Tribes defend themselves against a pandemic and South Dakota’s state government

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and Oglala Sioux Tribe’s COVID-19 checkpoints are at stake.

As COVID-19 numbers soared across the country this spring, tribal nations began closing their reservation boundaries to non-residents. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux erected checkpoints on roads entering their reservations in order to protect their citizens, even as the state of South Dakota refused to require masks or mandate social distance. By early May, South Dakota Gov. Kirsti Noem, R, explicitly told the tribes to remove their checkpoints or face the consequences.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier declined, saying that doing so would “seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation.” But Noem persisted. Throughout the pandemic, the governor has relied on voluntary measures, dismissed epidemiological studies and eschewed lockdowns in favor of business. Now, tribes say Noem has set herself against the safety of people on tribal lands by opposing their COVID-19 checkpoints.

89-year-old Emma Waters, an Oglala Lakota Tribal Member, sits between Pine Ridge Reservation border patrol workers and her daughter in support of COVID-19 checkpoints operated by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes. Waters had been quarantined since March, but when she found out about the Gov. Kristi Noem’s order to close the checkpoints, she decided to take a stand at the demonstration, held on Mother’s Day. Anna Salomon

Cultural Survival, a leading Indigenous rights organization, says this kind of behavior — strong-arming Indigenous nations into removing pandemic protections — is not uncommon among repressive governments that oppose Indigenous human rights. The group, which advocates for tribal communities’ self-determination, has found dozens of pandemic-related human rights violations against Indigenous peoples in North America, including four in the Western United States. In June, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed a complaint against the federal government, alleging that forcing tribes to shut down COVID-19 checkpoints would undermine tribal sovereignty and the people’s health and well-being.

See the rest of the story at: https://www.hcn.org/articles/indigenous-affairs-covid19-tribes-defend-themselves-against-a-pandemic-and-south-dakotas-state-government

Kalen Goodluck is a contributing editor at High Country News.