Lawmakers advance a bill requiring state government to pick up the bill on interpretive services during a contested administrative case.
Existing law doesn’t require the state to provide interpretive services during a contested administrative hearing. House Bill 1219 changes that.
Elizabeth Lone Eagle spoke in favor of the bill on behalf of a group of Lakota speakers contesting a uranium mining exploration case in southwest South Dakota. She began her testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in the Lakota language to show what it is like to be part of a proceeding you can’t understand.
Lone Eagle went on to tell lawmakers she simply introduced herself and counted to 10 in Lakota. But without an interpreter, they wouldn’t have known that.
“If I was not forthcoming with you about that and that was a demonstration of one of the necessities of these services in these contested cases," Lone Eagle said. "[That’s] because just as I’m sure you were very respectful and trying to see if you could follow what I was saying, it was very difficult for you and maybe at some point some of you even tuned that out. That’s the experience.”
That experience, she said, is the same felt by Lakota elders in the contested mining case.
Lone Eagle wasn't the only person who spoke Lakota at the meeting. Interpreter Violet Catches spoke in favor of HB 1219. She's been aiding some of the Lakota elder involved in the contested case with interpretation, saying it's been difficult at times.
"Some of it just doesn't cross over to our language, so we have to try to find words that fit in the best," Catches said. "The other part is in our language we don't have words that fit into English. And a lot of our older, traditional people are limited English speakers. They're bilingual but they don't really understand fully some of the concepts, words and phrases of specific uses."
For many of the elders, English is not their first language, says Duan Two Bulls. He told the committee that for some its English is their third language.
"Yet we expect them to navigate complex systems—health care, courts, services, voting and [education]—in a language that is not their own," Two Bulls said. "That is not access. That is exclusion."
Two Bulls argued that the access to proceedings should be "accessible to all South Dakotans."
Rep. Erik Muckey is the bill’s prime sponsor. He said while there is a fiscal impact, it is a not significant.
“[It’s] a very small fiscal impact with a very impact positively for the state of South Dakota,” Muckey said.
Both the South Dakota Trial Lawyers Association and South Dakota Voices for Justice testified in support of HB 1219.
The bill met no opposition during testimony Wednesday. It advanced after an 8-1 vote.
