Tribal chairman suspended after ordering drug tests

A tribal chairman just nine months on the job decides he’s seen enough of drug problems ravaging his reservation.

Twenty Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate babies came into the world in the last year addicted to methamphetamine. Not so long ago, a meth pipe turned up next to the toilet paper in a woman’s bathroom inside tribal headquarters.

Chairman Bruce Renville says he had to take a stand, so he called for a surprise mass drug testing of hundreds of his Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal employees on Aug. 17 in hopes of rooting out the problems.

Though many failed that test, only one — Renville — appears in danger of losing his job as a result of it. He thought he was doing right by a tribe engaged in a zero-tolerance battle against the scourge of drug abuse. But all he did, his opponents insist, is trample individual and constitutional rights by his actions.

“I did the right thing. I was within my authority as chairman to do a drug test,” said Renville, 71, who has been suspended by his tribal council for calling for the testing and now faces a removal hearing next week. “But people are angry. They want somebody’s head. I guess they want mine.”

Headhunting is nothing new in Indian country. Tribal governments across South Dakota’s nine reservations are constantly recalling and removing leaders for all manner of real or imagined transgressions.

Some of it is legitimate — the poverty and dependence foisted on tribes by the federal government are natural breeding grounds for corruption, theft and abuse of power. But sometimes people like Renville simply become pawns in struggles among tiospayes, or extended Lakota or Dakota families, who want nothing more than to control the purse strings and the power on their tribal lands.

“I will tell you ... that we need to evaluate the entire tribal government system,” David Flute, council representative for the Lake Traverse District on the Sisseton Wahpeton reservation, said in the aftermath of this latest tribal squabble. “We need to look at our processes, at our procedures, and evaluate it all.

“I would tell you that there are personal, political agendas from factions of families within the tribe, and they influence outcomes based on personal agendas, and they don’t look at moral character or moral issues. So again, the entire system needs to be evaluated.”

When it comes to drug abuse on his reservation, Renville thought the evaluation process was over. In August, his council took a dramatic stand, passing a resolution banishing any adult convicted in tribal, state or federal court of dealing, distributing, manufacturing or trafficking methamphetamine or any other narcotic drug.

It removed one of its own council members earlier this year for violating a tribal rule requiring members to be alcohol and drug free while in office.

And there is more. Revelations that tribal personnel policies requiring annual drug testing of employees had not taken place for three to five years helped move Renville to action. So did the acknowledgment that pre-employment drug testing had been spotty at best as well.

When the chairman recently gave one program manager the approval to drug test his eight or nine employees, 25 percent of them failed.

“All of that I used as my basis” for the mass drug test Aug. 17, Renville said.

No one disputes that there is a drug problem on the Sisseton Wahpeton reservation. Flute says “it is huge,” though tribal member Lee Ann TallBear insisted that it’s not just a tribal issue.

“It’s as true across all of South Dakota as it is on our reservation,” TallBear said. “We are geographically and economically isolated from the rest of the country. There is plenty of research that will verify my assessment. What happens is, we don’t have access to technology or resources to effectively combat the influx and invasion of illegal drugs into rural America.”

TallBear doesn’t question the mandates Renville brought with him when was elected. He won all seven districts on her reservation, the equivalent of an American president winning all 50 states, she said. He came into the job with a master’s degree and a stellar 32-year career with the federal government, working in Washington, D.C., with the Department of Education and in Aberdeen with Indian Health.

“Here’s a man who has led a responsible life,” TallBear said. “He comes home to be a public servant. He doesn’t make the policies. He didn’t make this bad policy (on testing for drugs). It existed over several administrations. He’s just trying to enforce the hand he was dealt.”

Internal tribal documents tied to the drug testing suggested as many as 150 or more tribal employees working in administration, commodities, the Head Start program, facilities management, planning, the Gaming Commission and other programs were tested.

Somewhere between 15 and 36 of those employees failed the drug test, the documents said, with the caution said that some of the failures would end up being false positive results. Under a zero tolerance policy that is a federal requirement, Renville said those who tested positive for meth, marijuana or other illegal drugs would be terminated immediately.

Yet last Sept. 4, as he was resting in a Sioux Falls hospital after undergoing a colonoscopy, it was Renville who learned that the council was suspending him for conducting the drug test. He was advised that they intended to have a hearing on Sept. 18 to consider his removal.

Garryl Rousseau Sr., vice president for the tribe and now the acting chairman during Renville’s suspension, would not comment on the council’s actions. “I really can’t say anything to you,” Rousseau said. “I don’t want to violate the chairman’s rights.”

In a letter dated Sept. 8, Renville was told that the drug testing he authorized fell outside of the tribe’s personnel policies. The only time employees can be tested, the letter said, was for pre-employment, for a mandatory annual screening, for a reportable accident in which liability could be an issue, for random testing that will include 5 percent of current employees, and for reasonable suspicion.

“Your directive to call for the testing of all employees was not pursuant to the five reasons an employee is subjected to drug testing pursuant to tribal policy,” the letter said. “In connection to the mass drug test, no justification provided by your office shows the drug testing was performed pursuant to policy or law, which could lead to violations of the Indian Civil Rights Act as well.”

That would all make sense, Renville said, if the tribe was following that policy itself. But it hasn’t been, he insisted, and so he used his authority to make testing happen.

One of the problems with the chairman’s approach was that it required employees to stand in line for a long time on the day of the testing Aug. 17. That created some of the backlash, TallBear said. Some tribal members were shamed by the experience, she said, though they had nothing to fear in the test itself.

“Culturally and traditionally, our people are very modest,” TallBear explained. “It didn’t matter who was doing the testing; I think these people would have been upset by it. They were shamed by it.”

While Renville acknowledges that the process can be improved, he still stands by his decision to test. He also is not happy with how council members handled the results.

On the day it made a motion to start the removal process against him, the council also passed a second motion to make the results of the drug testing go away. As a result, all those who faced immediate termination for testing positive for drugs were allowed to come back to their jobs.

“What my legal friends tell me is, ‘That’s aiding and abetting,’ ” Renville said. “You aid criminal activity by doing this. You allow it to continue to happen. In doing that, I think they’re creating a bigger problem for themselves. Our federal programs could be in serious jeopardy because of what they have done.”

Perhaps. But if that conjecture is causing any concerns across the reservation, few seem willing to voice them.

Instead, it seems Renville and the council are focused on his removal hearing next Friday. Though the chairman says he understands the hostility he could face if he succeeds in holding on to his job, he also very much wants to return. There are promises he has to keep, he said, in building up better housing, in creating more jobs, in spurring economic development, in addressing issues of justice.

Like a lot of people on the reservation, TallBear hopes Renville gets to fulfill those promises. And she hopes her tribe turns this fiasco into something positive.

“It’s a learning thing,” she said. ‘ “OK, we went through this. We have to understand this. How do we come together and learn from this mistake and move on. ... because we have babies being born that are drug addicted.’ I hope everyone can agree that that’s what we really need to be focused on.”