Journalists are the first story tellers. This means that reading the latest news in the regional journals that William Janklow, former S.D. Governor, is dying of brain cancer gives everyone in the state a chance to highlight the events of his long career as a major influence in law and politics. The news of the day often becomes the stuff of legend. William Janklow started out as a “poverty” lawyer on Indian Reservations in this state and ended up serving four terms as governor, a tale that suggests many interpretations. Already there are stories that his law practice was a sign of early promise and late accomplishment as it is said: “he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court no fewer than eight times, maybe more, as a legal aid attorney,” and “he was there defending Native Americans on issues important to them.” (Scott Heidepriem) Present Governor Dennis Daugaard says: “he won the hearts of thousands of South Dakotans by being straight forward and working hard.” These are the comments of some South Dakotans, politicians and lawyers, who know that Janklow’s work as a defender of States Rights against Indian Rights in this part of the country is what gives him a place in the great tradition of pioneer demands and white supremacy. In the view of some more astute observers, his long public career contributed to the wrangling that goes on in political enclaves to this day as tribes fight long and hard to organize coherent economic policies, develop political strength, claim law-and-order rights and develop the tribal nation judiciary. No one should hold Mr. Janklow up as a model of political trust in defending the historical rights of Indian Nations in general or contributing to cultural understanding between the Sioux and their neighbors in this state. It must not go without comment that Janklow, whose acts throughout his career told us that he despised the notion of tribal nation sovereignty, contributed to one of the most outrageous efforts in undermining that historical and legal concept of self-rule for Indians in the twentieth century. He did so in 1978, when he used $30,000 of taxpayer money from the South Dakota treasury to support a case that would bar Indian nations from criminally prosecuting non-Indians on their reserved homelands. It was the Oliphant v. Suquamish case, originating in Washington State and promulgated by one of the most well-known Indian haters in the US Senate, Slade Gorton. S.D. tax money went to support that case which has come to be known as a blatant and racist anti-Indian attempt to diminish tribal sovereignty and it was to apply to all of the Indian Nations in the century. This is not a trivial matter in Indian law; as such arguments are still being fought out in the courts in many venues. This particular legal matter told the world that the primacy of Indian jurisdiction on Indian lands (stemming from early treaty agreements) was at risk during Janklow’s era. And it still is. Five years prior to that attempt to diminish native treaty rights, Janklow was hired by the State of South Dakota to lead the prosecution of cases involving alleged crimes by American Indian Movement activists. He was successful in setting the precedents for examining “protest” issues of indigenous peoples as criminal activities, rather than the legitimate defense of civil liberties. The notion that Dissent, one of the democratic ideal of America, seems to be waning in Indian country, rose out of the Janklow period. No one suggests that crimes are not often committed during protest movements, nor is there the suggestion that unwanted and awful violence often is the result of such political events. Yet, the destruction of the American Indian Movement and the corruption and defeat of one of the most significant protests of our time might have been avoided with different leadership on both sides. The point is that the visceral reaction of powerful state politicians like Janklow to a movement that rose out of a history of disenfranchisement, assisted in describing the entire history of the American Indian Movement as a considerable threat to all of us, Indian and White. Such reactions criminalized a movement that was destined to happen because, very simply, it reflected the sorry chronology of federal and state governmental treatment of indigenous peoples all across the country (the assassination of Indian leaders in the 1800’s, the theft of the Black Hills in 1877, the passage of the unconstitutional Allotment Act, the flooding of Indian lands for hydro power, termination laws, relocation, and dozens of anti-Indian legislative acts lie Oliphant. Some histories cannot be avoided and must be held accountable. Some say that Janklow was swept into the South Dakota governor’s office in 1978 on a wave of anti-Indian sentiment largely created, it is believed, by activities of the protesters who made up the American Indian Movement. The truth is, though, Janklow’s clashes with Indians had begun much earlier, even when he was a “poverty” lawyer straight out of law school. His nemesis, AIM leader Dennis Banks, had earlier served as prosecuting attorney in a Sioux tribal court proceeding in which Janklow, as director of a tribal Legal Service Office, was accused of assault which set up further stormy histories in Indian-White relation in the state. There may have been no substance to the allegation, at least according to an FBI investigation, but the vendetta had been set in motion. The state’s zeal in prosecuting criminal acts by American Indian activists which began in those days has now settled into legal wars against people who are called “radicals”; thus, “AIM Trials” are routinely held in this state, decades after the events occurred. Like many of the 20th century wars throughout the globe, these Indian wars seem endless. In 2010 and 2011, full forty years after the Janklow Republican administration ended, decades after criminal acts were said to have been committed, and long after the Republican Reagan administration destroyed the common laws of Union Workers at the federal level, “AIM Trials” are still ongoing in this state, in the pursuit of peace and justice. Arlo Looking Cloud is serving a life sentence, Richard Marshall has been acquitted, and the Canadian Indian citizen, John Graham, and the tragic and now deceased Thelma Rios were charged and found culpable in a “conspiracy” dragnet to flush out other participants which probably means that such groups are destined for constant hounding. It is possible that AIM leaders are still in the crosshairs of the legal system developed by politicians and lawyers like Janklow. It took years for the former governor to “pardon” American Indian Activist Russell Means who, also, by some sad trick of fate, is said now to be mortally ill. When Janklow was sworn in as a US House Representative in 2003, he said the pardon he was offering would “put things behind us.” No one believed that would happen, but what did happen is that Janklow resigned a year later after he killed a man in a traffic accident, an event which ended his political career. More troubling these days, in the face of a national melt down caused by the deregulation of big banks and big money, South Dakotans must know that when Janklow persuaded lawmakers in 1980 to uncap interest rates bringing Citibank to the prairie, he was among those lawmakers who foreshadowed the financial crisis now facing not just Indians, but every American and every South Dakotan. Some things are not foreseeable, but legacies do matter and it is important for storytellers to try to be honest as they face the future. The fate of men like Janklow and Russell Means, who is also a part of the notorious Indian history of this state, is now in the hands of the creator and we recognize that the history we all share here in the Northern Plains can sometimes be balanced in the lives of mere human beings and sometimes not. Those of us who write about such matters, though, know that laws and policies set in motion by powerful men live on. Land issues still confront the Oyate, state government is still the enemy of tribal government and the needs among our people are great. Out of the ashes of the work of state politicians who refuse to make peace with those who are in their way will not so easily be “put behind us.” We all understand that stalemates in the works of settlers to this country and the indigenous peoples, who have lived here for thousands of years, will continue. Janklow, the most anti-Indian Governor of South Dakota, leaves a legacy of shifting problems in Indian-White Relations. (Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Crow Creek, is Professor Emerita of English and Native American Studies at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. She can be reached at elizcoly@aol.com)
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