Native Sun News Today Contributing Editor
RAPID CITY— It took over a quarter century before the hammer of justice finally came down on pedophile pediatrician Stanley Patrick Weber, when he was found guilty of ten counts of child sexual abuse in recent court rulings, two counts occurring during the few years he spent at the Blackfoot Indian Health Service (IHS), in Browning, Montana, and eight, for the subsequent years he spent at the Pine Ridge IHS facility (1995-2011).
While the details of his crimes, and the incompetence or duplicity that facilitated those crimes, is often the subject of reporting when it comes to Weber, what isn’t often reported is the disturbing failure of the process that created a health service where a perpetrator like Weber could operate so destructively over the span of decades.
It is difficult to put the spotlight on the IHS when such a heinous serious of crimes are the catalyst for that spotlight. But now that the victims have some closure by virtue of these long overdue verdicts, how did the IHS become the underfunded, poorly staffed, bureaucratically addled mess that is currently responsible for Native American health care needs?
Before the Geneva Convention of 1929, which attempted to establish some humane ground rules for human conflict, there was the Doctrine of Discovery, defined by the Supreme Court in 1823. Basically, if the US invaded aboriginal homelands, they belonged to the US, but this carried a responsibility for the original inhabitants. It is understandable, then, that Indian policy based upon right of conquest and seizure is not going to be humanitarian in conception.![](https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/12/18/stanleypatrickweber.jpg)
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