I was born in Potter County, and lived there until I went
into the Navy when I was nineteen. I was discharged in 64 and went into
agriculture until I went to Northern State College in 1970. I graduated in 74 with
a degree in Elementary Education.
My first job was teaching industrial arts in grades 6-8 in
Todd County. The first thing I learned was that there were a huge number of
kids there that couldn't read. How they were allowed to get this far in school
with so few skills scared me. I taught industrial arts not basic skills so I
had to adjust my program to fit the students.
We did woodworking, leather craft, and several other basic
things. It was great to find the students who had seldom, if ever, experienced
any success in school were able to do things they were proud of. When I visited
the school fifteen years later, and some of my former students remembered me
and still had some of the projects they did in our class.
My mother had cancer so when the teaching position came up
at Swift Bird Day School, just west of Gettysburg, I decided to move back home.
Swift Bird was just a little school with about 50 kids, ran
by the BIA. When I got there, I was horrified. John Demcheck was the principal
and teacher in the upper grades. He was not interested in teaching anything. He
showed movies to all the students all afternoon every day. I will never forget
one afternoon after an hour or so of watching the Russian revolution, he got
angry at the lower grades, (grades 1-4) because they could no longer sit still.
He would shout at them and order them to keep their eyes on the screen.
He got ill later in the year and I had to take his classes
as well as my own. I could maintain order but I could not teach 30 kids in grades
3-8 who were so far behind I didn't even know where I should begin. What
shocked me was that I began to hear that things in the other two schools, White
Horse and Promise, were not much better. I began to understand what Indian
education was really doing to the children. I vowed to change it.
There was a change in organization the next year and all
three schools were put under a single principal. Dr. Khan was the man chosen to
lead us out of chaos. While Dr. Khan was good to me, he had no idea what the
problem was nor any idea of how to solve it. He was satisfied just to keep the
schools open without really improving education. The whole game was to generate
funds so we could keep our jobs.
That was never the acceptable solution for me. I was
intrigued by the challenge of actually making our school a credible education
institution. I set out to do that in spite of, not because of, the
administration.
Fortunately, Dode and Lillian Brown and Jenny Swimmer were
on the school board. They had kids in school and were interested in better
education for them. Dode was the chairman of the board and really was a
stabilizing factor in the whole process of education change. Dr. Khan had a pet
project of getting a new school building so I found myself in a good position
of improving education because nobody else was interested and not going to
interfere. I decided we had to restructure education there which was before
"restructuring education" became a new buzz word. Most of how to do
things, I learned from Ann Gamble, a special education teacher.
We as the staff learned that to make this work, we would
have to go beyond the traditional classrooms and be perceived by the students
as parents even more than teachers. Our experiences with social services were
not good ones and we decided that if change were to happen, we were the ones
who would have to do it.
We knew that there were periods when children were
vulnerable to abuse and neglect so we would insure that they were safe as we
could make it. This meant the students could come home with the staff, with the
permission of the parents, of course.
We usually took three kids at a time so if accusations came
up, false stories could be easily discredited. We also had faith that if such
an incident did happen, the "licensed professionals" were competent
and would be able to easily dispel false accusations. Unfortunately, for me,
incompetence at that level was systemic. The state and federally licensed
professionals were suffering from paranoia themselves. That left us with no
protection at all.
I was also getting very unpopular with the drinkers and
abusers because I was actively challenging them. Some of the families realized
that they were losing control of their kids since the kids began to recognized
they did not have to accept neglect and abuse. They were opting to spend more
time with the staff, especially the days when the checks came in.
I was getting especially unpopular with Mike Bowker. I had
reports that his 12 year-old daughter had been seen with a carload of drunken
men. This was reported to me by one of the staff members. Later, I saw it for
myself.
I had been getting reports from parents that he was getting
alcohol and possibly drugs to the kids in our school. I started to put the
pressure on him. Once at a school board meeting we nearly came to blows. I
refused to be intimidated even though he was over six ft. and weighed 250 and I
was 5'7" and weighed all of 160. Fortunately, another parent stepped
between us.
Dr. Khan had gotten ill and I was appointed principal of
Swift Bird Day School for about three years. Then there was a cut in staff in
the BIA and Terry Yellow Fat, an Indian, was out of a Job. Les Ducheneaux, a
school board member once stated while the board was in session that he wanted
all teachers to be tribal members. So, I was demoted from principal to
classroom teacher. Yellow Fat was the new principal, not that I minded. I was
tired of fighting this mess and was hopeful Yellow Fat would continue the high
standards we had achieved at that point. The scores on the standardized tests
showed that we had several students on the 90th percentile and the math program
as a whole was on the 51st. The upper class was on the 59th percentile in math.
While Language/arts was lower, it still was in the 40's.
As I mentioned before, the staff was in the roles of being
substitute parents and would go to great lengths to help the kids in need.
There was a group of 3rd grade girls who didn't have
functioning fathers that liked to come to my home, I always felt they were
really part of my family and needed to know they were welcome to be with me
anytime they liked. They liked to stay in Gettysburg with staff members and we
would show them off and take them to the restaurants and other places. We
wanted them to feel welcome in "white man's country" and they did. We
always had great fun, Most of them liked to call me Dad when they were at my
place. I had a little playhouse they loved to clean and pretend it was their
own house. There was always talk of the fun we had at my place in school the
next day. This gave the teachers a tremendous advantage in the classroom
because the teachers were not only teachers, but parents as well. They were
always ready to do their best because we were important to them.
Not all kids chose to visit our homes, but there were some
that wanted to live with us.
There was this one especially depressed kid, Delise Bowker.
I knew she lived in a virtual hell. I had been to her home. It was a dirty
shack with lots of alcohol bottles around the yard. She had an emptiness in her
face; emptied by years of abuse. She was not well accepted by the other
girls because of the aura of agony that her small body spoke of. She had always
heard of the fun the other kids were having in Gettysburg. One day she asked if
she could come to visit. I told her she was always welcome at my place. It mad
me feel good that she may experience a happy evening at least once in her life.
I told her that she would have to get permission from her parents.
The next day, she had her permission slip and we decided on
a day the following week. I couldn't wait to get her out of that hellhole. She
was to come with two other girls who had been to my place many times before and
were the popular kids in school.
Delise spent the rest of the week so excited she wouldn't
leave me alone. At recess, she would hold my hand and ask if everything
was still on. I assured her it was. A faint glow of life worth living began to
creep into her face. But fate had not finished playing a mean trick on her. The
day she was to go, I noticed a severe case of head lice she had. It broke both
of our hearts when I had to tell her she could not come.
However, we got the case of lice straightened out and she
did get to come a few weeks later. I remember especially that evening at the
restaurant. Her face glowed. She was free. She was accepted by everyone. I felt
so good I thanked God for the opportunity to give this child a chance. As it
turned out, God was not kind to either of us.
Everything went well and we returned to the school the next
day. At recess, I had a problem with Darwin LeBeau. He was bullying the other
little boys around and if they would not do what he wanted, he would hit them
in the crotch. I stepped in and made him leave the group of boys. He was angry.
He then went to the monkey bars and began pestering a little girl, Jamie
DuBray. Jamie called for help and I went to get him away from her. I told
Darwin to let her alone but he would not. I then physically removed his hands
from Jamie. He got furious and looked straight at me and said, "You
bastard."
I reported the incident to Yellow Fat. I went to my math
class to present the lesson. About fifteen minutes into the lesson Yellow Fat
came to my class and asked me to come into the office. He told me that
allegations of child molesting had been made against me at the agency office
and he was removing me from my class. He gave me a ride home to Gettysburg and
I was suspended until the matter was investigated.
Darwin Lebeau was kid that caused lots of trouble in
school. He was a bully and knew how to manipulate the system even though he was
only ten.
The investigation took place by the local BIA investigator,
Ben Richards. It is important to remember that it was not Darwin LeBeau who
made the complaint. It was made by some mothers of some girls. Their names were
never given, but it was easy to figure out whom they were. By process of
elimination, I came to the conclusion it was Bella White Eyes and Ansonia Black
Bird. Bella's granddaughter, Shannon Black Bird was in second grade and Sonia
was also her granddaughter and Ansonia was Bella's daughter. I found this very
disturbing because I had helped these girls a lot and were very close friends.
I thought Bella and Ansonia were too, but they wound up cutting my throat and
stabbing me in the back.
During the investigation, Ben Richards cleared up the false
allegations of the mothers, but Darwin LeBeau saw the opportunity to cause me
trouble. He said he had been molested by me. Richards then turned the
investigation over to the FBI agent, Bill Asbury. Asbury set up a meeting to
interview me in Pierre, but when I went he had cancelled it. Asbury was trying
to use psychological warfare. They said they would schedule for another time.
Another time turned out to be several months. I couldn't believe they would be
willing to chance having a child molester in the midst of all these children
and say they did not have time to investigate. They couldn't spare one agent to
protect children, but they could muster an army of FBI agents to protect the
bones of a dinosaur that had been dead for millions of years. I wonder where
their priorities are.
I was then transferred to Eagle Butte under the office of
Cherie Farlee, Agency Supt. for Education. I was a marked man and getting rid
of me was the only objective, and as school board member Les Ducheneaux said at
the school board meeting regardless if I was guilty or not.( Living on the
reservation taught me what it was to be a victim of racial discrimination.)
That had to be the stupidest move possible. There they had
a teacher under in investigation for molesting children and they transferred
him to the highest concentration of children in the county. Well, nobody ever
accused the BIA of good management.
While I was at Eagle Butte, weeks would go by where I would
just have to sit in the lounge, and given nothing to do. They were putting the
pressure on me to cave and resign. Well, I am an old American veteran and
giving up for a moral cause was not acceptable. I was going the distance no
matter what. There is nothing I hate worse than an ENABLER and I was not about
to become one. Not to fight would have just enabled this same thing to happen
to someone else down the road. Not a chance in hell was I going to do that.
As the year passed, the BIA grew unhappier with me causing
problems in the system. At the end of the year they tried to fire me for
administrative reasons. The union saved me for the time. Since the original
allegations did not pan out, they decided to take Darwin LeBeau to a child
psychologist, Lee Pfeiffer, 615 Kansas City Street, Rapid City. I suspect the
FBI knew what psychologist would give the results they wanted and she did.
Lee Pfeiffer provided the evaluation to the FBI and they
provided it to the BIA for my removal. The BIA sent me the proposal to have me
fired. The union stepped in, however, and did an investigation themselves. They
found the story LeBeau told and Pfieffer chose to believe without any real
investigation to be flawed. First, three other boys who were there said no such
thing happened. In addition to that, Darwin tried to get his friend, Larry
Charger, to back up his story by putting him at the scene. Larry told the union
investigator, Peter Cass, a teacher, that he had never been to my place and
that was substantiated by the other boys. Therefore, the witch-hunt began to
lack credibility. Psychologist Lee Pfieffer #152 used Darwin's grandmother for
a source. His grandmother, Dorthy LeBeau, said that she did not understand why
I would spend my time and money on kids. I can understand why Dorthy Lebeau
would say that. I am sure that she felt that the MONEY could be better spent on
alcohol and the TIME could be better spent drinking it. To the best of my
recollection, she died from drinking too much. Lee Pfeiffer, however, chose to
give credibility to her.
As the union investigation progressed, it was learned that
Darwin LeBeau, now that he realized his newfound power, got even more abusive
after I was removed and the principal suspended him from school. That was the
first suspension at Swift Bird Day School in eight years.
And as the union investigation proceeded, the allegations
of the FBI began to unravel. They abandoned the witch-hunt and after nine
months of investigation, suddenly discovered they had no jurisdiction in the
matter. They then tried to pass the mess on to the state "for
prosecution." The Craig Smith, Potter County State's Attorney, stated that
there was not enough evidence for prosecution, but said this did not discount
Darwin LeBeau's story as true or not. So, he rode the fence and it left me
hanging.
As far as my job, I was transferred to Eagle Butte and
placed in Pete Cass's classroom until a teacher in White Horse School was
beaten up by the students and fired. Supt. Farlee then transferred me to that
school. I was there until the end of the year at which time they tried to not
renew my contract. The union kept them from doing that, and I was still
assigned to that school the next year.
Meanwhile, Daniel Black Bird, who was going to school in
Swift Bird called me on the phone. It was clear to me he was in some sort of
trouble. I made arrangements for him and some other kids to go to Pierre for a
break and to give him a chance for him to tell me what was wrong. We went to
Taco John's and he then told me Darwin Lebeau was touching his butt and
threatening him if he told. I asked him if he wanted me to do something and he
said he did. The abuse was so bad he felt he had to transfer to Eagle Butte to
get away. I reported this to Supt. Farlee, but not much was done and the only
thing I accomplished was getting her angry at me. I think they would rather not
hear of those things than have to deal with them. That is the real philosophy
of the BIA bureaucrats; don't have any bad news no matter who has to suffer.
While I was at that school, I got to know a boy in fifth
grade and his sister in fourth who I will refer to as "A" for the boy
and "B" for the girl to spare them from being identified, although
everyone in White Horse knows about this. A was in the fifth grade and B was in
the fourth. A liked me right away and would follow me where ever I went about
one step behind. The secretary once told me that if I stopped suddenly, A would
run into me. He did, in fact, do that.
They lived with their dad, in an old wrecked trailer about
a quarter mile from school. He was a violent man and a convicted felon. He was
married to a girl who just had graduated from the eighth grade. They had a
child and he was abusive to them both. I became very worried about B.
B and I became good friends. She was simply the best kid I
ever knew, and that includes my own. She was dark skinned with black hair and
just a beautiful child. She had taken on the role of parent to her little
sister and the family as a whole. I just adored her. She was very clean, an
excellent student, a very mature kid for her age.
One night at my house she came to visit me. I remember
remarking that she one fault. She asked me what that was. I answered, “You're
not my daughter”. She smiled.
I knew she was possibly in danger with that bastard of a
dad. I would often go to her house to check up on her and make sure that SOB
knew I would challenge him if anything went wrong. I also realized he wouldn't
think twice about killing me. He used to drive by my house with his big rifles
sticking out the window to intimidate me. I always figured if he shot me he
would be in jail and the kids would be safe at least.
Social Services were aware of the situation. Once the
caseworker came to the school and pulled the kids out of class. I was furious.
Things were bad enough without placing a stigma on them. I told the social
worker she needed to do her work at the home, not at school. I think she was
afraid of Alvin, but she wasn't afraid to put the kids into that situation. I
became very angry at the system. I got threatening letters from the Attorney
General's office. I felt if the Attorney General was so interested, perhaps he
should get his ass down there and put himself in jeopardy. That never happens.
He goes home at night to where his kids are safe. For me, I can't sleep that
way.
As time went on, I was assaulted in my office by Sami
Jewit. I wound up getting fired, and Supt. Farlee gave Sami a $103 dollar
purchase order from the Drug and Alcohol prevention fund, even though Sami was
on drugs and violent. Audrey Miner, a school board member, witnessed the
purchase in Bismark. She was not able to do anything because the BIA was going
to cover up and they used that to complete their objective to get rid of me.
Sami left school after her assault. Her two little cousins were so glad she was
gone they came to my house and to show their gratitude. They asked to wash my
dishes. I still have a picture of that- two little girls 6 or 7 washing my dishes.
Supt. Farlee and the BIA were not interested in them because they did not fit
the political agenda.
As I understand it, Sami continued her life of drugs and
violence and got in serious trouble with the Feds. She may have done time. Nice
job, BIA. They pay their administration top dollar for this management.
That was not the worst of it. With me gone, Alvin had
nobody to challenge him and he raped B. So, the perfect kid paid the price for
bureaucratic manipulation. Somehow, many people with power can't understand why
am angry or how angry I am. The psychologists get paranoid when someone
gets angry. Their solution is to suppress the anger and ignore the problem.
Nature put the capacity for anger in humans for a purpose. Psychologists think
they have the power change nature and should do it. Seems nature survived
millions of years without them, but they can't survive a day without nature. As
for my anger, it will live until I die and to hell with forgiveness.
When Farlee fired me, B was unprotected and the rest is
history. I often think of her, but hope we never meet again. I can't stand the
guilt of promising to protect her and didn't. Alvin got jail but that doesn't
help B. Alvin killed her mother in a drinking party and car accident earlier
and B is on her own. Heard she was in foster care somewhere in Sioux Falls.
Audrey Miner, my best friend and B's aunt still somewhere on the reservation
trying to save a few suffering kids on her own. She doesn't have me to help her
and the bureaucrats don't give a damn.
President Carter once said on TV, “We say we care about
kids, but we don't." I never have heard truer words.