A Minor Penalty For A Major Infraction: Ignoring The Harassment of American Indian Children in South Dakota | Virally Suppressed – Muckraking For The Modern World

30.7.15

A Minor Penalty For A Major Infraction: Ignoring The Harassment of American Indian Children in South Dakota | Virally Suppressed – Muckraking For The Modern World: The pursuit of justice for these Native children has been predictably, if not still discouragingly, lax. Despite large protests from members of the Oglala Lakota community and civil rights activists, along with public condemnations of the racially motivated harassment by these drunk men by Rapid City’s mayor, it would appear at the present moment as if the generations of discrimination of American Indians by whites in the region still holds sway within the justice system. According to Gloria Kitsopoulos, the superintendent and principal of the American Horse School and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, state officials showed tremendous disrespect to herself and the community as a whole in their dealings with them. During a visit from Rapid City’s chief of police, city attorney and South Dakota’s attorney general, a PR rep from Rapid City who was helping to facilitate a meeting with concerned residents addressed the group after first taking the microphone by telling them that, “if anyone wants to use the talking stick when I’m done, let me know,” while the Rapid City Journal ran victim blaming smear on page one of their paper asking, “Did native students stand for national anthem?”, as if an answer one way or the other could justify a group of grown men flinging racist epithets and dumping beer on the heads of children.