| Community Relations Service |
CRS MEDIATES AGREEMENT TO IMPROVE RACE RELATIONS BETWEEN CHARLES MIX COUNTY AND THE YANKTON SIOUX TRIBE IN SOUTH DAKOTA
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 20, 2001 |
CRS Contact: Daryl Borgquist 202/305-2935 |
Washington, D.C. -- Today, the Community Relations Service (CRS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced that Charles Mix County Commissioners and representatives of the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota signed a CRS-mediated agreement to improve communication, cooperation, and race relations. Silke Hansen, a senior conciliation specialist in the Community Relations Service’s Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver, Colorado, was on hand to facilitate the agreement. "Ms. Hansen skillfully brought the parties together in an agreement in which they will work cooperatively to solve education, drug abuse, day care, and racial profiling issues which have created racial divisions among the parties," said CRS Director Rose Ochi. The signatories include: Jack Soulek, Chairman, and Bruce Bakken, and Herman Peters, County Commissioners for Charles Mix County; and Ms. Madonna Archambeau, President, and Ben Gonzales, Secretary, for the Yankton Sioux Tribe. Under the terms of the agreement, the parties agreed to work together on a number of critical community issues including:
- to form a permanent County-Tribal Relations Committee to ensure continuing communication, information sharing, and collaboration on issues of common interest,
- to work cooperatively on developing day care and emergency placement of at-risk youth
- to jointly make a presentation to the Law Enforcement Task Force on the need to explore ways to avoid racial profiling and improve law enforcement-tribal relations
- to develop and implement a drug-court program and an effective support-aftercare program for youth
- to meet with education leaders in Lake Andes and Wagner to improve school curriculum and programs on Indian culture, encourage having an Indian counselor in each school, promote more tribal input into decisions affecting Indian youths, and develop strategies for promoting self-esteem and acknowledgment of Indian youth.
The Community Relations Service is a unique race relations are of the U.S. Department of Justice created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to help resolve community racial conflict through non-coercive, impartial, third party intervention. The Community Relations Service is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has regional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle. CRS also has field offices in Detroit, Houston, Miami, and San Francisco. ###
Last Update October 22, 2001
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