South Dakota Corruption
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The Lakota People’s Law Project's 35-page report reveals how private institutions and their relationships with those in the highest seats of power in South Dakota are responsible for the daily violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act and the systemic human rights abuses against the Lakota population in Indian Country. Read the Report HereSome of the main findings of the report include:
- Naming officials who have conflicts of interest including South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, Lieutenant Governor Matt Michels, Department of Health Director Kim Malsam-Rysdon, former Department of Social Services Director Deb Bowman, State Attorneys Dan Todd and Kim Dorsett, and State Senator Alan Solano.
- Identifying the mechanisms by which the aforementioned officials benefited either in their official public capacities or in private capacities, including reimbursing contractual payments with federal dollars and using their offices to leverage contracts for private institutions in which they were employed.
- Exposing the racist underbelly of South Dakota’s state system, which targets the most disadvantaged group in the state and identifies the Department of Social Services as the division most responsible for the system-wide willful violations of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act.
- Depicting the intersection between the pharmaceutical industry and the foster care system, where those in Big Pharma used disadvantaged foster care children to enhance revenue by encouraging doctors to prescribe the off-label use of powerful antipsychotic medication for mild behavioral issues.
- Revealing the antecedents for the introduction of powerful medication as being traceable back to a program called TMAP—the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.
- Properly framing the current ICWA crisis in a historical context, including how Indians have been deprived of access to their own resources and how South Dakota is launching an assault on the last remaining resource—the Native American children.