Native Sun News Today: Lakota language teacher fired by feds

Thursday, July 11, 2019  

EAGLE BUTTE— Mahto Luta was a Lakota warrior who lived near the close of the Nineteenth Century. He was the last of his line to have one name to identify himself; thereafter his male children, and their male children, would bear the surname of Red Bear their entire lives. Eventually this lead to Manny Red Bear, who was born on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in 1961.

For twenty-five years, Red Bear, a fluent speaker, was a Lakota language instructor at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte (CEB) High School. Last January his contract was terminated, and he continued on until spring as a substitute teacher hired by the school district.

Red Bear was terminated as an employee of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) for accepting monies outside his job. In this case, three supplemental income payments totaling $12,500 dollars over the course of his 25-year stint at CEB, supplements that were drawn up by a tribal attorney and delivered to Red Bear in the form of a check.

A gift from a tribe does not violate this BIE rule, and Red Bear claims he took this money with the express understanding that it was a gift. According to Red Bear, he asked the lawyer who drew up the paperwork if it was legal: “When (Steve Emery) first drafted up this differential pay, we asked him that, are we going to get in trouble as Federal employees? He said, ‘I’m the attorney here, you guys are questioning my work.’ He said, ‘It’s legal, it’s a gift!’”

But when it was later determined to not be a gift from the Tribe, but to be a violation of BIE policy, Red Bear was not only terminated, acting BIE line officer Casey Sobol considered Red Bear to be behind the entire situation: “When I talked to the Audrey Duran, the Retirement Specialist, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, Mr. Sobol said that you’re the mastermind behind all this, and he’s taking away fifteen years of your 25 years of retirement, and he’s not going to pay you 600 hours of second annual leave that you have.”

In a 2018 article on Indianz.com, a spokesman for the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of the Interior said Red Bear and other Lakota language teachers at CEB took money “even after being admonished by their supervisors, and being told their actions violated federal law.”

The summary continued: “We also determined that at least one teacher solicited for payments at district and tribal council meetings.”

He was referring to Red Bear.

Normally, in such cases, violation comes in the form of some criminal or independent manipulation of a system, such as willfully falsifying travel expense, etc. In the case of Red Bear, he asserts he accepted tribal supplemental income checks from the Tribe, based upon assurances from tribal attorney, Steve Emery, that the money was a gift, and therefore did not violate BIE policy.

Red Bear’s side of the story was not presented in the Indianz.com article, nor in any rationale offered by the OIG, which according to Red Bear initially approved the supplemental income payments from the CRST. It all goes back to low pay for Lakota language teachers at CEB, and the actions taken by the ten Lakota language teachers, with Red Bear leading the actions, to get a supplemental income “gift’ from the Tribe.

BIE Teachers’ Federal Salaries Illegally Supplemented (April 9, 2018)

James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today