A report of condition on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate bands of Santee Dakota during the Great Depression and the formation of the Indian Welfare and Protective Association there.

‘South Dakota Indians Begin Battle for Relief’ from Producers News (Plentywood, Montana). Vol. 17 No. 52. March 15, 1935.

Indian Leader Shows “100 Percent Americans” Robbed by Same Gang That Robs White Farmers; Given Less Relief Because They Are Indians

VEBLEN, S.D. We, the American Indians, are struggling for our very existence today. Turn where we may, we are being harassed and oppressed in every way possible. First, the government took our best lands away and put us on reservations. This reservation in particular was surveyed by Michial Paul, an Indian, and three government agents.

Michial Paul’s intention was to survey this reservation about 200 miles square. But the agents had ideas of their own. They filled the Indian up with whiskey and had him real drunk and surveyed the reservation just to suit themselves. So instead of being a square piece of land, this reservation is shaped like an ice-cream cone, taking in all rocks and hills.

Have Little Land

There is always a feeling among the white people that the Indians should be well off because they have lands. This is not true, as this reservation is so small that only persons that were born before the year 1890 were allotted lands, and those who were born later have no allotments and since they have no income, have had to make their living the same as any other citizen.

There is no doubt that the Indians would be well off financially today if the government would only settle all the claims which are justly due us, but the government has ignored all of our treaties which were made in good faith. At the present time our most perplexing question is relief.

Before elections last fall the Democrats, in their speeches made to the Indians, said: “As good, upright citizens of South Dakota, vote for Tom Berry and all the other Democrats and you will have a good hospital and medical care. You will never be hungry or cold.”

On the basis of these promises, the majority of the 50,000 Indians of South Dakota cast their votes for the Democrats.

Election has come and gone, but not one of these promises has as yet materialized and as usual we are still hungry and cold.

Discrimination

Soon after elections, all the Indians were shifted to white relief in three different counties. The relief officials then said that the Indians, being used to a lower standard of living, should be given less.

This was true 80 years ago when all sorts of wild game roamed the prairies and the word depression was unknown. But during these times our standard of living can be equal to any class of people if we had the money, since we can eat what they eat. We are denied clothes, bed clothes and coal. As a result, our children cannot attend school regularly as they have no warm clothing to wear.

Small Allowance

The white farmers are given very small cash allowances per week, but we are given less. At the present time we are expected to buy fuel, clothes and support our families on $3 per week at the most, and as low as $1.50 for some families. In general the living conditions among the Indians today are very deplorable.

You may wonder what we have done to protect ourselves in these trying times. We have organized a small group, consisting of seven Indians, to fight for our rights. We called our organization the Indian Welfare and Protective Association. Within a short time we had 42 members.

We have had some good results through the work of this organization.

Indian Office Buys Leaders

Then the Indian office, which is always trying to keep us in a miserable condition, used a different scheme to wreck our organization. They supplied work with higher wages to some of the members of the executive committee who readily accepted these offers and quit us cold.

But we are replacing these vacancies with new and better members. It is indeed a hard task to convince the Indians that only through an organized body can we gain results. This is because they have been misled and fooled so many times before. But through the evidence of their home conditions and results gained by the different organizations, they are commencing to realize that only through mass action can anything be gained.

At a meeting called the 10th of February, a committee of three was elected to drive to Britton, the county seat, to obtain aid for some families that were not allowed to work at all. Many demands were made by the committee and some grievances were remedied. The relief administrator was asked why the Indians were not treated equally with the white workers and were given less relief. He answered by saying that “We are instructed to issue relief according to how much effort each individual has made to support himself before the depression.” We thought that was the best joke we ever heard, because we know personally most of the relief officials in the office, and we know that they have never done an honest day’s work in their lives, so we asked: “Why then do the relief officials get more than the workers?” He did not relish that much.

Entitled to Relief

We made him understand we work just as hard as anybody else and are entitled to anything we get through relief. We were considered very good citizens before election, but now we are rated as the lowest class of people on relief. But we have an opinion of our own. We know we are at least more honest than relief officials whose program is to starve us out.

Plans are now being made to extend our campaign of action throughout the reservation in a fight for more relief. There will be many obstacles in this campaign, as whenever we voice our protests to improve our conditions, they tell us that we act very radical and sometimes are mean enough to call us “reds.”

Personally I will tell the world I am a Red Man! which was not my choice but of which I am mighty proud!

Producer’s News was a radical rural voice that became a Communist publication in the late 1920s. First published in Plentywood, Montana in Sheridan County, one of the few places to elect Communists in the 1920s. as the organ of the Montana Non-Partisan League beginning in 1918, took a left turn and passed into the hands of Communist editor Charley Taylor and then the Montana Farmer-Labor Party in 1924. In the late 1920s the paper became the voice of the United Farmers League before becoming the organ of the Communist-dominated Farm Holiday Association in 1935, ending its nearly twenty year run in 1937.

PDF of original issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85053305/1935-03-15/ed-1/seq-1/