Tag: social ills

By Vi Waln

Another October is past. I believe the most important awareness activity observed in October is that of domestic violence. Women, children and even men of all ages suffer from violent acts of physical, mental, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse on a daily basis. And many have lost their lives because of violence.

Abuse often comes from close family members who live under the same roof. Victims of domestic violence should seek help right away. Do not continue to risk your emotional, mental, spiritual or physical well-being to stay with your abuser. Abuse is not love.

Abusers are often master manipulators. They can be very convincing when they manipulate you with their emotional sweet talk. Perhaps the most famous line spoken by an abuser is”I won’t ever hit you again.” But you and I both know he or she will eventually commit another violent act.

You are worth more than the abuser leads you to believe. Get away today! It is not worth putting your very life or your children’s lives at risk to continue living with a violent person.

I believe individuals engulfed in violent thinking suffer from an acute form of mental illness. And I have close relatives who are constantly consumed by their own inner violent thoughts. One male I know has grown up to be a big boy. He tends to tower over everyone. He must think it gives him some kind of license to abuse his companion because that is what he does.

In one of his relationships he beat his girlfriend to the point where she suffered broken bones. They are not together anymore but he still attempts to intimidate her when he sees her in public places. Their small child witnessed the assault the mother suffered. As much as I do not like to see children raised by only one parent, I am glad they are not together anymore because at least the child doesn’t have to watch the dad beat up on the mom.

There are incidents where women have been murdered because of domestic violence and the perpetrator has gone free. Some silent witness sillouettes represent unsolved deaths where a suspect might walk free and never be prosecuted. I do not want to see another woman die from a beating inflicted upon her by her companion.

If you are in an abusive relationship please get away right now. You might save your own life.

Vi Waln is Sicangu Lakota and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Her columns were awarded first place in the South Dakota Newspaper Association 2010 contest. She can be reached through email at sicanguscribe@yahoo.com

Last week National Public Radio broadcast a three-part investigative report criticizing South Dakota’s foster care system. Journalists Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters report these numbers:

1. Each year, we South Dakotans take about 700 Native American children from their homes.
2. Native American children make up 13% of our child population.
3. Native American children make up 53% of the kids taken into our foster care system.
4. A large majority of South Dakota’s Native American foster kids are placed with non-Native families, in apparent contravention of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which restricts such non-Native placement of Native children to exceptional circumstances.
5. Eleven out of 183 state case workers are Native American.

What do these numbers tell us?

Do these numbers result from our individual and institutional racism? No decent human enjoys separating children from their parents. But maybe it’s easier for social workers and judges to carry out such a terrible action when the children and parents are others.

Do those numbers speak to a reservation reality beyond racism? Maybe more Native kids end up in foster care because more Native kids grow up in households disrupted by poverty, alcoholism, and violence. Maybe Native American culture is so broken that it can’t produce enough social workers, foster parents, or functional families to take care of its own children. But if that’s the case, don’t we end up looking in the mirror again at the racism with which we invaders broke that culture? And if we broke it, don’t we have to fix it?

The NPR report raises many questions. None are more important than these:

1. Why aren’t those Native children with their families?
2. Can we put those Native families back together?
3. How do we keep more Native families from falling apart?

Neither Left, Right, nor Center can provide easy answers to those questions. But we may find a partial answer in one other number from the NPR report: each year South Dakota gets nearly a hundred million dollars from Uncle Sam for foster care. That money boosts the South Dakota economy. If half the kids in the system drawing that helpful money are Native Americans, shouldn’t we find a way to pump half of that money back into the Native economy?

Money won’t fix centuries of cultural warfare, but it could help more Native foster parents provide kids in need with food, clothes, and love in their own communities.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.

By Cory Heidelberger

I note with regret that I have been party to the killing of two men in the last two months. I hope to avoid being party to a third killing.

On August 2, Rapid City police officers killed Daniel Tiger. On September 6, a South Dakota Highway Patrol officer killed Cody Engen. Both Tiger and Engen posed an immediate threat to public safety. Both were armed. Tiger was firing his weapon and had already mortally wounded two police officers. Engen was shooting, destroying property, and threatening officers.

Both men needed to be stopped. We stopped them. We, through the police officers we empower through our democratic laws, killed them. Urgent necessity justified deadly force.

On April 12, South Dakota Penitentiary guard Ronald Johnson died at the hands of convicted felon Eric Robert. On September 16, Robert confessed to that murder. Robert spoke of his crime with cold pretense, claiming he planned to”eliminate one of my oppressors,” then saying he”executed” the prison guard. Robert said he tried to grab a guard’s assault rifle so he could”continue to shoot officers.”

If guards had come upon Robert as he attacked Officer Johnson, if it had appeared that verbal commands or non-lethal force could not have stopped him, killing Robert would have been justified. However, Robert has been stopped. We, through the state, have disarmed and confined him. His crime has prompted review and strengthening of security measures in the Pen. If our prison system works properly, Robert will no longer pose an immediate threat to anyone.

When civilized means fail, deadly force is our last resort. In a street shoot-out, there is no time for civilized means. But in a prison, where a confessed killer is subdued by strong men and strong bars, we have time for civilized means.

We don’t need to kill Eric Robert to protect ourselves. Quite the contrary: to protect ourselves from avoidable blood on our hands, we need to keep Robert alive, in a cell, alone, for the rest of his days, under the watchful eye of a civilized state.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.