DLN Issues : Legal Affairs Involving American Indians
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
April 12,2003
By Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer
PIERRE -- Six members of Sioux tribes have filed a lawsuit seeking $25 billion
in damages from the federal government for the alleged mental, physical and
sexual abuse of students at Indian boarding schools nationwide.
The class-action suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in
Washington, D.C., seeks damages on behalf of all students who were allegedly
abused in the past century at the schools, most of which were run by churches
or other religious groups.
The federal government failed in its duty to protect the students who were
sent to the boarding schools, the lawsuit says. In treaties with many tribes,
the government promised to reimburse Indians for any wrongs done by
non-Indians, the suit says.
Other lawsuits will be filed later against the churches or religious
organizations that ran boarding schools, lawyers said.
The lawsuit was started with the allegations of former students from South
Dakota. But it also will involve accusations at boarding schools in Arizona,
Utah, New Mexico, Minnesota and California, said Jeffrey Herman of Hollywood,
Fla., the lead attorney in the case.
The six allege they were beaten and sometimes sexually assaulted by priests
or nuns who ran the boarding schools.
Sherwyn Zephier said he was beaten when he attended St. Paul's boarding
school in Marty, S.D. That school has since closed and been replaced by
another school, the Marty Indian School, which is run by Indians and is not
the subject of the lawsuit.
"I was witness to a lot of these things. I was beaten myself in the middle of
the night. I was tortured in the middle of the night. When I saw one of my
relatives being sexually abused, I tried to run, and I was caught," Zephier
said Thursday at a news conference in Los Angeles.
"They would whip us with boards and sometimes with straps," he said.
His sister, Adele Zephier, cried when she described her time at St. Paul's.
"I was molested there by a priest and watched other girls," she said, and
then broke down crying.
Other allegations were made by former students at St. Francis Boarding School
on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and Holy Rosary Boarding School at the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation.
Dan DuBray of the U.S. Interior Department said federal officials had not yet
seen the lawsuit Friday. "We haven't reviewed it and can't speak to the
merits of it or respond to it."
Blain Rethmeier, spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, said it was too
early to comment on the lawsuit.
"We'll evaluate this claim and make a determination how best to proceed," he
said.
Jerry Klein, chancellor of the Sioux Falls Diocese of the Catholic Church,
said the diocese was not directly involved in running the St. Paul's school.
"We've been aggressive in this diocese in trying to reach out to people who
have been harmed by abuse, regardless of the source of the abuse," Klein
said. "We continue to have that concern, and our door has been and will
continue to be open to assist anyone who has been harmed."
The lawsuit said the federal government set up the boarding-school system in
the late 1800s to try to wipe out Indian culture, tradition and language by
assimilating Indian children into "white society."
Schools controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and churches used violence
and abuse against the students and sometimes even killed the children, the
suit said.
"The physical beatings and sexual abuse were justified by school teachers,
administrators and officials as a means to ‘send the devil out' of the Native
American children," according to the lawsuit.
Gary Frischer, a California legal consultant, said the lawsuit was started
after someone from South Dakota called him last year. The caller noted that
lawsuits were being filed in alleged church-abuse cases around the nation but
nothing had been done about abuse in Indian schools, he said.
Frischer said he has talked to nearly 1,000 people in South Dakota who will
become plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "It didn't matter which school I went to.
The stories were very similar for different schools."
One of the original six plaintiffs, Edna Little Elk, said she saw her cousin
beaten to death when she attended the St. Francis boarding school in
1921-1924.
Christine Medicine Horn said she was thrown down a three-story laundry chute,
stuffed in a trash can and punished in other ways for not speaking English
when she attended St. Paul's in Marty.
Posted to DLN Advocacy by Alfred Bone Shirt
An Interview with Mr. Gary Frischer
Black Hills People's News
March 2003
PINE RIDGE--Mr. Gary Frischer was in Pine Ridge this week. Frischer is a Multi-District Litigation Consultant. Mr. Frischer said that Attorney Jeffrey Herman, who has previously and successfully sued the Catholic Church, is representing hundreds of Lakota who have been sexually, mentally and physically abused.
"It's about the alleged stripping of the Lakota Culture from many children who attended Catholic schools in the past," Frischer said. "And the federal lawsuit will be filed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on 17 March."
When Frischer was asked how long he's been around here, he answered, "I came here in September to do research, so we have solid legs to stand on. This is my fifth trip here, every two or three weeks I'm here. And what I have found is that the Catholic Church, including Holy Rosary, has completely derailed a culture. Our goal is to reflect what has happened to these Indian people. I have always said, if Indian people want to practice their traditions, they should be allowed to do so."
When asked if he and Attorney Herman were accustomed to major lawsuits such as this, he answered, "I have been at this for 23 years, and this is the best lawsuit I've been involved in. I did the DuPont Fire and the Union Carbide lawsuit in India. We did the litigation on the Lockerbie, Scotland, terrorist attack. Another high-profile lawsuit we did was the MIA Act of Congress."
BHPNEWS: The Catholic Church has lost a lot of credibility in the past few years.
"With all the sexual abuse lawsuits the Catholic Church has been involved in," Frischer said, "the Church has lost all credibility. And that is in our favor. We have discovered the U.S. government allegedly made secret payments for children to attend St. Francis. The government paid for children to go to that school. And the school is supposed to be independently funded. That's concealment."
BHPNEWS: Will a successful lawsuit shut down the Catholic schools in Indian country?
Frischer said no, the schools will still be there and operating. The U.S. government honors treaty stipulations; therefore, the government will keep them running.
BHPNEWS: Abuse of children in Catholic schools is so well know, I'm surprised a lawsuit like this hasn't come forward years ago.
"People elsewhere don't care," Frischer said. "If people elsewhere, white people, went through what the Indian people went through due to the Catholic Church, they would have had the church in court years ago. And the lawsuits would have driven the Church out of business. It's time for justice here. Two years ago we couldn't have successfully done this. Timing is everything now. This lawsuit will bring change to the whole Indian world."
BHPNEWS: This lawsuit will be high profile?
"Yes," Frischer answered, "people everywhere need to know what happened during and after colonization. To see that maybe these people, who brought and forced Christianity on the people, weren't so holy. To make the lawsuit high profile, the minute the lawsuit is filed in Sioux Falls, we will go to worldwide media. Worldwide media has already been notified."
When asked what drives his consulting firm and law team to seek out these cases, Frischer replied, "I love doing these projects. These horrors, allegedly inflicted on one group of people, need to be dealt with in litigation; then the grieving and healing can begin. There was so much oppression of your people. I have interviewed so many Indian people, and the same names of priests and nuns keep popping up. When these priests and nuns bot out of hand, the Church just transferred them; just transferred the problem to a different area."
BHPNEWS: In history books, I have read where the Catholics basically traded souls for soil.
"According to the 1868 Treaty," Frischer said, "the schools were brought to the Indians to teach English. And that was it. Schools weren't allowed to convert Indian people to Christianity. And they definitely weren't set up to inflict sexual, physical and mental torture. And they definitely weren't set up to destroy a nation of people and their culture. The people never asked for a holocaust."
Mr. Frischer hosted an informational meeting/supper at Wapamni CAP this past Tuesday. His flyer read:
If you are interested in joining the hundred of Oyate that are pursuing this litigation, please attend this important meeting. For more information, please call Floyd Hand at 867-5762.
Mr. Frischer can also be reached at 605-384-5100 or gfomedia.com
home : mission statement : contact : site map : search : store : links
DLN coalition : DLN issues : DLN nation : related issues Any reprints are under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law : See http://www.dlncoalition.org/fair_use.htm.
|
