Rounds, Daugaard administrations received many millions to traffic Native children

Negatives continue to damn GOP hopefuls in South Dakota.

For another good look at why Mike Rounds is such a poor candidate for tribal nations check out this piece from Christina Rose, Native Sun News, posted at indianz:

American Indian High school graduation rates have dropped from 68 percent to 45 percent in South Dakota in the last two years. One teacher even stated that the current curriculum includes mistakes based on was known in the 1960s. “They changed the cover on the old curriculum. That’s all they did,” said Heather Brown, teacher at the Takini School. The fifth grade social studies lesson plans originate with European settlers and the difficulties they had upon arriving on these shores. One teacher said that out of the entire curriculum, there is only one section on Native Americans and it features only early contact. The all-white representation of people within the curriculum is said by educators to be as alienating as the lesson plans.

The name, Hani Shafai, keeps popping up in searches into the developing scandal surrounding the Daugaard/Children's Home Society campaign donation circle.

It's well known that South Dakota is a moocher state and will shaft anybody it can to make $1.59.

Among other things, the October 2011 series — “Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families” — said Native American children in South Dakota too often are placed with white families, contrary to the intent of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. It also said the state has a financial incentive to take Native American children into state custody, that Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s work at Children’s Home Society while he was lieutenant governor was a conflict of interest, and that South Dakota’s foster care system in general has a cultural bias against Native Americans. The Coalition of Sioux Tribes for Children and Families and the Lakota People’s Law Project cited this number in a report to Congress in January. “We believe it is likely that the state consciously treats Native American foster children as an attractor of federal money,” the coalition’s report said. --Cody Winchester, Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Links added.

A summit of stakeholders is scheduled for April in Rapid City.

NPR followed up on its original story. Laura Sullivan reports that South Dakota Department of Social Services has likely broken federal law:

"I've seen it firsthand," says Brandon Sazue, chairman of the Crow Creek tribe. "That would be like United States going into a foreign country and saying, 'Hey, I'm taking your kid because of this or that,' " he said. "I mean, this is within the boundaries of the Crow Creek Sioux Indian reservation, and as far as I'm concerned, we are the government." Officials with that agency say that when native children are placed in foster care, South Dakota and other states generally move the children onto Medicaid, which is heavily subsidized by millions in federal dollars.

The State is also most certainly in violation of the 'Bad Man Clause' because federal money is involved: it has been applied in other legal actions according to a report by Mary Garrigan in the Rapid City Journal:

The "bad man" legal argument was successfully used by Lavetta Elk, another Oglala Sioux, in a lawsuit alleging that a U.S. Army recruiter had violated the "bad man" clause when he sexually molested her while transporting her to a military recruiting appointment. Elk recently won a $650,000 settlement that left intact a federal judge's ruling that said the treaty language requires the government to reimburse Sioux tribe members who are injured by "any wrong" done by "bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States."

One red state commenter at reporter Bob Mercer's blog, Pure Pierre Politics, believes DSS is broken because women employed there hyphenate their names.

The Sioux City Journal and its parent company are earth haters' wet dreams with histories of supporting only GOP candidates.

Dr. David Newquist chronicles South Dakota's path to red state collapse as TOTN interviews Laura Sullivan about her heart rending Native foster children story: