Once roaming the Great Plains in the millions, the American bison, or tatanka, was nearly wiped out by European invaders of the North American continent. There are now only around 500,000 of these magnificent creatures in all of North America. Also once a central venerated figure of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota – the “Buffalo People” – the American bison is less revered today, as evidenced by the near-decimation of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s small herd, primarily by tribal members seeking individual monetary gain. PHOTO COURTESY/BYWAYS.ORG

CHEYENNE RIVER RESERVATION, SOUTH DAKOTA -- A legal case that could decimate the buffalo herd on this large reservation has tribal members extremely concerned.

Once the central life force of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples of the Great Plains, the American bison, or American buffalo as it is more commonly known, has of late become the subject of an increasingly heated, convoluted battle on the Cheyenne River Reservation.

Overtones of mismanagement, corruption, greed, tribal sovereignty encroachment, wanton buffalo decimation and possible cultural sacrilege seemingly taint the ongoing dispute.

The current maelstrom stems from a civil suit initially filed in U.S. District Court in Pierre in November of 2009 by Clint Amiotte of Interior, following underpayment for 308 head of buffalo he agreed to sell to the now-defunct Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe-chartered bison cooperative, Pte Hca Ka Inc., in July of 2006.

Amiotte, who is Oglala Lakota, claimed in the suit that the cooperative’s then-executive director, Roy G. Lemmon, solicited him to sell some of his buffalo to Pte Hca Ka for their meat marketability value.

Named as defendants in Amiotte’s federal lawsuit were Pte Hca Ka, formerly located off the Cheyenne River Reservation in Gettysburg; Lemmon of Eagle Butte; McGreevy’s Mid West Meat Co., a meat processing plant located in Wichita, Kan.; and Timothy J. McGreevy, president and operating manager of his family’s meat processing business, also of Wichita.

Further, Amiotte contended that Pte Hca Ka, under the directorship of Lemmon, slaughtered his buffalo on-site or transported them elsewhere for slaughter then shipped the meat to McGreevy’s Mid West Meat Co. for further salability processing.

In the complaint, which was filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Amiotte claimed ten separate causes of action, primarily against Pte Hca Ka and Lemmon. The RICO filing stemmed from the transport of allegedly stolen live buffalo and buffalo meat across state lines for profit.

Amiotte sought compensatory damages of $304,942.90 plus interest since Aug. 31, 2006, punitive damages and “other relief” including attorney’s fees and associated court costs. According to court documents, Amiotte received an initial payment of $12,337.10 from Pte Hca Ka in the form of a check, which ended up being returned for insufficient funds.

Subsequent payments of $10,000 from the CRST’s comptroller and $7,500 from Pte Hca Ka are the only actual monies Amiotte has ever received for the buffalo he agreed to sell in good faith.

In August of 2010, the U.S. District Court ordered Pte Hca Ka to pay a default judgment of over $1 million to Amiotte, according to the West River Eagle of Eagle Butte. Judge Roberto A. Lange issued the ruling as a result of Pte Hca Ka’s failure to respond to the lawsuit.

The CRST permanently closed the bison cooperative in 2008. Since then, the tribe – in the form of tribal administration – has had to legally and rightfully assume the plant’s debts as the charter issuer.

However, Pte Hca Ka, via tribal council, has failed to settle the debt with Amiotte, prompting him to continue to legally force the matter in the interest of solvency.

Amiotte is apparently now in the process of attempting to collect the adjudged compensatory amount from the CRST via a lien placed on the tribe’s collective buffalo herd, according to sources on the reservation. This potential seizure-for-sale of the tribe’s sacred and culturally significant buffalo, has some tribal members, particularly elders, in an uproar.

“I talked to my lawyer this morning, and I’m just kind of declining to comment right now,” said Amiotte in a telephone interview on Dec. 21. “I just can’t really say anything right at the moment,” he said.

Amiotte’s Minneapolis-based attorney, Allison Eklund, declined to comment on his case as well.

“Hopefully this (matter) gets taken care of today,” Amiotte said in reference to a special meeting called by tribal council on Dec. 21 in regard to the issue of payment of the outstanding debt to him.

According to sources, the majority of the meeting was held in executive session and therefore closed to the general public.

Former Pte Hca Ka attorney, Margaret Bad Warrior, who attempted to attend the closed-door portion of the meeting but was excluded on the basis of her former connection to Pte Hca Ka, informed tribal community residents who attended the minimalized open portion of the meeting that Amiotte has the legal right to take the tribe’s land lease payments but not the land itself. She made no mention of the tribe’s buffalo herd, which Amiotte apparently has the right to take as well.

Bad Warrior said she is being retained by the tribe’s Game, Fish and Parks Department (GFP), which currently manages the buffalo herd, not the now-dissolved Pte Hca Ka. Calls to Dennis Rousseau, director of the tribe’s GFP, both for comment and for the exact number of buffalo currently owned by the tribe were not returned.

GFP’s secretary eventually referred Native Sun News to the tribe’s administrative officer, Wayne Ducheneaux II, to secure the exact number of buffalo presently in the tribe’s possession.

However, a request by phone to speak to Ducheneaux at the tribal administration center was vehemently denied by the executive secretary, Lacey Turning Hawk.

“Regardless of if you got any information from who, what, when and where, you cannot put Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe with it because they are not the actual person that can speak to media about that, even if it’s a tribal member” said Turning Hawk, in a puzzling response to Native Sun News’ request to speak directly to Ducheneaux regarding the size of the tribe’s buffalo herd.

Turning Hawk subsequently launched into an unprovoked and confounding diatribe against Native Sun News and the media in general.

Community estimates of current and historical buffalo figures are incongruent, at best. According to Lloyd “Hap” Marshall, tribal elder, the CRST’s collectively owned buffalo herd numbered close to 10,000 head at one time.

Marshall also contends that employees of Pte Hca Ka needlessly slaughtered buffalo and inexplicably entombed them in trenches on the reservation.

“We had some awful poor (tribal) management,” said Marshall. “The buffalo kept expanding in growth and (Pte Hca Ka) started selling or stealing the buffalo” in an effort to keep the buffalo count in check and make a profit at the same time, he said.

The number of buffalo the tribe has owned over the years wildly varies depending on who is being asked, indicated tribal elder and former 30-year council member, Lanny LaPlante. Approximately 30 years ago, in LaPlante’s estimation, the tribe initially had 2,200 head of buffalo. LaPlante currently estimates that somewhere around 600 buffalo reside on the reservation.

Numbers have dwindled due to the questionable management of the herd by Pte Hca Ka, he further indicated.

“Some of the elders tried to go before a council meeting as an organized committee, and they wouldn’t hear us,” LaPlante said. “My biggest concern is the missing buffalo,” he said. “The treasurer has no record of any buffalo being sold or any money being deposited in the tribal treasury, so where is the money and where did the buffalo go?”

“Under the Amiotte case, the federal judge is going to confiscate our buffalo and the whole 22,000-acre ranch,” said LaPlante.

Lange’s U.S. District Court ruling is poised to set a dangerous precedent for tribal nations across the country. It opens a Pandora’s box rife with ever more disregard and disrespect for the protections guaranteed by tribal sovereignty.

During the executive session wrangling on Dec. 21, Amiotte and the tribal council via the tribe’s attorney, Steve Emery, agreed to a two-week postponement of the original Jan. 9 sale date for the tribe’s buffalo, according to an inside source. No action will be taken by Amiotte against Pte Hca Ka’s, or essentially the tribe’s, remaining inanimate assets before Jan. 5, the date a revised notice of public sale will be both published and posted. Phone calls to Emery for an interview went unreturned.

In the days leading up to the special meeting, District 5 tribal council representative Robin LeBeaux acted as a sentinel against Amiotte’s impending seizure and sale of the tribe’s buffalo. LeBeaux’s vigilant defense was staged at the behest of a concerned group of tribal elders known as Lakota Advocates for the Rights of the People and held at the entrance to buffalo pasturelands on the reservation.

“I’m not speaking on behalf of my tribe. I’m speaking on behalf of the elders,” said LeBeaux in a telephone interview on Dec. 21 from her appointed post. “Clint Amiotte got this writ of execution and (U.S. Marshals) are coming” to take the buffalo for sale on his behalf, she said.

A writ of execution is a court-issued document ordering that a legal judgment be enforced. In this case, the matter was settled in federal court, thereby warranting enforcement of the judgment in Amiotte’s favor by the federal law enforcement agency.

If the sale of the tribe’s buffalo herd does not generate enough money to cover the amount owed to Amiotte, tracts of tribal land will subsequently be auctioned off, according to LeBeaux.

“So I called the tribal office on (December 12) and said ‘What the hell’s going on?’,” said LeBeaux. “About a half-hour after that, I got a call saying a plane was going to be coming over the buffalo pasture to count the buffalo,” she said.

“I talked with the elders and they said ‘We need to get out there,’ so the first day, on (December 16), me and my son came out (to the buffalo pasture entrance) with a couple bottles of water, tea and some candy bars.”

The tribe’s Game, Fish and Parks Department was going to guard the entrance to the buffalo pasture so that U.S. Marshals could bring Amiotte to the pasture to round up the buffalo for sale, LeBeaux said.

“I said ‘Hey, wait a second. These buffalo and this land do not belong to Pte Hca Ka, the corporation’,” she said. “Who is the tribe? The tribe is the people so (the buffalo and the land) belong to the people.”

During LeBeaux’s courageous watch, a young woman from the community recorded an interview with the tribal council member and posted the video on the public file sharing website YouTube. The video, entitled “Guarding the Buffalo,” can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baGnQYkpMI.

Further information about Lakota Advocates for the Rights of the People and its stance on Amiotte’s imminent taking of the CRST’s sacred buffalo can also be found on the organization’s Facebook page.

Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Genz of the Sioux Falls District divulged little about the U.S. Marshals’ role in assisting Amiotte in seizing and selling the tribe’s buffalo herd and otherwise further enforcing the writ of execution.

“Outside of the fact that we execute court orders, I really don’t have anything else to say about the whole negotiation or anything like that,” Genz said. “In fact, given that there are negotiations, I really don’t have any comment about it whatsoever,” he said.

When further queried as to whether or not Amiotte’s case and the ensuing involvement of U.S. Marshals potentially violate the sovereignty rights of the CRST, Genz was even less forthcoming.

“I really don’t know and … actually the legal aspect of it I really don’t know,” he said, essentially repeating himself.

The tribe and Amiotte are in negotiations, and hopefully it won’t come to the point that the U.S. Marshals have to assist him in taking the buffalo to settle the debt, said Genz. According to former tribal chairman Joe Brings Plenty, who served two two-year terms in the tribe’s top spot, from 2006 to 2010, some tribal council members lacked accountability as far as the tribal buffalo herd was concerned.

“(Amiotte’s case was) something that was basically thrown into my lap by tribal council,” said Brings Plenty. “My administration tried to get people who were involved with the buffalo program to hold themselves accountable,” he said.

The tribally-chartered, off-reservation slaughter company, Pte Hca Ka, was basically the middleman – they cut the deal. They told McGreevy’s Mid West Meat Company they would provide them with so many buffalo for meat processing and they cut this deal with Amiotte, Brings Plenty said.

“Individuals at Pte Hca Ka did get paid from McGreevy’s Mid West Meat Company but, somehow or other, that funding wasn’t sent to (Amiotte). We did our best to be helpful with Amiotte during my administration,” he said.

McGreevy, both as an individual defendant in Amiotte’s civil suit and as a spokesman for McGreevy’s Mid West Meat Co., said he and the family business were groundlessly dragged into the matter by Amiotte.

“I can’t really say too much because (the case is) still pending,” McGreevy said. “I bought buffalo trimmings from a Pte Hca Ka slaughter plant. The (representative seller’s) name was Roy Lemmon,” he said.

“The agreement I had (was) to buy the meat in a box and pay so much a pound for it, and so I did that and fulfilled the contract. I got this lawsuit and … I was told that I was in cahoots with this Pte Hca Ka and Roy Lemmon in trying to, I guess not pay this Clint Amiotte. My agreement in the thing was I was never going to buy the buffalo, I was going to buy the meat after (Pte Hca Ka) slaughtered it.”

McGreevy said that he made a deposition for the federal district court in which he denied being an accomplice in the matter and that his company had paid Pte Hca Ka in full for the buffalo meat received for processing.

“(My) attorney said I probably got drug into it because somewhere along the chain, I’m the only one with any money,” said McGreevy. “I didn’t even know this Clint Amiotte until this lawsuit,” he said.

Lemmon said that the truth of the ongoing ordeal involving the tribe’s buffalo herd has yet to be told.

“The story hasn’t been reported the way it should be reported from the very (onset),” Lemmon said.

“Here’s the thing that isn’t getting printed: when we went down (to Pte Hca Ka), there was nothing down there except almost $5 million worth of debt. No one talks about any of that. And we took the buffalo herd and made it into a production-type herd to help pay those bills, to pay for the land and try and get (Pte Hca Ka) refinanced. We created 30 jobs – there was 30 people going to work every day that worked in that plant, in that slaughter facility.”

“Everything’s just gotten so twisted around,” he said. “I want to get the truth out there more than anybody does because I’m tired of this deal.”

Lemmon, a non-Native American who is married to a tribal member, held Pte Hca Ka’s lead position for just over four years, from October of 2003 to December of 2007. Following Native Sun News’ initial phone interview with Lemmon, his defense lawyer, Al Arendt of Pierre, called Native Sun News and said that his client has been dismissed from Amiotte’s lawsuit.

“He has been found to have no liability whatsoever and … that dismissal is all we have to say about this matter,” said Arendt on behalf of Lemmon.

The tribe had approximately 1,500 head of buffalo when Brings Plenty took office in 2006. By the end of his tenure just over a year ago, he estimates there were around 400 remaining.

“To me, it was an insult to our Lakota culture, our way of life,” said Brings Plenty. “We say that we are Lakota people, but how is that? What’s the fundamental of being a Lakota? Our language? What we perceive is important in our everyday lives? Or even the buffalo?” he said.

The manner in which some former, as well as still-serving, tribal council members managed Pte Hca Ka from the outset, there was nothing Lakota about it, indicated Brings Plenty.

“They only pretended to be Lakota, and that showed through,” he said.

During the period of the alleged deception of Amiotte for internal profit by Pte Hca Ka, its board of directors consisted of enrolled tribal members Rousseau, Petey Williams, Mona Thompson, Dani Cudmore, John D. Lemke and Sharon Vogel, according to sources on the reservation.

“I don’t want to have to do it, but if the tribe doesn’t settle its debt with me, it’s game on from here on out,” said Amiotte.

Contingent upon the outcome of talks between the tribe and Amiotte, the buffalo herd is currently slated to be put on the auction block on Jan. 23.

“A lot of our buffalo – our relatives (on the Cheyenne River Reservation) – paid an ugly price. This is our culture. This is our identity. They are our basis. We’re said to come from them. If they disappear, then we disappear,” Brings Plenty said.

Both CRST Chairman Kevin Keckler Sr. and Vice Chairman Ted Knife Jr. did not respond to calls for comment.

Contact Jesse Abernathy at staffwriter@nsweekly.com