Joseph Barkoff

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe checkpoints are just the tip of the iceberg

At a point in western Stanley County, with a right turn off U.S. 14 onto South Dakota Highway 63 north, visible just after the turn sat a large sign blinking two messages on Thursday, May 28. It warns not of the expanse as a two-lane highway stretched off into a slowly falling and forever horizon, but of a COVID-19 checkpoint.

The other message suggests motorists seek an alternate route.

It is 50 miles from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Members began setting up checkpoints around their borders in early April.

For better or for worse, there are checkpoints in South Dakota now. Tribe officials, while defying Gov. Kristi Noem’s order to remove the checkpoints,hope to keep them in place for a while longer.

The Strategy

BeforeCOVID-19, CRST had 17 police officers to cover an area which is nearly as large as the state of Connecticut.

Now,the tribe has about 140 individuals who volunteered to work as deputies, CRST Intergovernmental Affairs Coordinator Remi Bald Eagle said.

There are a total of nine checkpoints, with seven of them on U.S. highways in and around the reservation, he said.

It would be tactically and logistically impossible to create checkpoints at every off federal highway road. Between the almost 30-mile stretch from the South Dakota Highway 63 checkpoint, there are countless side roads leading off, some able to access the reservation.

The volunteers work in four-person crews on 12-hour shifts. Bald Eagle said the checkpoints are enforced 24 hours per day.

Non-compliance does not fly on the reservation when it comes to safety, according to Bald Eagle. The checkpoint is an advanced contact tracing system put in place early,and luckily so, as Bald Eagle said.

There has been only one COVID-19 case at Cheyenne River so far, officials said. The case was caught and “smothered” because of the checkpoint, Bald Eagle said.

The levels of the tribe’s defense conditions are one though five, with Level 1 being acknowledgement of COVID-19 and to monitor, educate and communicate. It basically involved joining the regular briefings in progress around the nation as the novel corona virus introduced itself to the world.

Level 2 is where the checkpoints came into play. Conditions now stand at Level 3, according to the Eagle Butte Emergency Command Center COVID-19 Emergency Response Status document.

The first level of the tribe’s “COVID-19 Emergency Response Status” acknowledged COVID-19 has entered South Dakota, but is not in Cheyenne River. With one case in South Dakota, they moved to Level 2, which included all of the items from Level 1, but now there is a “Tribal Declaration of Health Emergency.”

Level 2 meant officials enacted a command center, closed schools and day cares, and transitioned to online learning. They also closed bars and screened individuals for entry to their medical facilities. They designated essential businesses,restricted restaurants to takeout only and began establishing full delivery services and check-ins on elders.

Part of the emergency declaration they also enacted was “the regulation of exit and entry points on the reservation” and a “travel permit system for certain allowed purposes” as per Emergency Orders #2.1, 2.2 and 2.3-2020-CR andCOVID-19 Checkpoint policy dated April 18, the CRST Emergency Command Center said.

This is how they caught their first and only case, Bald Eagle said.

The tribe uses the South Dakota Department of Health’s community impact map as its guide for people wanting to leave the reservation, Bald Eagle said.

When an individual living on the reservation wants to go to any area where there has been community acquired COVID-19, they must complete a formal travel request.Sometimes, those requests are denied, he said.

When residents want to go to somewhere there has been no community acquired cases, there is no issue and permits are not even needed because at each entry point, a deputy will record where people are coming from, whether they are visitors, commercial traffic or returning from places, in the case of residents.

For people who live in the communities not attached to the reservation, they only need to show their license for a quick proof of residence and they are are allowed to pass, according to Bald Eagle. He also said commercial traffic is let through without issue after a brief stop, he said.

The Scene

A semi-truck loaded with cattle rumbled up to the South Dakota Highway 63checkpoint, slowed down and rested in neutral. A deputy asked the driver where they were coming from and their destination. The deputy recorded the license plate number. Another deputy removed the cone blocking the road and the truck driver closed his door, engaged his gears and moved on.

There have been times people have not been permitted through the checkpoints, Bald Eagle acknowledged.

When people are non-compliant or belligerent when they are asked to share their business around the tribal lands, they will be turned away, he said. If people are unwilling to state their intentions amicably, the tribe is unwilling to take the risk the individual will not respect the residents.

The basic purpose of the checkpoints is to monitor and track, but they do turnaround people with “no business here on the reservation,” CRST Chairman Harold Frazier said.

The early success happened when one resident of the reservation had returned from what the tribe calls one of its “hot spots.” A hot spot is anywhere with community acquired COVID-19, so anywhere with minimal to moderate and above spread. The individual’s information was taken from where they were and when and as a result, they were asked to self-quarantine as is done with the tribe’s protocols for people coming back from hot spot areas.

The individual did, and a few days later, while still under self-quarantine, they developed symptoms of COVID-19. After being tested, the results were positive for COVID-19. They have since recovered, but it saved lives as far as Bald Eagle is concerned.

“One of the biggest unfortunate things about all of this is that we are putting up checkpoints and that’s it,” Bald Eagle said. “It is absolutely not it. It is the last thing we put in place.”

Volunteers to help work the checkpoints and checkpoints themselves are not the only community service actions taken and implemented on the reservation to battleCOVID-19, he said.

“It is a huge robust system we put in place,” Bald Eagle said.

There was one recent high school graduate, sitting masked with a baseball hat at a desk, so only the movement of their eyes and the dexterity in their fingers is seen as they input all the data collected daily.

All of the data collected from the checkpoints is entered daily into a system so that only health department staff members and contact tracers for the tribe can access it. They do no share their information about anyone with law enforcement, Bald Eagle said.

The tribe has established dormitories for those returning from hot spots who are unable to quarantine at home, or just do not want to attempt to quarantine at home due to comorbidity issues, he said.

Bald Eagle said among his people, there are high degrees of comorbidity issues,especially with their elders with conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. They hold their elders very dear, Bald Eagle said.

Anyone over 60 is considered an elder, he said.

For their elders, they have established food delivery programs, as well as an initiative to reach out to every elder, daily, to ask them how they are doing and if they need anything, he said.

By 10 a.m. Thursday, May 28, there had been reports back from 91 different communications with elders, Bald Eagle said.

Noem’s Concerns

Noem said she is concerned with protecting the sovereignty of the Tribal Nations,but also with having the ability to protect people.

“This is a sticky situation because we have federal authorities on U.S. and state highways. I recognize it would take federal action for the law to be upheld,but yet South Dakota is leading our COVID-19 response,” Noem said.

Fort he most part, Noem has continued to delegate authority to the local governmental level with promises of support for their decisions based on science and facts.

Tribe officials maintain they are acting on science and facts by installing the checkpoints.

They also hand out lunches to feed families every day at their high school cafeteria. They have also stockpiled more than 5 tons of protein in large walk-ins and freezers, closed bars, closed schools, limited alcohol sales times, and instituted a curfew.

“A lot of our phase lines, our event horizons for our levels are almost exclusively tied to the state,“ Bald Eagle said. “So, all of our trigger points are to the state.”

Both Noem and Secretary of Tribal Affairs Dave Flute have spoken to Frazier about the checkpoints.

During Noem’s May 12 news conference, Flute said he had reached out to Frazier on April 18, and by April 21, Frazier responded: “He would not join the join the state of South Dakota for a conference call to discuss this tribal check point issue,” according to Flute.

“We felt it was necessary to share that information and on behalf of the governor,”Flute said. “I was asked to reach out to Chairman Frazier, and other tribes in the area, if they would join us for a conference call so that we could hear their concerns and that they could also hear our concerns, that from the constituent calls we were getting and just general concerns. We felt it was best to communicate.”

Flute said it was necessary to share the information with South Dakota because it disheartened him with Frazier’s response, not just as a tribal member or former tribal chairman, but as a South Dakotan, he said.

“On behalf of the governor, when these checkpoints were being established by ourtribes, a few of our tribes, we were alerted to it,” Flute said. “And we shared that with the governor, and we shared it with senior leadership and we had it on our radar and we were monitoring how those checkpoints were being operated.”

Despite the communication, there was a breakdown somewhere.

“Unfortunately, Chairman Frazier and I had a couple of calls. The chairman is a good friend of mine. He was sharing with me that the checkpoints were running smooth and that there were no complaints. And I would share with the chairman that we were hearing different. And there were some concerns and some complaints from both his tribal members and from non-tribal members.”

Noem said she has personally communicated with Frazier via phone and text messages. She remains hopeful they can come to an agreement.

Moving Forward

When all of this began, tribe members asked the state and federal government for help to establish extra bedding facilities, such as the military hospital tent units used in other areas of the state and nation, as well as other assistance for preparation of the pandemic and due to being “denied or completely ignored, on every request we sent out,” they acted for themselves, Bald Eagle said.

“These checkpoints are just a part of what we’re doing,” Frazier said. “When we started this process back in March, March 10 is when we started really planning, and we talked about all different kinds of scenarios where ‘how are we going to react,’ and ‘can we etc.,’ and we realized this virus doesn’t travel — it’s the people that carry the virus that travel.”

If they were going to get it, someone would have to bring it there, he said.

A member, resident or visitor potentially could bring it in and playing out the scenarios they decided on the health checkpoints, he said.

“This is not something we are forcing everybody to do,” Bald Eagle said. “This is a collective effort on as many people as possible and it’s in every community. I am really so proud of them, myself. So proud. Because it’s not easy to tell people to do something. Look at what is happening in the rest of the country.When you tell people what to do, they get upset. But when you lead in the right direction, and you look behind you, good people always follow, and that is what is happening here on this reservation. And I think that is one of the things people are missing in all this.”

Most people on the reservation, as with everywhere else, did not care for the extra restrictions. However, they seemed to understand, even though some complied reluctantly.

“Our job moving forward should be saving lives — not saving face,” Frazier said.

Frazier wishes there was just a vaccine so things could go back to normal, he said.

Until then, or when the federal government gets involved, he said they plan to maintain the checkpoints.