MCLAUGHLIN, S.D. - Naomi Johnson was devastated, she said, when she saw what her girls were carrying off the bus that transported them home to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation from the Flandreau Indian School: "big bags of medicine."
"When I seen those pills, I cried," Johnson said. "I really cried. I said, 'Why are they doping up our children like this? Why do they deserve to do this?' I said, 'It's not back in the 18th century.'"
It was the start of Christmas break during the 2023-2024 school year, Johnson said, and she was shocked by the amount of medications her granddaughter and niece had been prescribed while at the school, without, she said, her knowledge or consent - and under threat of punishment.
Other parents and guardians also told Lee Enterprises that they were surprised and concerned when they discovered their children had been prescribed medications, including psychotropics, while attending Flandreau, which is one of just four remaining federally operated off-reservation boarding schools for Native American students.
Former staff members corroborated these claims, saying they were aware of students who were medicated without their guardians' consent.
Native American students say school pushed prescribed drugs on kids, threatened punishment
The Flandreau Indian School Student and Parent handbook explicitly states, "Failure to take prescribed medication is a Health and Safety issue and can result in FIS disciplinary action."
Special Report: Problems persist within federal schools for Native Americans
But concerns about the Bureau Indian Education-operated boarding school's medication policies are not limited to claims about a lack of parental and guardian consent.
In interviews for this series, former students, guardians and staff claimed that students were punished for not taking prescribed medications and that staff administered medications to students without receiving training.
These are issues that the BIE has known about since the fall of 2023, when a parent filed a lengthy complaint with the federal government. But it remains unclear what actions, if any, the bureau has taken in response.
'No protocols'
Richard Hockett worked in various roles, including as a teacher and as home-living director, at Flandreau over a 22-year career that ended with his retirement in 2023. During that time, he said he knew of numerous guardians who hadn't been informed that their children had been medicated while attending the school.
He said there were "no protocols" that directed staff to inform parents of a change in medication. As a result, Hockett said, "nobody" was doing it.
"The nurse was not. The dorm staff managers were not. That was not part of their job description," Hockett said.
Sometimes, Hockett said, guardians came to school to attend a meeting about special-education services for their child and "would find out that they had been put on Adderall for ADHD."
"Some of the parents said, 'I was not even aware of this. I was not informed of it. I don't agree with it,'" Hockett said.
Hockett said school officials would "push" the responsibility for contacting parents about medication changes onto the Indian Health Service or the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Health Center, where Flandreau Indian School students receive health services.
This happened, Hockett said, despite the fact that through what's known as an in loco parentis provision the school was "stepping in as authority for the parent while the students were on campus."
Cynthia R. Jacobs, chief executive officer of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Health Center, did not answer a list of questions about whether clinic staff properly medicate Flandreau Indian School students, including whether clinic staff contacted the parent and guardians to obtain written or verbal consent before prescribing medications to FIS students.
"We cannot share protected health information about students or comment on BIE policies," Jacobs wrote.
An Indian Health Service public affairs officer responded similarly, saying they "cannot comment on the processes and procedures used at this site" and referring questions to the BIE.
A BIE spokesperson, however, placed primary responsibility for obtaining guardian consent on prescribing providers like the clinic, who "must contact the parent or guardian."
"The staff at Flandreau Indian School rely on the prescribing provider to communicate with the parent or guardian to secure consent for prescription medication," the bureau spokesperson added in an emailed response to questions. "If the provider cannot reach the parent or guardian, FIS will attempt to connect the parent or guardian with the provider."
Rogene Crawford, who worked at Flandreau from 1999 until 2022 as an academic secretary and as a staffer in the girls' dormitory, said "a lot of" students were "put on meds" shortly after counseling sessions.
"They would immediately be put on meds as soon as they'd get there," said Crawford. "They'd set up appointments through (Indian Health Service), and they would claim that they were depressed 'cause of their home life. But not all of the kids have a bad home life."
Crawford acknowledged that she has not trained as a counselor and doesn't "know what they look for" to diagnose mental-health disorders, but after working at the school for almost her entire adult life, she was concerned by how many students were being medicated - and she wondered why.
"I would hand out meds before bedtime, and a lot of them were those antidepressants," Crawford said. "But they never seemed like they were depressed when they got there. I don't know that, because I'm not a counselor, so I don't know what they look for and signs of it. But they seemed fine to me when they got there. Then all of a sudden, they're all depressed?"
And Crawford said she didn't think parents and guardians knew their kids were medicated.
"In fact, I can tell you right now they probably still aren't notified until they get home," she said. "They're on their buses right now going home, and that's when the parents find out. 'Well, when did they give you this? When did they start handing out this med to you? What is this for?' I'm sure that's the questions they get asked when they get home.
"And the kids, they don't know. They only do what they're told because if they don't they get threatened with being written up and then they can't do anything."
'In loco parentis' consent
Johnson doesn't dispute that she signed what is known as an in loco parentis consent when she sent her niece, K'lyn Ducheneaux, and her granddaughter, Santana Vazquez, to Flandreau.
Johnson, who is the guardian of both girls, said she even knows off the top of her head exactly where that consent is: on page 19 of the Flandreau Indian School application.
There, in bold, school officials have defined the Latin phrase in loco parentis as a "term used in situations where another individual or agency is acting in place of a parent on behalf of a minor."
"The term is used in legal settings to assign the rights, duties and responsibilities of a parent to another parent or agency," the application for the 2024-2025 school year continues. "Alternatively, the term has been used in less formal references to describe the role played by an educational institution, such as a boarding school, college, or university in supervising minors and young adults."
The application also requires guardians to consent to allowing school staff and healthcare providers "to arrange for or to provide ... health services" for students."
"All Flandreau Indian School staff are authorized to act in Loco Parentis (sic) for the students at the Flandreau Indian School," the application says. "The FIS staff has authority to sign all paperwork required for emergency, medical or hospital care at any medical facility."
But federal regulations suggest that not even this in loco parentis consent gives the school the right to prescribe medications without parental consent.
Those regulations are included in what's known as the Indian Affairs Manual, a detailed document that lays out the federal government's "current operational policy" for Indian-related programs.
In a chapter entitled "Medication Administration at BIE-Operated Schools and Dormitories," the manual states that parents must sign an authorization to allow school staff to administer medication to students.
"No medication will be administered in school or during school-sponsored activities without the parent's/guardian's written authorization ..." the rules read.
The manual also explicitly mandates guardian consent to medicate students at boarding schools like Flandreau.
"In boarding schools or dormitories, where a parent is not on campus for extended lengths of time, and the school acts in loco parentis, some protocols may differ based on the home living staff training and health services agreements with local health care providers who prescribe the child's medication," the Indian Affairs Manual reads. "Therefore, written documentation that the prescribing provider has contacted the parent/guardian by telephone and consent has been obtained, may be acceptable in lieu of the parent/guardian signature."
A BIE spokesperson did not directly answer specific questions about whether Flandreau Indian School "has obtained and documented such parent/guardian consent in all cases at FIS."
Instead, the spokesperson wrote that the school "follows the Medication Administration at BIE-Operated Schools and Dormitories policy."
"When students request medical care, FIS staff will attempt to contact the parent or guardian to obtain permission and explain that the healthcare provider will follow up with the outcome and any additional needs," the spokesperson added. "The provider will attempt to contact the parent or guardian to discuss results and obtain consent for prescribed medications. In emergent situations, FIS may invoke in loco parentis, prioritizing students' welfare in close collaboration with parents and guardians."
Christopher Thomas, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said it's considered "a best practice to involve a patient's guardian in treatment planning and decision making." Even if a young patient is hospitalized, Thomas said, "the parents will be involved in the treatment planning, and, yes, they would be contacted if medications were going to be used, and certainly informed about the treatment."
Ira Burnim, senior counsel for the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said it was difficult to understand a school's rationale for making medical decisions about children without their guardians' direct involvement.
"What's, to me, so remarkable about this is I can't imagine a school that wouldn't tell the parents," Burnim said. "Even if you didn't get consent up front, how do you operate a school with minors where you're not telling the parents that you're requiring the kid to be on medication?
"It just seems completely inappropriate to me, and I can't imagine a school doing it. I can't imagine a medical provider doing it."
'Never had my permission'
While Johnson said that she never got a call from the school or the clinic about her girls' medical treatment and prescriptions, the girls did report some of their concerns directly to her.
One of the girls, her niece, sent her a voice message from the school and told her the medicines she's been prescribed and forced to take were making her feel "like a zombie," Johnson said.
"So I told her, I said, 'You need to talk to someone, and I'll call in the morning,'" Johnson said. "So I'd been calling, calling. I'd leave messages."
Days later, she said, a staff member returned her call.
"I said, 'And what is the protocol on this, all this medication that you guys are giving these children? What's the protocol?'" Johnson said. "And he goes, 'I don't know.' 'So you couldn't give me a straight answer on that too?' I said, 'Why is my granddaughter and my (niece) taking all this stuff?' I said, 'What's the protocol?' I kept on saying to him. He did not answer. ... And we were upset, me and my daughter, and I had tears coming down when I talked to him too. I said, 'You guys are giving them way too much medicine,' I said."
That conversation happened soon after Ducheneaux started at the school in 2019, Johnson recalled. But the school continued to prescribe more medications to Ducheneaux, she said.
After another child in Johnson's custody - her granddaughter Santana Vazquez - started at Flandreau as a 13-year-old freshman in 2022, Johnson said she too was prescribed medications and given iron infusions without her knowledge and consent.
Johnson was not the only guardian of a Flandreau student who said they never consented to allow their students to be treated and medicated and were never informed by the school that such prescriptions had been written.
Areonna Grey Bear said she didn't realize her daughter Mariah Fassett had been prescribed an antidepressant at Flandreau until her daughter was suspended from school, returned home to North Dakota's Spirit Lake reservation and began to act strangely, talking excitedly and emotionally but "not making sense."
"It was really scary," Fassett said. "I felt like I had powers or something."
After questioning her daughter, Grey Bear said she found Fassett had been prescribed a 20 milligram dose of prozac at Flandreau and had been taking it irregularly since coming home.
Grey Bear didn't want her daughter on the medication, especially without her knowledge, and was stunned to find out she hadn't been told about the prescriptions.
"I thought they would have asked me," Grey Bear said.
When she called the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Health Center to attempt to get her daughter's medical records, Grey Bear said a staff member put her on a prolonged hold and then told her that she couldn't provide them because Fassett was over age 18 at the time, even though she was 17 when the medications were initially prescribed.
Grey Bear said she then went online, found the records-release paperwork, printed it out, had her daughter sign and faxed the documents in.
"And I never got anything," Grey Bear said.
In the time since her daughter left Flandreau, Grey Bear said Fassett has continued to struggle with her mental health and that a doctor told her he suspects the psychotropic medication prescribed at Flandreau may have triggered a "chemical imbalance."
Areonna's cousin, Lorenda Grey Bear, said she found out her daughter was on antidepressants when she came home from Flandreau for Christmas break in 2022 and had a "little baggie" that contained medication. She asked her daughter what it was for.
"She said she was depressed," Lorenda said. "And I was like, 'Depressed?' I said, 'What you depressed about?' She was like, 'I don't know.' I said, 'There was nothing wrong with you when you went down there.' So I said, 'What's wrong with you?' I said, 'If you want to talk to somebody, you come home to talk to somebody. You don't take those pills.'"
When Lorenda sent her daughter back for the second semester at Flandreau, she thought she had stopped taking the antidepressant.
"I thought she listened to Mom," she said.
But near the end of the 2022-2023 school year, Lorenda recalled, a school staff member called to complain that her daughter "takes forever to come up and get her meds."
"And I was like, 'Meds?'" Lorenda said. "I was like, 'Well, what kind of meds is she taking? Like I told her at Christmas time, she don't need to be taking nothing.'"
When she told the staff member she didn't want her daughter to be medicated, Lorenda said she was told to contact the school's superintendent or the school nurse.
"I was like, 'Well, why am I going to call (the superintendent) and let him know that I want you guys to stop giving my kids meds when you guys didn't call me and ask me if she could start them?" Lorenda recalled. "I said, 'You guys never had my permission.'"
Only two weeks were left in the school year, Lorenda said, and she was so frustrated with - and distrustful of - the school's response that she didn't try to contact the superintendent or nurse. Instead, Lorenda said, she spoke directly with her daughter every day for those final weeks and encouraged her not to take the medication.
'Like savages'
Over the past few years, since Deb Haaland became the first Native American cabinet secretary and took charge of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the federal government has begun to reckon with the ugly, assimilationist history of the federal system for educating Native American children.
That history started in the 1800s, persisted through the 1960s and continues to be felt in the generational trauma that is pervasive in Indian Country today.
But while that system has changed radically and undergone significant reform, it hasn't entirely disappeared. It persists to this day in the altered form of the Bureau of Indian Education, which funds and oversees 183 day schools, residential facilities and boarding schools that serve some 45,000 Native American students across the country.
Many of these schools are tribally controlled, but the federal government continues to operate 55 of these schools, including Flandreau, which has been around since the late 19th century.
And those BIE schools have repeatedly been the subject of intense media, parent and lawmaker scrutiny for compromising student welfare at various schools, for shrouding reports of student harm in secrecy and for failing to respond to requests for documents and information, even when those requests have come from sitting U.S. senators.
Dorothy McLean, who worked in the dormitory at Flandreau from 2014 until 2021, knows the horrors of the old boarding school system firsthand. She attended one of those schools on the Rosebud Indian Reservation beginning in 1959, when she was just six years old, she said.
Even today, she has difficulty discussing that experience and the physical and emotional abuse she survived.
"I have a hard time telling people," she said through tears, "because I was hurt so bad."
McLean acknowledged that Flandreau was "way different" from the boarding school she attended as a child, but she also said that some of that trauma and fear resurfaced during her years working at Flandreau.
At Flandreau, McLean said, she said she saw staff "hollering" at students and knew of a former staff member who "physically harmed" students. She said she saw a lack of "due process" for students facing disciplinary action. And after she filed complaints on behalf of students and about her own concerns, McLean said administrators "intimidated" and bullied her.
"I felt like this little child in boarding school," McLean said.
Asked about claims of staff yelling at, berating and emotionally abusing students, the BIE spokesperson wrote, "Staff members receive de-escalation training in collaboration with the BIE Behavioral Health and Wellness Program. Any engagement by staff in such situations is thoroughly investigated, and staff may receive retraining on effective student interaction as needed."
Some of the staff she worked with, McLean said, had "lost their compassion along the way, or their spirit. The kids, they couldn't do right. They (the staff) wouldn't listen to the parents."
McLean said she was aware of students being medicated without guardian knowledge or consent.
"They kept these kids on uppers and downers like Prozac and trazodone," McLean said. "I don't think the parents were informed, period."
At Flandreau, the school's handling of antidepressants, sleep aids and psychotropic medications has made some question the school's practices and policies.
Fassett said Flandreau "literally treated us like savages" by putting students "on medications when they're so young without their parents even knowing."
"When I was on those meds, I had no emotion," Fassett added. "My mind just completely felt blank. I couldn't hold conversations. I wasn't myself at all. And I feel like that's what they wanted: for us to be quiet and calm and not acting out. Not acting like kids."
Lorenda Grey Bear - who, in addition to being a Flandreau parent, is Fassett's aunt - said the use of psychotropic medication meant staff missed opportunities to talk with students and families "about what the real issue is or what's really bothering you."
"Instead it's kind of like, 'Here's some meds, you'll be okay,'" Lorenda said.
Annabel DeMarce, Lorenda's aunt and Mariah Fassett's grandmother, believes medications were a convenience for staff who didn't "want to deal with" normal forms of teenage rebellion and who used medications to make the students more manageable.
And Naomi Johnson said her niece's and granddaughter's experience being medicated broke her heart and violated her culture's veneration for children.
"When they were telling me what was going on over there, I really cried with them," Johnson said. "And I said, 'I didn't bring you guys up to be a project, to be tested like a rat,' I said. And I didn't want that to happen to them. I said, 'We're Lakotas.' I said, 'We cherish our children so much,' because I grew up that way."
What Johnson wants, she said, is for Flandreau and BIE administrators to treat the students in their care with the dignity they deserve, to give them opportunities that were hard to come by at Standing Rock.
"I wanted them to get a good education," Johnson said. "I wanted them to be self independent, to do stuff, because I'm getting old now. I'm 64 years old, and I'm trying to prepare them so they could be on their own. And instead of that, they were getting doped up. And I didn't approve of that at all."
Contact us: Ted McDermott is a reporter for the Public Service Journalism Team at Lee Enterprises. He can be reached at [email protected].
Up next: Former staff members of the Flandreau Indian School say they weren't trained to medicate school children - but did so anyway.
In this Series Special Report: Problems persist within federal schools for Native Americans Updated 5 mins ago Kids were prescribed medications at their Native American school. Their parents had no idea. Updated 5 mins ago Native American students say school pushed prescribed drugs on kids, threatened punishment Updated Oct 15, 2024 Amid reports of abuse, Native American boarding school says it keeps kids safe 5 updates Next Be the first to know
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