Gathering population information from people who live on South Dakota reservations is difficult. Government entities usually request statistics for funding and when people aren’t accounted for, those funds can fall short. Employees with tribal veteran affairs offices teamed up with a research group to find the needs of their local veterans.
Reservations are in some of the most remote and rural parts of South Dakota. Robert Dunsmore is the Tribal Service Veterans Officer for Cheyenne River. He’s one of two Veterans Affairs, or VA, employees serving the reservation. He says his isn’t the only tribal VA office that’s understaffed and offers limited services.
"We don’t have the funding to be doing things like we should, like mainstream America. When you go to Sioux Falls, Rapid City-you’ve got vets center, everything else and those places. We don’t have that here.”
He says it’s important to make services like healthcare, housing and mental health available to veterans. He says location is important and Many veterans are forced to travel to larger centers hours away. Dunsmore says when he asks for tribal VA service funding, federal and state entities want to see data to show how many veterans live in the area. However-that data didn’t exist before this survey.
“The state of South Dakota alone has a little over 72 thousand veterans registered in the state. Thirty eight thousand of them are American Indian veterans.”
The survey his team conducted for the Oglala Lakota, Sisseton Wahpeton and Cheyanne River tribes are the first to highlight local veteran populations and their needs. In three months, they found the veteran populations on all three tribes- the highest number, 99, in Cheyanne River.
“That still doesn’t show the numbers but it’s a start.”
Dunsmore says these numbers show there’s enough people in the area to increase local VA funding and services. He says legislators have told his team to expect changes soon.