Selma Johnson, who is of Oglala Lakota and Dine heritage, gathers table shams at Rapid City’s Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. Johnson has been employed full-time in the civic center’s maintenance department for the past two years. Native American employees of both the city of Rapid City and Pennington County historically remain few and far between, however. Photo © Karin Eagle.
RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA -- Native Americans are dismally represented as employees at both the City of Rapid City and in Pennington County. The city currently employs over 2,000 individuals in settings ranging from the civic center to the mayor’s office to the police department. Of the city’s more than 2,000 employees, 136 have voluntarily identified themselves as Native American, according to data gathered for city and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reporting purposes. As further broken down, 726 of Rapid City’s employees hold full- and part-time, benefited positions, according to Tammie Krumm, city human resources manager, with 26 self-identifying as Native. Over 1,300 employees with the city hold temporary, often seasonal, non-benefited positions, said Krumm. Of this number, 110 have indicated they are Native, she said. City employment benefits include, among other things, health and life insurance plans, retirement options and sick and paid holiday leave, as delineated in the city’s benefits summary package. All told, the city of Rapid City presently employs Native Americans at a rate of nearly seven percent of its total workforce. Native workforce statistics for Pennington County correlate with city statistics. There are currently 554 county employees, according to Nicholas Stroot, Pennington County human resources manager. County employees work in departments such as the clerk of courts office, health and human services and the sheriff’s office. In optional accordance with EEOC-regulated, self-reported demographic information, nine of the county’s employees have identified themselves as Native, Stroot said. Native Americans, then, comprise less than two percent of the 2,784-square-mile county’s entire workforce. This similarity of a reduced Native labor force may be attributable, or at least influenced by, the fact that Rapid City, as the most densely populated area, serves as the administrative center of Pennington County. As the city is the allegorical heart of the county, some within the community might assume the two structurally and administratively separate entities to be virtually one and the same. “We do have an office in Wall and we do have an office in Hill City, but if I had to guess, I’d say 90 percent – 90-plus percent – of our employees work out of the Rapid City area,” said Stroot. As listed on its website, employee benefits with Pennington County are comparable to those provided by the city. According to 2010 census figures, the city of Rapid City has a population of approximately 68,000. Roughly 8,400 citizens – or 12 percent of the total population – are Native American, also according to the latest census. Less conservative estimates of the Native population of Rapid City place the total closer to the range of 10,000 to 15,000. Such estimates primarily come from within the city’s Native community and are more indicative of and accountable to the interconnected transitory and collectivistic nature of peoples who once mainly roamed the Great Plains in close-knit mezzo- to macro-sized bands. Additionally, the majority of the city’s homeless population, with its relative concentration of Natives, is more than likely excluded from censual data. This exclusion further skews the total reported Native population figure. Pennington County has an overall population of around 101,000, with Native Americans comprising about ten percent of that total, according to the 2010 census. The reported 10,000 or so Natives residing within the county are primarily located in Rapid City, Box Elder and Black Hawk and again, this number may be moderately to grossly under-representative. In following the federal government’s initial framing of the issue, both the city of Rapid City and Pennington County have equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies in place. And the city, at least, has taken the spirit of EEO one step further with its interconnected affirmative action plan (AAP). The interrelated, underlying intent of EEO and AAP policies – which were formulated during the height of America’s civil rights movements – is to ensure that all individuals have equal access to apply for and secure employment positions they are qualified for and to protect individuals from the non-majority sector against discrimination throughout the employment process – or at least deter incidences of discrimination. According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, EEO is defined as “ensuring that work environments are free from unlawful discrimination and harassment and provide employees with equal opportunities for jobs, training and development.” The term itself originated with the issuance of an executive order by President Lyndon Johnson in September of 1965. Johnson’s order stated, in part, that “the head of each executive department and agency shall establish and maintain a positive program of equal employment opportunity for all civilian employees and applicants for employment within its jurisdiction.” In 1969, the first EEO-specific executive order was signed by President Richard Nixon. As a result of this official governmental prohibition of discrimination, nationwide EEO laws and policies were developed and adopted. The purpose of the city of Rapid City’s equal employment policy, as set forth in its AAP, is to “affirmatively recruit, hire, train and promote the most qualified persons into all job levels.” Pennington County’s similarly-purposed EEO policy partially states that “(i)n order to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals, employment decisions at Pennington County will be based on merit, qualifications and abilities.” Pennington County’s EEO policy is federally mandated, Stroot said. The county takes its EEO guidelines and rulings directly from the federal government so anytime anything were to change at that level or there’s a new requirement, then the county would take that cue either from the state if they were to pass it at the state level or the federal government, which would be more likely, he said. “If we weren’t to follow the EEO guidelines, we wouldn’t be eligible for a lot of the grants that we get,” said Stroot. “A lot of the highway grants, a lot of the highway money, can be through federal funding or there’s grants for different programs that we run, such as our juvenile diversion program and it’s just easier if we follow those federal EEO guidelines.” Rapid City’s AAP – which is intertwined with its EEO policy – specifically addresses females, disabled – or differently abled – individuals, veterans, with emphasis on Vietnam era veterans, and minorities, inclusive of Native Americans. Current federal EEOC policy includes further specific protections for perceived intelligence, pregnancy and from retaliation for opposing and/or reporting discriminatory practices. And, in this age of accelerated scientific and medical advances, genetic information has been included as a protected classification. The EEOC also defines alcoholism as a disability and places the minimum protected age at 40. Affirmative action refers to governmental employment policies that take socially constructed, biological and sociocultural factors including race, color, age, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and disability, or different ability, into consideration in order to benefit these underrepresented classes of individuals, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination. The term first appeared in an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy in March of 1961. It was used by Kennedy to refer to measures to achieve non-discrimination. Noticeably absent from the city’s formal AAP, which apparently was last reviewed and revised in March of 2006, is a provision for sexual orientation, or – more appropriately – inherent genetic orientation. An affirmative action quota system was initially implemented nationwide by employers to ensure the hiring of a minimum, or set, number of individuals from protected classes. In 1978, in a highly publicized case involving a white male who claimed unfair discrimination due to affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed inflexible quota systems in affirmative action programs. The city does not utilize an affirmative action quota system, according to Ward 1 Alderwoman Charity Doyle. Quotas were “deemed illegal because all it was doing was creating animosity,” she said. In recruiting potential applicants for city jobs, city administration makes a concerted effort to reach Native Americans, indicated Doyle. “I do know that we go over and above just posting the data in the general … places that you would expect,” she said. “ … I know that the city reaches out to specific Native publications, for instance.” The city of Rapid City does advertise open positions with Native Sun News, said Jackie Giago, NSN sales manager, in support of Doyle’s claim. The City administration is hoping the Native community is aware of and accessing these targeted publications for city jobs, said Doyle. According to its AAP, the city also posts open position announcements, via email, within both tribal and non-tribal agencies and institutions that provide services largely for Native Americans. These regional agencies and institutions include the Oglala Sioux Tribe personnel department, Oglala Lakota College, Sinte Gleska University, United Sioux Tribes, United Tribes Technical College, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe employment rights office and the Sioux San Alcoholism Program. “And city jobs, not a lot of them come up very often, they’re kind of specific so that might be part of the challenge,” in recruiting and hiring Native Americans for employment with the city, she said. “We have it such that we don’t discriminate at all,” Doyle said. “When any protected class, or any able-bodied person, or any … unprotected class comes to interview for a job through the city’s website, they fill out the application, there’s no place in there for them to distinguish themselves as meeting special preference.” This lack of up-front demographic reporting ensures that the city’s human resources department does not categorically pre-segregate job candidates on the basis of any of the protected statuses, according to Doyle. That is, until the city council passed a disability consideration policy on Oct. 17 to assist those individuals with significant disabilities in securing job interviews with the city, she said. “I don’t have any problem helping a particular group of people if, in fact, it has been identified that we’re doing something wrong or unfair,” Doyle said. “And those are the questions I’ve been asking.” “It’s like, well show me that we’ve done something unfair, and then let’s fix the problem,” she said. “But there isn’t anything like that going on. This was just the mayor’s idea to help give another … helping hand to a certain class or a certain … group of people, to give them preferential treatment.” “Personally … I have nothing against disabled people; I have nothing against any protected class, but I just don’t think that it’s fair,” said Doyle. The policy was introduced by Mayor Sam Kooiker, who was born with cerebral palsy. Kooiker cast the mayoral tie-breaking vote in favor of the policy. Following a one-year trial run, the policy will need to be re-authorized by city council, if it so chooses. The federal government and many local and state governments, including South Dakota, have had such a policy in place since the early ‘90s, following the monumental – albeit delayed – passage by Congress of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In further addressing the issue of the low number of Native city employees, Doyle said, “We don’t have a specific recruiting job, and when I say ‘recruiting’ I mean like a ‘headhunter’ that goes out and actively tries to employ any group of people because those city jobs are, you know, they’re kind of coveted so when you put an application out … or a job opening out, we typically get a lot of applications.” Many of the Native Americans who are currently employed by the city of Rapid City may be working in lower-profile, lesser-paying positions, according to some Natives within the community. “I don’t really think so,” Doyle said. “I think, first of all, the city, relative to the rest of the demographics (and) as far as the pay scale goes in Rapid City, government workers typically are going to get paid more in this area relative to the median wages here,” she said. “So I think just that, in and of itself, is they’re probably getting paid higher through a government or a city job as they would in the private sector for a similar job. So I think that’s definitely an advantage.” Based on her personal experiences, Doyle said the low-pay claim is not an accurate statement. The number of Natives employed by the city is disproportional to the number of Natives living here, according to Ward 5 Alderman Ron Sasso. “I do think that there should be, given the population, there definitely should be more Native Americans working for the city, and part of that could very well be that not as many are applying for positions because they may feel they don’t have as – I’m not sure – but it may be that they don’t think they’ve got as good of an opportunity to get hired,” he said. “If there is (EEO and AAP) data … being tracked, that’s the first step towards the city becoming more aware of a problem, and I think the more that that data becomes public and part of discussion, the better the likelihood that things are going to change,” Sasso said. The city does not currently have readily available statistics for department and job category breakdowns by ethnicity as it is not a required field, indicated Krumm. According to the city’s AAP, the last time ethnicity-specific data was compiled and analyzed was between September and December of 2005. At the outset of that quarter, the city employed 20 Native Americans. By the end of that year, the number had been reduced by one to 19, with 15 Native males and four Native females working for the city at that time. American Indian males comprised two percent of the city’s workforce in December of 2005 while American Indian females made up one percent of the workforce, as further reported in the city’s AAP. The city of Rapid City employed a total of 669 individuals at the end of 2005, according to the workforce analysis contained within its AAP. As broken down by worksite and job category in September of 2005, seven Natives worked for the police department as officers; one worked for the fire department in a non-specified professional position; and 12 were classified as “remaining workforce” employees, with three office/clerical workers, one skilled craft worker and eight service and maintenance workers. “The only way we take applications is online so I don’t have any way to know” how many Native Americans are actually applying for city jobs, Krumm said. “The one thing I can say is … we have a lot of temporary positions so … we hire several hundred of those a year, and we see Native Americans come in with positions there.” “We get people coming in and asking about positions,” she said. “We get Native Americans that come in and ask, and other ethnic backgrounds, and then I don’t know if they do apply as the actual applications are not secured and returned in person.” Pennington County also accepts and manages job applications via an online system, according to Stroot. The nine Native Americans employed by the county work within the city limits of Rapid City, Stroot indicated. “We have it broken down under job category,” he said. “I have two in what’s called protective services, that’s going to be a lot of law enforcement, correctional officers; five in what’s called paraprofessional…it’s not administrative, paraprofessional could be specialized professional things such as caseworkers so it’d be in an office setting, but it wouldn’t be an administrative position (and) two in administrative support.” Native Americans have also been historically scarce in city government positions. Doyle discussed the recent tenure of Native American city council member Lloyd LaCroix in response to this paucity of Native city leaders. LaCroix’s third one-year term as Ward 4 alderman recently expired. He had served consecutive city council terms since July of 2006. LaCroix’s uncle, the late Art LaCroix, was Rapid City’s first Native American mayor, serving from 1975 to 1987. Art LaCroix also holds the distinction of being the city’s longest-serving mayor to date. “Mayor Kooiker has worked to try and get a polling place in Lakota Homes, which is something that I’m sure, as long as … definitely people need to get out and vote when we have the elections as that is so incredibly important, but I also believe that that will significantly help with getting the Native voice out,” said Sasso, in reference to the issue of a lack of Native American representation within Rapid City’s government. As far as the opportunities to run for office go, having that polling place right there in Lakota Homes as opposed to its former location at General Beadle Elementary School will help make Ward 4’s Native American voters more aware of available positions with city government, Sasso said. Kooiker established a new polling location at the Lakota Homes Community Center, located in North Rapid, this past September in an effort to make voting in city, state and federal elections more easily accessible for the district’s substantial Native constituency. A large portion of the city’s Native population resides on the North side, a distinct sub-community within Rapid City. Additionally, the mayor’s office has a Rapid City Human Relations Commission that is the most basic level of a complaint procedure available to any and all employees in the Rapid City area, outside of the human relations offices of their employers. It is often used as the jumping off point for employees who feel that their rights under labor laws are being either violated or ignored. According to the city of Rapid City’s website, the RCHRC was established by Municipal Ordinance No. 5377 and is authorized by the ordinance and state law to investigate any discriminatory acts or practices within city limits. The commission is composed of seven members appointed by the mayor. The South Dakota Human Rights Commission, under the Division of Human Rights, is the next level of procedure available to all employees in the state. The HRC may begin the complaint and investigation process when they have reason to believe a person is violating state laws regarding discrimination. The commission holds public hearings on justified complaints when voluntary settlement is not successful. When the commission finds violations of the laws as a result of the hearing, it issues final orders to correct any discriminatory practices and to prevent them from happening again. A few examples of the issues that the HRC deals with are when an employment agency denies an applicant rights on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, sex (includes pregnancy), ancestry, disability or national origin; an employer, labor union or employment agency advertises job openings or union memberships indicating a preference for or excluding a particular race, color, creed, religion, sex (includes pregnancy), ancestry, disability or national origin; or when an employer refuses to hire a person, to discharge or lay off an employee, harass or to treat persons differently in the terms and conditions of employment because of race, color, creed, religion, sex (includes pregnancy), ancestry, disability or national origin. On average, the Division of Human Rights handles approximately 130 charges each year. Of all the different reasons for protection (e.g., race, color, national origin, etc.), most filings are based on sexual discrimination, which includes sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and gender discrimination. The most common charge is sexual harassment. The EEOC, as a federal agency, enforces Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits job discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin or sex. Title VII covers employers of 15 or more persons, including state and local governments, labor unions, apprenticeship programs and employment agencies. The EEOC also enforces the Equal Pay Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The South Dakota Division of Human Rights works closely with the EEOC, and charges filed with the EEOC are referred to the division for investigation. It is possible to file the same complaint with all three agencies. (Contact Jesse Abernathy at staffwriter@nsweekly.com. Contact Karin Eagle at staffwriter2@nsweekly.com)
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