Indian Health Service

Complaint Filed On South Dakota Senators For Unlawful Activity

May 31, 2022 Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Resist! Health Care, Indian Health Service, Senators, South Dakota

Rapid City, SD - A complaint has been filed with the Senate Ethics Committee in Washington, DC, regarding unlawful activity by both South Dakota Senators, Mike Rounds (R-SD) and John Thune (R-SD). Electronically filed with the Senate Ethics Committee on May 26, 2022, the Complaint was sent in by four former patients of the Sioux San Indian Health Service Health Facility (Sioux San) in Rapid City. The complaint states that both Senators pressured the Indian Health Service (IHS) to enter into an unlawful contract for the administration of the Sioux San IHS Health Facility with one of their own non-profit corporations, a data collection agency called the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board (GPTLHB). The corporation changed the historic name of the Sioux San to the Oyate Health Center (OHC).

The Self Determination Of Native Americans Hinges On This Supreme Court Case

May 24, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Indian Health Service, Indigenous Sovereignty, Privatization, South Dakota

A case brought before the United States Supreme Court by three Native American women, who have been representing themselves, may decide the future of the 1975 Indian Self Determination Act. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charmaine White Face, a petitioner in the case, about her fight to stop the privatization of an Indian Health Service facility, Sioux San Hospital in Rapid City South Dakota, that serves 325 tribes in the area. She describes how the privatization is harming the health of the people who use this historic hospital. To her knowledge, this is the first effort to privatize an Indian Health Service hospital. If the privatization is allowed to continue, which has been done without the consent of the people who are impacted, it will set a dangerous precedent for all tribes and allow any federal agency to take a similar illegal action.

Help Three Native American Women Save Their Hospital

May 16, 2021 Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Resist! Hospitals, Indian Health Service, Indigenous Activism, South Dakota

When Donna Gilbert asked me to be a part of her lawsuit, I immediately said yes. After having survived three other lawsuits, I should have been leery. But when peoples’ lives are at stake, it is not hard to make a hard decision. Initially it was the Oglala Sioux Tribal Court (OST). It was my son’s idea to go to the Tribal Court because we knew what the outcome would be. The OST court would dismiss our case because the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board (GPTCHB) was under the jurisdiction of the state of South Dakota and was not a Tribal Organization. But we needed this verified by a court. We also knew that the other federal courts would acknowledge the Tribal court ruling, or were supposed to. It would be a win for the OST Court and for the patients who use Sioux San Hospital. As it turned out, the federal District Court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals both ignored and disregarded the OST court ruling.

‘Trying To Teach Ourselves’ Deep-Rooted Knowledge

May 15, 2020 Sydney Akridge, Indian Country Today. Create! Health Care, Indian Health Service, Indigenous culture, Medicines

Cheryl Morales started the medicinal garden at the Aaniiih Nakoda College’s demonstration farm in 2010 with only four plants: yarrow, echinacea, plantain and liquorice root. After 10 years, the garden has expanded to hold more than 60 plants. The six raised garden beds, a garden wheel and a greenhouse make up almost 30,000 square feet. Almost all of her plants also grow naturally in the mountains, valleys and river banks on the Fort Belknap Reservation in northern Montana. The plants have also been used for generations as medicines to treat a wide variety of symptoms: echinacea is used to help boost the immune system, protecting healthy cells; valerian is a strong sedative that can address nervousness, tension and stress; liquorice root is an antihistamine, which treats allergy symptoms.

Indian Health Services Is Ill-Prepared For The Coronavirus Crisis

March 29, 2020 Dr. Melissa Riley, Rewire.news. Educate! COVID-19, health, Indian Health Service, Indigenous Peoples

Most Native Americans rely on Indian Health Services (IHS), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for their health-care needs. Since it was established in 1955, IHS has been crucial to Native American health care, yet it continues to suffer from several structural deficits, such as maintaining medical providers, operating from safe facilities, and funding—the agency’s most severe and life-impacting deficit—as it is chronically underfunded by billions of dollars each year. If IHS can barely keep up with broken bones and preventive care, what makes our people across the country think IHS can handle the outbreak of COVID-19? Native Americans across the United States who are the health-care recipients of IHS often do not have consistent, quality health care that build trust and satisfaction as a patient-provider should have.

When Stereotyping Is A Screen For Genocide

March 25, 2020 By Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Resist! Health Care, Indian Health Service, Privatization

If you take out the words “tribal” and “Indian” all you have left are a group of patients fighting a federal government agency for the right to health care. That’s what stereotyping does. It blinds people to getting to the heart of the matter. It puts an extra burden on the people and lets a government agency get away with violations of federal laws. This is exactly what is happening to Donna Gilbert, Julie Mohney, and the author as we happen to be Native American Indians fighting the United States Indian Health Service and their illegal contract with an information agency that carries the lofty name “Great Plains Tribal Chairmens’ Health Board.” No one seems to remember that tribal chairmen have no authority, jurisdiction, or sovereign immunity off of the reservations.

Congress Is Starving The Indian Health Service

December 9, 2018 Nick Martin, Splinter News. Educate! Appropriations, Congress, Indian Health Service

The Argus Leader published a massive series on Wednesday outlining the failures of the federally-funded Indian Health Service in South Dakota and the toll it’s taken on two tribes, the Rosebud Sioux and Oglala Sioux, also known as the Oglala Lakota. The Leader’s blockbuster report provides everything from first-hand horror stories of Natives losing limbs and loved ones to damning statistics that show the breadth of the systematic failure to provide decent healthcare to the tribes—citing a state report, the newspaper found that the median life expectancy for Native Americans living in South Dakota is a staggering 21 years shorter than the state average.

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