PIERRE – As Rodney Bordeaux gave the State of the Tribes address to the South Dakota Legislature on Thursday, he noted it was the fourth year for such a speech and that the tribes still suffer from many of the same problems. 

Bordeaux, the president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said drug dealers who face legal difficulties in South Dakota towns often make their way to one of the reservations. 

“We routinely have drug dealers visit the reservation,” Bordeaux said.

He suggested that the state join with South Dakota’s Indian reservations for a methamphetamine and opioid summit so they could work together on the problem. 

Suicide is a problem on the reservation, Bordeaux said, largely because of a lack of mental health services. He said there is one psychologist on the reservation for 27,000 tribal members. 

Tribes have been lobbying the U.S. Congress for funding for more mental health assets. “Those calls have largely gone unanswered,” Bordeaux said. 

He urged a joint session of the Legislature to make mental health care on the reservations a priority.

“We are all South Dakotans,” Bordeaux said, “and we have a moral duty to take care of each other.”

Health care is supposed to be provided on the reservation through its treaty with the federal government, Bordeaux said. 

“We do not believe that the federal government is living up to its responsibility,” he said. 

The local hospital is understaffed, Bordeaux said, and funded at a 1989 level.

“We have no way to get that reassessed,” he said. “Medical care is a treaty right.”

Bordeaux was critical of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Legislature’s response to protests concerning the pipeline.

“There are a great many things about this project that trouble us,” Bordeaux said. “I submit to you that our natural resources are not for sale.”

Bordeaux noted the tribes’ opposition based on their traditional care for the land as well as social concerns about crime on the reservation that could be caused by the pipeline construction crews. 

He said tribal members were dismayed with the passage in 2017 of SB176 which limited protest on public land. 

The law was passed, Bordeaux said, with “an eye for limiting our people in protest.”