South Dakota
Tribe disbands security task force, cites financial struggles • South Dakota Searchlight
FORT THOMPSON — The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe has disbanded a security task force formed a year ago after the homicide of a young man in Fort Thompson.
Task force members were not sworn law enforcement officers, but responded to public safety incidents to de-escalate situations and provide aid.
The Crow Creek tribe doesn’t have its own police force. Many of South Dakota’s tribes do have their own police departments, but Crow Creek is among the tribes without one.
Crow Creek Tribal Chairman Peter Lengkeek said the hope was to transition the task force into a federally funded, tribally managed police force.
“That was one of the goals of this,” said Lengkeek, who added that the tribe remains interested in moving toward a local force.
Noem’s ‘banish the cartels’ obscures statewide drug problem, tribal leaders say
Officers with the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Justice Services provide law enforcement services for Crow Creek and the neighboring Lower Brule Reservation. But Crow Creek leaders have argued that BIA officers aren’t always able to respond to calls in a timely fashion. The tribe declared a state of emergency after the killing of a young man in 2023 and launched its task force.
Task force members were paid by the tribe and received training from a private security firm headquartered on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The dissolution of the task force follows the election of three new members last month to the tribe’s seven-member council. Lengkeek, who retained his seat, confirmed this week that the security task force has been disbanded.
In May, Lengkeek told South Dakota Searchlight he’d hoped to be able to fund the force through the tribe’s marijuana dispensary business and its farming operations. But he also said that “we need to get some funding” to keep the force going.
This week, Lengkeek said the endeavor was not fiscally sustainable without federal support.
Lengkeek said he met with the state’s congressional delegation, and “made them well aware of the situation in the state of emergency and asked them to take the state of emergency where it needs to go for consideration and funding.”
“None of this has happened and no communication has come back to the tribe on the status of this,” Lengkeek said.
Congressional reaction
The Department of Interior’s BIA, Lengkeek said, has yet to address the issue. Questions sent by South Dakota Searchlight to the BIA on the matter early this week had not been returned as of Friday.
Members of the state’s congressional delegation have addressed public safety in tribal areas directly in several forums and formats over the past year.
Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson and Republican Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for more public safety funding for tribes in a June 2023 letter.
Rounds sent another letter to Interior in December, and another to the Government Accountability Office in March, in that case asking a series of pointed questions about budgets and calls for service he said have been left unanswered by Interior. In April, he sent a letter requesting a meeting on a regional BIA law enforcement training center, and he signed on to a bipartisan letter from senators in May asking for a budget increase for tribal public safety.
Also in May, he talked about tribes setting up their own ad hoc security forces during a congressional hearing.
“In response to the police shortages, some residents of tribal communities have even resorted to establishing citizen patrols to look out for crime,” Rounds told Assistant Interior Secretary Bryan Newland during a May oversight hearing by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
Rep. Johnson had a virtual meeting with Crow Creek leadership last August. A spokesperson for his office pointed out that while the emergency declaration had no specific ask for funding, Johnson has also pushed for a regional law enforcement training center, and has called for a congressional field hearing on tribal land.
“Tribal communities are desperate for relief … The federal government [should honor] the commitment we made and work to meet the law enforcement needs of Indian Country,” Johnson said in a press release on the field hearing request.
Johnson’s office also referenced letters to the House Interior Appropriations Committee that directly referenced public safety emergency declarations from Crow Creek and the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Backdrop of controversy
The launch of Crow Creek’s task force came about seven months before Gov. Kristi Noem gave a speech to lawmakers linking illegal border crossings to alleged drug cartel activity on reservations. Lengkeek and other tribal leaders pushed back on the speech and Noem’s later comments suggesting that some tribal leaders are “personally benefiting” from a drug cartel presence on their lands.
Yolanda Aguilar, Crow Creek tribal secretary, was a member of the task force and remains a member of the tribe’s suicide response team, a volunteer group that came before the security task force and will continue on in its wake.
Tribal members divided about banning Noem, united in need for better public safety
Aguilar said it’s unfortunate that the task force is over, but said she and other members won’t waste their training. If she sees a situation and she feels that she can help, she doesn’t plan to ignore it.
“I’m still going to help out,” she said. “It’s about being a good neighbor.”
Jennifer Wounded Knee, who lives near the location of the 2023 homicide that preceded the task force’s creation, said it’s a shame the group has disbanded. Wounded Knee didn’t see it as an adequate replacement for law enforcement, but it helped.
“When they would drive by, people would kind of disperse,” Wounded Knee said.
Fort Thompson resident Alphonso Drapeau said in the end, the force wasn’t able to move the needle on violence in the community.
“We’ve still got gang violence over here,” Drapeau said.
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South Dakota
SDAHO Highlights Internal Expertise at the 2026 Rural Health Leaders Conference – Midwest Medical Edition
Get ready to be inspired! The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) is bringing the energy, insight, and expertise of our own team to the 2026 Rural Health Leaders Conference. Join us June 24–25, 2026, at our new location—the Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center in Pierre, South Dakota—for a dynamic event centered around this year’s theme: A Century Strong: Charting the Next Frontier of Rural Health.
This year’s conference delivers a powerful lineup of speakers and sessions designed to spark ideas, strengthen leadership, and shape the future of rural health care. Among the highlights are sessions led by SDAHO experts who are working every day to advance health care across our state.
State Advocacy UpdateTim Rave and Jacob ParsonsSDAHO’s advocacy team will provide a timely recap of the 2026 legislative session, along with updates on current advocacy efforts and emerging state policy priorities. Attendees will gain valuable insight into evolving reimbursement, funding, and policy developments—and what they mean for health care organizations across the continuum of care. (CE: NHA)
Partnering for Impact: How SDAHO’s Rural Health Initiatives Team Helps Healthcare Facilities SucceedBecky Heisinger, Michelle Jury, Loretta Bryan, Lindsay StromanThis session highlights how SDAHO’s Rural Health Initiatives (RHI) team partners with health care facilities statewide to support quality improvement, workforce development, opioid stigma reduction, and grant management success. Presenters will share how organizations can leverage available programs and funding while strengthening collaboration with SDAHO’s RHI team. (CE: NHA)
Important Deadline Reminder
A room block is available for conference attendees at the Ramkota Hotel, offering the convenience of staying just steps away from the event. Be sure to reserve your room soon—the room block closes May 24.
Ready to celebrate a century of strength and help chart the next frontier of rural health? Join us in Pierre and be part of the momentum. Click here to learn more and register today!
South Dakota
‘Nine Little Indians’ tells story from South Dakota’s ‘painful’ Native boarding schools
MARTY, S.D. — A documentary about nine sisters who attended a boarding school for Native American children in South Dakota and later underwent a lengthy legal battle with the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls will see a global premiere this month.
“
Nine Little Indians
” follows the Charbonneau sisters, who are members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. They attended St. Paul’s Indian Mission School, also known as Marty Indian School, in Marty, South Dakota. All nine sisters said they experienced abuse at the hands of priests and nuns at the school.
Native American children were sent to boarding schools as early as the mid-19th century. Many boarding schools were affiliated with religious groups, and many were directly funded or supported by the federal government through the Indian Civilization Fund Act. That legislation allowed for funding to religious groups that wanted to open schools for Native Americans in an effort to introduce tribes to the “arts of civilization.”
At least 3,000 children died
in Native American boarding schools in the United States between 1828 and 1970, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.
Shannon Kring, the film’s director, has worked with Indigenous communities across the world and directed the 2021 documentary “End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock.” That film chronicles the yearslong fight of the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American people against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
For “Nine Little Indians,” Kring worked with executive producers actor Leonardo DiCaprio and motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins.
Photo courtesy of South Dakota News Watch
Kring told News Watch that she wants the film to be a “healing tool” for all of those who were involved in the boarding school system, as well as their descendants, and acknowledged that it will likely bring up difficult feelings for many who have experiences at boarding schools, even outside of South Dakota.
Kring said that conversations throughout the film’s production and release rollout indicate a general unawareness of the country’s boarding school system. An important part of ensuring the film’s salience is hitting on the scale and scope of the system, she said.
Just
10 states in the country
did not have any Native American boarding schools, and a study from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition said that the United States had a total of 526 schools.
The film will premiere at Lincoln Center
in New York City in a sold-out showing on May 27.
Darrell Red Cloud, a Lakota historian and the great-great grandson of Chief Red Cloud, will open the premiere with a prayer song. Kring told News Watch that the premiere will also include a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Kring also plans showings in South Dakota this summer. She said that she hopes the documentary will resonate even with those who don’t have connections to the boarding school system.
All of the nine tribes in South Dakota had boarding schools operating on their reservations at one point in time, and several existed outside of tribal lands.
Photo courtesy of South Dakota News Watch
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is also doing its part to preserve the stories of those who attended Indian boarding schools throughout the United States. The organization, which was founded in 2012, is near the end of its
two-year oral history project funded by the Department of the Interior
.
That initiative has involved nearly 400 survivors of boarding schools across the United States sitting down with historians to share their experiences at the schools in video interviews, which will be stored in a permanent, public archive of survivor stories.
Charlee Brissette (Sault St. Marie Ojibwe), co-director of the oral history project, told News Watch that hearing real stories, like those told in “Nine Little Indians” and in the oral history project, can allow for a much more potent understanding of the system – especially considering survivors are still alive today.
“To be able to witness firsthand stories from survivors … we’re able to see a face of somebody who’s been directly impacted. We’re able to hear exactly what they’ve gone through, and how that experience has impacted their life and shaped them as a person,” Brisette said.
The South Dakota Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 23, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from May 23 drawing
04-16-41-48-66, Powerball: 26, Power Play: 2
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from May 23 drawing
05-16-24-32-41, Star Ball: 04, ASB: 03
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Dakota Cash numbers from May 23 drawing
02-05-07-10-16
Check Dakota Cash payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 23 drawing
15-20-30-45-49, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize
- Prizes of $100 or less: Can be claimed at any South Dakota Lottery retailer.
- Prizes of $101 or more: Must be claimed from the Lottery. By mail, send a claim form and a signed winning ticket to the Lottery at 711 E. Wells Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501.
- Any jackpot-winning ticket for Dakota Cash or Lotto America, top prize-winning ticket for Lucky for Life, or for the second prizes for Powerball and Mega Millions must be presented in person at a Lottery office. A jackpot-winning Powerball or Mega Millions ticket must be presented in person at the Lottery office in Pierre.
When are the South Dakota Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10 p.m. CT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky for Life: 9:38 p.m. CT daily.
- Lotto America: 9:15 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Dakota Cash: 9 p.m. CT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 10:15 p.m. CT daily.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a South Dakota editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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