Students being coerced, under threat of punishment, to take psychotropic medication.
A lack of training and a disorganized system contributed to “med errors,” including some students being “given the wrong medication," said one long-time teacher at the BIE-operated Flandreau Indian School.
Parents and guardians not being informed that such medications had even been prescribed to their kids.
Staff not being trained to administer these medications.
These allegations from students, parents and staff of the Flandreau Indian School – an off-reservation Bureau of Indian Education-operated boarding school – are at the center of this Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team investigation. But they are not news to the BIE itself.
The bureau has known about these concerns – as well as others – since the fall of 2023. That’s when Lexi Follette, an alumnus of the school and the mother of a recent Flandreau graduate, filed a lengthy complaint with the federal government about the treatment of staff and students at the boarding school located in southeastern South Dakota.
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But it’s not clear how that complaint was investigated or what the school or the BIE have done, if anything, in response to these issues. A bureau spokesperson did not directly answer questions about that investigation, and attempts to access information through the Freedom of Information Act were unsuccessful.
In response to public records requests, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector general said it was “withholding” documents related to the investigation into Follette’s complaint. The OIG did provide five other complaints about Flandreau – but redacted every single word that those complainants filled out.
And when asked how the BIE investigated Follette’s complaint and what actions were taken in response to the findings of that investigation, a bureau spokesperson wrote that the BIE “does not comment on specific student incidents” and that “if an investigation is warranted, the appropriate staff will investigate and take appropriate action.”
While much remains murky about the response to Follette’s complaint, one of the school’s controversial practices – threatening punishment for students who refuse medication – remains included in the 2024-2025 Flandreau Indian School Student and Parent handbook.
“Students who are on medication will be required to take their prescribed medications,” the handbook reads. “Failure to take prescribed medication is a Health and Safety issue and can result in FIS disciplinary action.”
‘Not doing their job’
A veteran of both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, Follette had a “positive and memorable experience” when she attended Flandreau in the 1990s, she wrote in her complaint letter.
“[S]o when my daughter asked to attend in honor of her late father who also graduated from Flandreau,” she continued, “I fully supported her.”
But Follette began to question that decision after her daughter called her from the school in November 2022 to express her concerns about a staff member’s treatment of students in the Flandreau dormitory.
As Follette began looking into that one issue, more and more students, parents and staff began to bring various concerns to her, she said.
Follette and many of these parents, students and staff said they had already tried to lodge their complaints with the school but felt they had not been heard.
Asked how many complaints have been filed about Flandreau since 2021 and what has been done in response, the BIE spokesperson wrote, “Parent communication is always welcome at Flandreau Indian School. Staff actively engage with parents and take appropriate measures to respond to concerns or needs. Open dialogue is encouraged to ensure a collaborative approach to supporting students.”
But in over a dozen interviews conducted as part of this series, students, parents, guardians and staff did not describe an open and collaborative relationship with school administrators. They also expressed their frustration to Follete, who compiled their concerns in a 50-page letter that was appended with 48 pages of supporting documents and sent it to the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General.
It detailed a litany of issues, including what Follette described as “emotional abuse of students and staff,” “forced withdrawals and excessive punishments” and a “failure to provide Native culture at the school.”
In response to questions about these issues, the BIE spokesperson said allegations of emotional abuse are “thoroughly investigated” and that the “school follows established protocols to uphold due process in disciplinary actions.”
“Flandreau Indian School is committed to advancing the Bureau of Indian Education’s mission by delivering a high-quality and culturally relevant educational experience and integrating cultural values with modern academics,” the spokesperson wrote.
Follette’s complaint also documented allegations about many of the same issues described in this investigative series, including that:
- students were “being medicated to cope with their environment and then punished and expelled for their side effects.”
- students were medicated for anxiety and depression “without their parents’ knowledge or permission.”
- staff were never offered “any formal trainings or information on handling medications.”
- school administrators failed to “see the legal repercussions of not notifying parents of medications to minor children and not having protocols in place to monitor and document the students’ symptomology or behavior changes while on these medications.”
Rather than investigating the complaint itself, the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General “determined that the complaint would be best addressed by the Bureau of Indian Education” and referred the complaint to the “BIE for review and action deemed appropriate” on Oct. 17, 2023, according to an email sent to Follette.
While the Office of Inspector General exists to “independent oversight” within the Interior Department, it doesn’t investigate more than 90% of the complaints the office receives.
“Generally speaking, given the size of our office and the breadth of our oversight mission, the OIG is able to investigate less than 10 percent of the complaints that we receive annually,” wrote Erica Paulson, the Interior Department’s associate inspector general for communications and congressional affairs, in response to questions from the Lee Enterprises reporting team.
Of seven complaints involving Flandreau Indian School that have been filed since 2018, Paulson said her office has not directly investigated any of them.
“Three of those complaints were referred to BIE for review and action,” Paulson wrote, “and four were closed to file because the allegations were duplicative of allegations being already reviewed.”
"Why are they doping up our children like this?" one parent said. "Why do they deserve to do this?"
In response to a public records request for those complaints, the OIG provided five but redacted them so that nothing could be read about what issues were reported. To justify those redactions, the OIG cited laws that allow agencies to withhold “records or information compiled for law enforcement.”
Follette said the OIG’s failure to provide the “independent oversight” it promises – especially in a matter that has to do with the welfare of children – calls into question the office’s function.
“If they’re not doing their job,” she said, “why are we funding it?”
‘Withholding’ documents
In the October 2023 email to Follette, the Office of the Inspector General indicated that the “BlE is expected to provide a response (to her complaint) to OIG within 90 days.”
In July, a Lee Enterprises reporter filed a public records request with the BIE for documents related to the investigation into Follette’s complaint. In response, the BIE stated it had no such records and that the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General was the “most likely location” of such documents.
When Lee Enterprises requested the investigation from that office, however, a staffer indicated that the Inspector General’s office had relevant documents but was “withholding” them because they “related to an ongoing investigation.”
But Follette said she has never been formally interviewed by BIE investigators about her complaint and questions why the investigation is still ongoing a year later.
Concerns about the BIE’s ability to investigate itself have been recently.
Other investigations
In July, a pair of congressional subcommittees a that probed the OIG’s and BIE’s handling of complaints and investigations into allegations of sexual assault, retaliation and bullying, among other , at one of the schools it operates, Haskell Indian Nations University.
That hearing was the culmination of a protracted battle between the BIE and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, a nonprofit watchdog that engaged in a to extract information pertaining to a BIE investigation into Haskell.
The report that the BIE reluctantly handed over was produced after the Interior Department’s Inspector General complaints about Haskell to the BIE to investigate itself, much as it did at Flandreau.
Jeff Ruch, of PEER’s Pacific office, said the report pointed to the BIE’s “lack of administrative competence and responsible oversight. So for example, I mean, one of the most attention-grabbing parts of the report was reports of sexual assault on students that was drawing no official response. Moreover, there was no protocol, no policy, no nothing.”
Ruch called that “fairly shocking, particularly given the checkered history of Indian education and the concerns” that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is the , “has been voicing” as her department has begun to with the history of the United States’ boarding school system for Native American kids.
Ruch said he and his colleagues at PEER, which has a long of pursuing accountability within the federal government, also was surprised that Haaland didn’t intervene and press the Inspector General’s office to investigate Haskell directly.
“We had thought that Secretary Deb Haaland would basically want to be involved because Indian education was one of her key issues, and you would have thought that she would have demanded something,” Ruch said. “The other thing is that these complaints all originally went to Interior's Office of Inspector General, who referred them back to the agency. And if the secretary wanted the IG to investigate, that would probably ensure a thorough investigation.”
While PEER thought Secretary Haaland “was going to basically kick ass and take names” to ensure accountability at Haskell, Ruch said, “that never happened.”
“In the case of Indian education,” Ruch said, “the problems that have been identified have been historic problems with no admission that there are ongoing problems. So there doesn't appear to be a willingness – and I didn't really see it at the hearing by Interior or (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) or BIE – to admit that they have a problem.”
The communications director for the Office of the Secretary did not respond to questions about Ruch’s criticism and about medication issues at Flandreau Indian School.
In September, congressional staff sent a indicating that they found “significant discrepancies” between an original draft of the BIE’s investigation into Haskell and the one that was reluctantly turned over to PEER and, later, the joint subcommittee. Among the issues they found, the letter stated, were “potential deletion of critical details and improper redactions.”
While the issues at Haskell have drawn attention from lawmakers, Ruch said the BIE’s shortcomings deserve more attention – and action.
“This is supposed to be a model national program,” Ruch said of the BIE, “and it's far from a model. And imagine if this sort of scandal was taking place, let's say, for example, at the Naval Academy or West Point. There would be a much bigger hue and cry.”
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.”
Outrage
Follette's outrage about the issues she identified at Flandreau derives, in part, from how much she got out of her own experience at the school.
Flandreau, she said, “made me who I am.” But she believes it left her daughter with anxiety and depression that “required immediate post traumatic therapy counseling,” as she wrote in her complaint.
What Follette wants, she said, is to see Flandreau – and other schools in the BIE system – live up to the promise she knows they hold.
“There’s so much potential for these schools to heal our people,” she said. “And they’re missing that.”
Contact us: Ted McDermott is a reporter for the Public Service Journalism Team at Lee Enterprises. He can be reached at ted.mcdermott@lee.net.