In this photo taken on Feb. 2, Daryl Scott, left, and Ted Rousseau dig out cars at Rousseau’s father’s auto service center in Ridgeview, S.D., a community on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, while Rousseau’s son Kaden, 5, looks on. The cars were buried by an ice storm and blizzard that swept through the region nearly two weeks earlier.  AP PHOTO/STEVE McENROEEAGLE BUTTE, S.D. (AP) – Tribal officials prepared Feb. 3 to go door to door to assess needs on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, where some residents were still without electricity and running water nearly two weeks after an ice storm.


Emergency shelters were still open, but seeing fewer people and serving more as distribution centers for food or bottled water. Utility crews continued working through snow and below-freezing temperatures to rebuild above-ground power lines. Federal officials were traveling across the reservation in north central South Dakota and elsewhere to assess damage for possible federal assistance.
And Joe Brings Plenty, in his first term as elected chairman of the impoverished, 8,000-member Lakota Sioux Nation, asked why it took an emergency to get the attention of a government he and many other Indians say has broken its treaty obligations to care for Indians who gave up their land to make way for white settlers.
One out of every two people lives in poverty in Ziebach County, home to a reservation larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The jobless rate among tribal members, according to a 2003 Department of Interior report, was 88 percent.
Here, as on many of the state’s other nine Sioux Indian reservations, jobs are few and life is short. Alcoholism, suicide, crime and a sense of abandonment plague the tribe.
“There are a lot of issues in tribal lands that go unheard of because there’s not an interest from the state, there’s not an interest from the federal government until something like this happens where people pay attention to such a disaster,” Brings Plenty said.
“Then they have to come in and sit down and visit with us.”
The 2008 poverty rate of 54 percent in Ziebach County was the highest in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Cheyenne River Reservation overlaps Ziebach and Dewey counties in the north central part of the state, a rugged and sprawling area that attracts few businesses.
Economic growth is further limited by an outdated water distribution system that failed during the storm.
“We can’t put up homes. We can’t put up additional businesses,” Brings Plenty said. “Our water system needs to be upgraded and this has been a concern for my tribal government for almost two decades.”
The tribe is the only one of the state’s Sioux tribes that does not offer casino gambling, which can be a major employer on reservations.
Job creation is difficult in areas like Cheyenne River that are located far from urban centers and offer little in recreation or amenities that attract families, said Clarence Skye, executive director of United Sioux Tribes, a nonprofit organization working on behalf of Sioux tribes in the Dakotas and Nebraska.
“The reservations were never set aside for economic development, they were set aside to put Indians away,” he said.
Tribal officials were checking households for basic necessities, mental health and medical needs, said Natalie Stites, the tribal attorney who is doubling as information officer.
“We have reports that people are still snowed in, some people never got plowed out and we’re trying to address those situations,” Stites said.
Cheyenne River was part of a broad area in northern South Dakota that lost electricity. The South Dakota Rural Electric Association said 15,500 customers lost power at some point, including 3,800 with the utility that serves the reservation and surrounding area.
Those still without power are outlying ranches where crews may have to replace a mile of power poles and transmission line to restore service to a single customer, spokeswoman Brenda Kleinjan said.