A fundraising plea from St. Joseph’s Indian School. Image from Facebook
‘Begging for dollars’ out of hand at St. Joseph’s Indian School
By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn CNN, filled with their reporter's indignation that goes with the “expose” of another Indian story of fraud, racism, greed and hypocrisy reports in a Nov. 18 airing that St. Joseph's Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota, (a boarding school for Sioux Indian Tribal children) sent out 30 million mailers last year to unsuspecting “bleeding heart” donors across the U. S. with false and stereotypic pleas, using made-up quotes from falsely named and unknown students. The mailers claimed among other things, that “the children will freeze if we can't pay our heating bills”. The pamphlets, written by an unnamed fundraiser and the school officers, used fraudulent quotes from unknown students who were quoted as saying things like: “I love this school because my father gets drunk and beats me.” And, “This school helps me because my mother would rather use drugs and doesn't care for me.” These mailers raked in $120,000,000 from which the unnamed fund raiser took about half. This Catholic school, the CNN report reports, has $64,000,000 in unrestricted assets today. A multi-tribal charitable institution which has claimed to care for native children here in this off-reservation town located on the Missouri River for most of the 20th century, it is well known to the people it presumes to serve. The people of the 300,000 acre Crow Creek Indian Reservation, its agency a mere18 miles away, have accepted the charitable work of this institution over the decades without much comment, but the CNN news center has probably told them nothing new with this most recent “expose." Indeed, 30 years ago I sat with my father in his 3-room home in Big Bend when I was a young parent and he was a grandfather and as we looked at the pamphlets from the school sent to our white neighbors, his only comment was: “They have no right to make beggars of our children.” With sorrow, we acknowledged that making money using Indians as pitiful, poverty stricken and helpless people has been a profitable endeavor for non-Indian institutions ever since the treaties were signed. That is a reality whether you are talking about charitable organizations, the law, business interests, federal bureaucracies, or the man in the street. This history may account for the rather desultory, rambling and altogether passive comments from the tribal people the CNN reporter subsequently interviewed:
“It's not very nice treating them as less than people.” “I don't know, making up names. It blows my mind.” “I'm sure maybe a lot of that money is being used for native kids but, they need to tell the right story.” “We call this poverty porn.”Leonard Pease, the vice president of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe says: “It's BS. Who is Josh Little Bear (the name accompanying one of the photos)? There's no Little Bears around here. This has been going on a long time.” Mike Terrell, president of the school, Joana Ohm, the communications director, and Joel Bishop. a tribal council member, had little comment. Called “Little Indian Begging Letters” by Indians on the rez, they have been the mainstay for the soliciting of funds on Indian Reservations, in the same way that white Christian citizens in the cities and communities across America have provided clothing and food for the “needy.” The poverty situation on Indian Reservations has now been absorbed into the broader economic dialogue of the U. S. with little attention paid to the very specific issues and causes suffered by the “colonized” enclaves called “reserved” lands held in “trust” by the Federal Government for the last 200 years. Tribal Governments, formed by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, are notably inefficient, but the men and women who are elected by the people of the tribe have worked hard to make these tribal governmental structures work for the people to bring better lives to the people. They will continue to do so. Governmental systems are flawed in many ways, and yet citizens of Indian Nations must do everything possible to help their institutions to become independent sovereigns. Dependency is the plague of systems now in place. The Sioux Nation does not represent a helpless and uncaring world, and its Treaty obligations along with its relationship with the Federal Government must be upheld. About the story told by CNN, it tells what it knows of the story but offers little hope. It may be a great revelation to those who know little about life as an Indian in America, but, in the end, dependency accepted from well-meaning as well as criminal “do-gooders” does little to offer our children a decent future. (Elizabeth Cook can be contacted at Elizcoly@aol.com)) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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