Michael Jandreau, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe chairman and chief executive officer, has served his people with humility, respect and honor for over 30 years. He is one of the most widely recognized and highly regarded leaders within Indian Country. PHOTO COURTESY/FOXNEWS.COM
LOWER BRULE, SOUTH DAKOTA –– Longevity. That term best describes one of the most admirable career characteristics of Michael Jandreau. For 33 consecutive years, Jandreau has unfalteringly served the members of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, or Kul Wicasa Oyate, in the capacity of chairman. His longevity is an astounding and almost unheard-of feat within the whirlwind political cycles of Indian country. Jandreau, 68, who is also the tribe’s chief executive officer, humbly attributes his enduring success as the Kul Wicasa Oyate’s leader to the people themselves. “The credit goes to people who have been generous enough to allow me to serve here,” he said. “Anything that we’ve been able to accomplish has only been able to be done through their willingness to allow it to happen.” “I’m just kind of a common guy. I don’t purport to have any great skills or anything like that.” Jandreau has been the administration’s mainstay for the past 40 years, beginning his tenure as a tribal council member. One of South Dakota’s smaller tribes, the Kul Wicasa Oyate has a membership approaching 4,000 and a land base of just over 200 square miles. The tribe’s centrally located land base straddles the western banks of the Missouri River. Of the almost 4,000 enrolled members, approximately 1,300 live on the tribe’s federally allocated land. When he is not busy tending to the affairs of the tribe, Jandreau maintains a small family ranch, comprised of a few head of livestock including cattle and horses, on the Lower Brule Reservation. Save for a minimal amount of time for work and academic pursuit, Jandreau has spent the majority of his life on the reservation. “I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, for a little bit,” he said. “I worked down there for a few years, but, other than that, I spent a little time out in Maryland when I was a youth, trying to go to school.” “That’s pretty much my escape from the reservation. Other than that, I grew up here. I’ve raised my family here.” Under Jandreau’s longstanding leadership, the Lower Brule Reservation has, to a certain degree, seemingly avoided many of the pitfalls associated with the entrenched poverty of South Dakota’s other reservations. In describing the current economic state on the reservation, Jandreau said, “If you take and look at it totally, it’s, I think, decent. Do we struggle with economics? Of course we do. That’s an everyday occurrence. We just never have enough resources to fulfill all of the needs that are here. It keeps you pretty busy just looking to garner resources to serve the needs of our constituency here on the reservation and, a lot of times, for those off the reservation.” “We’re struggling. The economy’s been awful tough on us, but we’re surviving. In times like this, even survival is pretty good,” he said. In addition to the tribe itself, major employers on the reservation include the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, the tribally owned and operated Golden Buffalo Casino and the Lower Brule Farm Corp., which lays claim to being the country’s number one popcorn producer. Jandreau modestly eschews a sense of accomplishment on his part as the tribe’s perennially incumbent leader and guiding force. He bases his sense of accomplishment in the people he serves instead. “The tenure that has been allowed me by my constituents in order to put together activities and efforts to kind of further the quality of life on the Lower Brule Reservation, I guess, to me, just being allowed to do that has probably been my greatest accomplishment,” said Jandreau. The major obstacle to the continued, relative socioeconomic success, as well as survival, of the Kul Wicasa Oyate is the leadership base contained within the federal government and its ill-conceived approach to Native American affairs, according to Jandreau. “If you really look at what is happening nationally, in the whole field of education, in the whole field of the direct and ongoing identified trust relationship with the federal government, there’s a continued effort to erode and destroy that responsibility to the tribes,” he said. “It evolves from and is embedded in the treaties. This has been a constant fight and it’s been a constant fight for every reservation, at least here in the Great Plains.” “We have to be ever-vigilant to try to slow down the onslaught of the ripping away of that direct responsibility that Congress seems to be ever-vigilant in trying to do. It doesn’t belong to any single party; it’s very much a bipartisan and administrative effort that has been ongoing ever since the Nixon years, when he identified that self-determination was something that we should be allowed to attain.” It seems like, with President Richard Nixon doing that in the early 1970s, that the rest of the federal government has worked so hard to try and make things happen that were counter to that, Jandreau said. Many of the tribes right now are fighting for the federal government to meet its obligations to us, he said. According to Jandreau, the U.S. government continues to attempt to shirk its obligations under P.L. (Public Law) 96-638, or what is more commonly known as 638 contracting, which provides a mechanism for tribes to obtain, among other things, needed social, health, housing and infrastructure services through congressionally appropriated Bureau of Indian Affairs funding. The BIA is a subdivision of the U.S. Department of the Interior. “This contract support thing, with them forcing us into contracts in order to preserve the resources flowing to the reservations, Pine Ridge has just been a party in an enormous suit to try to turn back the idea that they can get by with not providing contract support, and I believe they’ve been successful. I believe the Navajos were a part of that, too,” said Jandreau. “If you look at the housing dollars and how those are being restricted, we have such enormous needs on all of our reservations that without the activities of the Native leadership trying to overcome this onslaught from the government, it would be the most crushing thing we can try to move ourselves away from. We get so much lip service from our congressional delegation telling us they’re doing what they can. We know that we are not the top priority list for most of them, and we’re glad for what we can get.” The political strength we as Native peoples have is greatly diminished by our own inability to stay and stand strong enough together, Jandreau said, although the effort is now focused on correcting that, hopefully working together we can get something done. As far as the government of the state of South Dakota goes, Jandreau recognized Gov. Dennis Daugaard for creating a secretary of tribal relations position. Leroy “J.R.” LaPlante, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, was appointed to the nascent post by Daugaard in early 2011. “(Daugaard) did make at least the overt effort to name a cabinet position. We have yet to see really the true empowerment of that cabinet position, but at least from a façade standpoint, that structure is there. Hopefully, it’s there to assist us and not just assist in having state programming accepted by the reservation.” In addition to 2012 being a U.S. presidential election year, the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe will be holding its biennial tribal council elections later this year. “Our elections are probably in August. The usual schedule is August is the primary and September is the general,” said Jandreau. As far as running for the elected position of chairman once more and more than likely continuing his decades-long reign as the tribe’s top official, Jandreau said he would not know what else to do. “I’m too old to learn a new trade,” he said with a laugh. In looking to the future of the Kul Wicasa Oyate, Jandreau is optimistic that the people will have faith in themselves to continue on the path to true self-determination. “I guess we all wish we had a magic wand or some kind of a process to foretell the future,” he said. “I believe that this band has worked very hard doing their best to become self-sufficient. I see greater movement toward that.” “As I measure from the time that I became first involved, this was far before I was ever elected to office, how far the band has moved to today, I believe that as long as they put their heart and mind into the survival of the people and the future for the children, there are a lot of difficult and ugly roads to travel, but I think they’ll get there. I really do.” “I think that the success of our tribe’s not vested in myself, but it’s vested in the people themselves and their desires to have a more secure future for their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” said Jandreau. As far as the Kul Wicasa Oyate or any other indigenous nation in America eventually achieving real autonomy from the U.S. government, he said that is contingent upon the will of all indigenous peoples. “I believe as long as they vest the future and their real concern about those basic elements that are contained in being truly sovereign, if they continue to keep their mind on the fact that the only way that sovereignty exists is by the ability of the people who are the participants of that sovereignty to truly desire and move in that direction, I believe it will be attained,” Jandreau said. “Do I believe that there will be enormous economic strength? No. It doesn’t seem to be in the cards that that is really going to happen, but their ability to survive in a good way will be able to be obtained. I believe that. I have to believe that. If I don’t believe that, there’s no reason for me to exist in this position.” (Contact Jesse Abernathy at staffwriter@nsweekly.com)
Join the Conversation