"South Dakota jails drug offenders, and particularly Native citizens, at rates that boggle the mind.

[Demovictory9]

South Dakota has a penchant for putting people in jail. Specifically, South Dakota jails drug offenders, and particularly Native citizens, at rates that boggle the mind. And it’s the state’s lock-em-up approach to what is at its core a public health and economic crisis that shows not just the absurdity, but also the disingenuousness, of this new campaign.

South Dakota arrests juveniles at a rate double the national average and 25 percent higher than the next closest state; of those arrested children, one in five are sent away on drug-related charges. In fact, half of all arrests in the state are for drugs, compared to 29 percent nationally. Looking at the incarcerated population, 64 percent of the women in South Dakota prisons are there for drug arrests; 28 percent of men are locked up for the same reasons. Both of those rates are at least double that of the national average. The soaring rates of drug arrests—up 148 percent from 2010, with over 3,000 meth-specific arrests in 2018—unsurprisingly coincide with the state citizenry’s soaring rate of drug use and substance abuse. In the first six months of 2019 alone, the DEA seized 78 pounds of meth in South Dakota; it grabbed just 66 pounds in all of 2018.

Within these already alarming statistics exists another trend: Natives make up 8.7 percent of the South Dakota population, but account for half of all arrests in the entire state. On the whole, Native citizens are thrown in jail at a rate ten times that of white South Dakotans. State officials recently estimated that if one was to add the reservation crime stats to those kept by the state—tribal law enforcement is handled by a combination of the Native nation’s own police force and federal law enforcement—South Dakota’s crime rate would double.
https://newrepublic.com/article/155775/locking-people-up-south-dakotas

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Lets be damn honest.

Most of the Natives live in pure ugly conditions. Meth and Opioids as well as Booze fills their days. Pretty much zero employment opportunities or Social Service Agencies to break this cycle.

And the non Native South Dakotan's are about as hateful of the Natives as can be. They are for the most part,a pawn in the States Republican Parties control of the State. Blame everything on the Indians and it works.

[NCLefty]

2. The U.S. made more than 500 treaties with Native American tribes. We've violated or broken them all.

From 1778 to 1871, the United States government entered into more than 500 treaties with the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated in some way or outright broken by the US government,[22][23][24][25] while at least one treaty was violated or broken by Native American tribes.[26] However, violations by one party do not nullify the treaties under US law; the treaties still have legal effect today, and Native Americans and First Nations peoples are still fighting for their treaty rights in federal courts and at the United Nations.[23][27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_treaties