A sign on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Photo by Jimmy Emerson
A new time for our people
A note from the editor’s desk
By Brandon Ecoffey
Lakota Country Times Editor
lakotacountrytimes.com Sitting down and writing a column about our community only days after an incident of violence is a sobering moment. The shooting that took place in Pine Ridge outside of an independent basketball tournament must be a watershed moment in our people's modern history. It is weeks like this one where I dread having to digest and analyze the news because it is so easy to imagine myself present in some of the horrible situations that occur in our community. I thought about playing in this weekend's tournament in Pine Ridge but I decided my legs weren't up to carrying my overweight butt around all weekend. So I stayed home. I can't help but think that had I decided to play who knows where I would have been when multiple armed gunmen chose to gun down a citizen of the Oglala Nation in broad daylight, in front of multiple witnesses, while an independent basketball tournament was taking place only feet away. In all my years of playing in independent tournaments this was the first I ever heard of such a horrific act taking place. I do not know the motives behind this shooting. I do know that gangland style killings are not the norm around here. This has to be the catalyst that forces federal authorities and tribal lawmakers to take drastic action to prevent another incident like this from happening again. The sense of unease, and constant thought of "what if" that is on so many of our people's minds as the intensity of violent crime on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation increases is a violation of our human rights. Our people deserve to feel safe in their everyday activities. It is time to start asking our council representatives about common sense solutions. One way the tribe could immediately put more officers on the streets is by deputizing volunteers for short periods of time. There are dozens of tribal-citizens who have both military and law enforcement training who would be willing to help provide a more visible police presence. Can the Oglala Sioux Tribal Housing begin to find out who chronic offenders are? Should the council pass laws regarding the people who contractors are allowed to bring into our communities? These ideas are only temporary fixes of course. Any long term change will require an investment in drug treatment facilities and a restructuring of our legal code to target the right offenders while limiting collateral damages to families. This is an immense task but we are facing an immense problem. A problem that has many of our people arming themselves. I know of one Oglala who is a retired police officer who said that he has now decided to start carrying his AR-15 rifle with him at all times. There must be many more of our people who are also arming themselves. Is this really what Congress and the White House want happening?
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How do we fund these initiatives is always the first question we all have. Personally, I would use the profits from legalized pot. For the less progressive, however, it would seem simple for the tribe to direct its best grant writers to dedicate their efforts to finding the dollars necessary to empower our courts and build treatment centers. Imagine if we decided to enroll every single one of our addicts into the Affordable Healthcare Act, and then had our doctors and prosecutors mandate treatment for them. We could fund our own facility while healing our own people. Of course these are just ideas and there are people smarter than me who have better ones. It is time we start listening to all of them and formulating a real plan for how we are going to fix this reservation system. The time to do it is now. (Brandon Ecoffey is the editor of LCT and is an award winning journalist who was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and earned his education at Dartmouth College. He can be reached at editor@lakotacountrytimes.com) Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter and download the new Lakota Country Times app today.
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