‘I don't want to be guilty of benign neglect’ on reservations

When Sen. John Thune ran against then-Sen. Tom Daschle in 2004, he spent a respectable amount of time campaigning on South Dakota's Indian reservations. Four years later, he's back on the reservations. This time, he's working for law and order.

Sen. Thune is a major force behind Operation Dakota Peacekeeper on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and he's pushing to find a way to make that 90-day law enforcement surge more permanent.

A third of the way into Operation Dakota Peacekeeper, which added 20 police officers to the 10 that covered Standing Rock's 2.3 million acres, Thune is pleased with the results and worried about what will happen after the 90 days are over.

Thune decided to work on trying to improve the reservation crime problem after he heard a consistent concern from various groups about increased violence.

“I've had school officials in my office in Washington, letters from business people, people who fear for their lives on reservations. It had gotten to a boiling point,” he said, noting that the crime problem also was a dominant theme in a roundtable meeting he had with tribal leaders last summer. “I was hearing from people out here, Indian and non-Indian, that something needed to be done.”

The entire congressional delegations of both North Dakota and South Dakota have worked on this issue, but Thune has been the most vocal in promoting the need to keep on top of the problem.

When asked if this push had its roots in his 2004 campaign, or even his boyhood in Murdo near reservation communities, Thune said not really. It has more to do with events on the ground. However, he did say he believes it is his responsibility to do what he can to help.

“I don't want to be guilty of benign neglect, which is how a lot of politicians treat reservations. They come back every time it's time to run for re-election. In the meantime, things continue to deteriorate,” he said. “I would like to do something that meaningfully improves the quality of the lives of people on reservations.”

For Thune, other problems can't be addressed unless people are safe.

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