substantial amount of revenue for the city’s strategically located pawn shops. Yet the Indian clientele is more often than not stereotyped, mistreated, and – in some instances – criminalized by these generally lucrative area businesses.
Shawn Garnette, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and a former employee of one of the pawn shops, is a living testament to such discriminatory practices.
Garnette, 33, was employed by First National Pawn for almost three years – from April 2008 to February 2011 – initially at the 935 E. North St. location then, later in his tenure, at the franchise’s 115 E. North St. location.
In an interview Garnette spoke of a double standard that exists, but is not always formally acknowledged, between Native American and white customers. Native Americans comprise “90 percent of the [pawn shop] customer base” in Garnette’s estimation.
Many of them rely on area pawn shops as moderate sources of quick, accessible, and readily available income. But the treatment they receive by some white pawn shop managers and employees, particularly at First National, is “not reciprocal,” according to Garnette.
As a prime example, he cited instances in which Native American produced and themed artwork, including paintings and intricately beaded items, was “ridiculed” and devalued simply because such crafts are often abundantly pawned by Indian customers. “There is no cultural sensitivity when it comes to Native Americans,” Garnette said.
According to Garnette, in the interconnected world that is the pawn shop menagerie, both consumers and employees migrate back and forth between and among the seven (eight if the fact that First National has two separate locations along the East North street circuit is taken into consideration) pawn shops licensed to do business in Rapid City.
“There are managers and co-workers that I used to work with at First National who now work at other pawn shops,” Garnette said. The pawn shops in Rapid City, being virtually centrally located on the North Side, have been intentionally “set up that way for the mostly Native American foot traffic along East North Street,” said Garnette.
Such a close configuration allows for ease of mobility between shops for the predominantly Indian patrons many of whom do not own automobiles and are residing within the North Side community.
“But white pawn shop managers and employees still do not treat their Native American customers with respect. And these managers and employees transfer from pawn shop to pawn shop, taking their disrespect with them,” Garnette said.
Garnette said that Indian customers were often scoffed at, condescended to, and offered less money than their white counterparts for the salable items they brought in.
“Some of [First National’s] white employees were always gruff with the Indian customers who came in and would talk to them as if they were dumb. [These employees] would almost sound like they were yelling because they didn’t want anything to do with supposedly unintelligent Indian customers,” said Garnette. Indian customers were often hurried in and hurried out and such discrimination was practiced on a regular basis, according to Garnette.
Employees would also target Native Americans for surveillance when they came into the store because they thought that they would steal.
“Native American customers were judged based solely on the color of their skin,” Garnette said. Those Native Americans who presented items of moderate value – such as tool kits or stereos – for hock or, more particularly, for outright sale were immediately presumed to have stolen such potential merchandise by First National employees.
“The pawn shops have to file inventory reports with the police department on a regular basis because many pawned items may be stolen, but not necessarily by Native Americans,” he said.
The reports identify each customer by name and detail the corresponding items brought in for loan or sale. “A certain police officer is assigned to keep track of the reports. That officer’s name is [Tom] Garinger, and he will single out listed customers who appear to him to have Native American surnames,” Garnette said.
The Rapid City Police Department did corroborate Garnette’s claims that local pawn shops must generate such inventory reports and submit them for review by Detective Tom Garinger.
Even Garnette became the recipient of unwanted and unwarranted discrimination by some of his white co-workers at First National.
“One of the guys I worked with told me one day that I looked like a ‘Hector,’ or Hispanic, to him, and the name somehow stuck,” he said. “I am actually part Mexican too, but I think this guy was referring more to my tattoos than anything,” Garnette said as he grinned and pointed to the intricately etched tattoos visible on both of his forearms.
Garnette was ultimately fired by First National in what the company adjudged to be a ‘no-call, no-show’ incident. “I never called in to work,” he said. “I was always there, and the one time I didn’t show up for work, they fired me.”
The termination incident was eventually taken to court by Garnette. With the assistance of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and one of its contracted subdivisions, a Minneapolis-based Fair Employment Practice Agency, which specifically manages charges of workplace discrimination and the protection of the employment rights of Native Americans, Garnette applied for and was granted a preliminary judicial hearing to determine if he had just cause to file a discrimination lawsuit against First National Pawn, Inc., claiming that he did inform management that he would be absent from work on the day in question.
In lieu of a personal phone call to notify the store that he would not be at work, Garnette instead sent a text message to his supervisor, which First National claimed was not in accordance with company policy for reporting an absence from work. “They didn’t have a policy against notification of an absence by text message in place at the time,” Garnette said. “I’ve heard that they do now.”
The presiding judge in Garnette’s preliminary hearing consequently decreed that discrimination on the part of First National was evident. Garnette was granted the right to sue the business for wrongful and discriminatory termination. “Suing them would take money, though,” he conceded, “money that I don’t have right now.”
“They didn’t fire me because I called in,” Garnette – who is presently employed elsewhere in Rapid City on a full-time basis – declared with finality. “The company fired me because I’m not white.”
The managers of each individual First National Pawn location on E. North St. were both on vacation and unavailable for comment at press time.
(Contact Jesse Abernathy at staffwriter@nsweekly.com)
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