Away From Protests, Tribal President Fights 'the Lakota Way'

                   Pine Ridge, S.D. - The hundreds of Indians who plan to march today on the neighboring Nebraska village of Whiteclay will do it again without their president.

Oglala Sioux Tribal President Harold Salway has been conspicuously absent at the weekly rallies organized to call attention to issues such as the sale of beer in Whiteclay to residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where possession and consumption of alcohol is prohibited.

Instead, national and local leaders of the activist American Indian Movement - such as Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means - have been fanning the flames.

When Salway invited Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns to meet him in Whiteclay one day last month to see the village and to discuss the issues, Johanns was swept away by the activists - led by Salway's half-brother, Tom Poor Bear - to their nearby tepee camp to hear their demands.

Salway was left behind. Confrontation is not his style.

It's not because he isn't passionate about the issues: fighting alcoholism, defending the tribe's treaty rights or solving the bludgeoning deaths of two Indian men whose bodies were found two months ago just north of Whiteclay on the South Dakota reservation.

Salway knows how alcoholism devastates families.

Nearly eight years ago, he walked away from the chance to seek re-election as tribal president after the alcohol-related deaths of two brothers. One drank himself to death. The other, drinking and driving on his birthday, was killed when his car rolled while he was trying to elude police.

"Since then I have no tolerance for alcohol or its abuse," said Salway, now settling into the presidency again after his election last year. "That's why I have a vested interest in the issue of alcohol sales in Whiteclay. I don't care what the rally boys think."

The first summer of Salway's second term has been one of crisis and conflict - and a little pomp and circumstance, mixed with unparalleled joy followed by sleepless nights. Most of all, it's been busy.

In addition to the mysterious slayings and the renewed claims by activists that Whiteclay is legally part of the reservation, Salway has dealt with a tornado that devastated the village of Oglala, a historic visit by President Clinton and the birth of a son.

Johanns, who managed to meet briefly with Salway in Pine Ridge after leaving the activists' Camp Justice near Whiteclay, said the leadership challenge presented by the AIM activists has added to the confusion for the Oglala people.

"I truly believe the president (Salway) is a man of good faith," Johanns said. "He wants to improve conditions on the reservation, and he's working very hard to do that."

The Oglala people should look to Salway for leadership, Johanns said.

"He is the elected leader," he said. "They elected him, and now he has the responsibility of moving that reservation forward. Although I've talked to others, it's the respectful thing to do to work with the elected leadership."

The activists claim that the Oglala people should control Whiteclay, which would allow them to shut down the unincorporated village's four beer outlets. They say treaties and century-old presidential orders included the village as part of the reservation.

Johanns said he believes Salway understands that no governor can negotiate treaties with a sovereign nation like the Oglala Sioux.

"I don't solve treaty disputes," he said. "That's not within my power. But if he's looking for someone who can help the situation at the federal level, I think I can be helpful."

Salway and Johanns are working to put together a group to meet and discuss the issues.

Although he only has been in office since January, the 44-year-old Salway is no rookie to tribal politics. His first term as president of the tribe, from 1990 to 1992, was preceded by stints as vice president and a member of the executive board known the fifth member.

After graduating from high school in Martin, a reservation town, Salway fixed flat tires, pumped gas and threw grain sacks. He also started learning more about the spiritual side of his heritage. He sang traditional songs to drums and learned the sun dance.

"I learned how to provide for my people, even if it was just being a sun dancer, being in a sweat (hut) . . . just all the things that a Lakota is all about."

He learned a philosophy of life. He was given the Lakota name Akilnajipi, which means "the people gather and select an individual who will lead the people."

"By knowing my language, knowing our cultural ways, knowing the customs and, especially, knowing how to pray as a Lakota individual . . . made me who I am today."

Salway takes pride in his bloodlines.

He is a direct descendant of Left Tehran, whose father was Makula, a spiritual adviser to Chief Red Cloud. Salway traces his mother's family to the Red Shirts, White Faces, Thunder Hawks, Young Bears and others in Chief Smoke's line.

Salway worked for nearly seven years as a tribal police officer. He has an associate of arts degree in human services and is one class short of an associate degree in criminal justice.

As a police officer 25 years ago, he attended a conference on Indian treaty law and later talked with the late Chief Charlie Red Cloud about the treaty that establishes the Oglalas' relationship with the U.S. government.

Red Cloud said changes in the historic treaty wouldn't be good for the tribe, changing the Indians into white people and aiming the Sioux into the wrong direction.

"He said the best way to retain our posterity is to go back to who we are and what we are as Lakota people," Salway said.

Like other Sioux leaders before him, Salway takes a hard line on the sanctity of the Indian nation's treaty with the United States.

"It was a treaty of peace," Salway said. "They couldn't beat us, they couldn't whoop us, they couldn't stop us, and they couldn't shut us up."

Salway said during his campaign last year that federal government programs have financially repressed and materially destroyed the Sioux.

"Their genocidal practices haven't put us back on our heels yet," he said, "but every tribal member on this Oglala Lakota Nation are fighters. Some of my friends say that I walk around with a chip on my shoulder. It could be true. . . . I consider myself a fighter, and I'm going to fight for the people's issues and concerns."

Salway said he will negotiate directly with the White House on treaty issues.

"I know we've got processes, procedures and contacts . . . while they suppress us into thinking subordinately," he said. "The treaty did not make my grandfathers to be subordinate to the generals. That is why my forefathers coordinated directly with the United States government, not with a messenger or a water boy."

Salway said he wants to lead the tribe by finding new funding, setting priorities on spending and focusing on issues, including better managing the reservation's $300 million economy. The tribe's casino near Oglala employs about 150 people, nearly all of them tribal members, and has contributed $1.5 million to the tribe's general fund.

"We are not going to point fingers, we are not going to stand back and glare at each other and argue," he said. "I know the easiest way . . . is to create confusion and controversy and keep everybody fighting, so I can give my opinion and force it. I'm not like that. That is not the Lakota way."

Salway said the use of illegal drugs is rampant on the 2 million-acre reservation, which is home to about 25,000 of the tribe's 39,000 members. He doesn't agree with those who would solve the alcohol problem on the reservation by legalizing beer and other drinks.

"We have a system in place, (and) all it has to be is enforced," he said. "I don't want my kids growing up in a drug way of life. These are diseases, and we have to treat them like diseases."

Salway said his economic programs - including jobs and housing initiatives announced by Clinton last month - are critical to ending the use of alcohol and drugs on the reservation.

"When you sober somebody up, when you straighten them up, when you clean them up, you have to find them a job," he said.

To do otherwise, he said, is to fail.