SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – A group of Native American inmates has filed a federal lawsuit against the South Dakota Department of Corrections, saying a new prison policy that bans the use of tobacco during religious ceremonies is discriminatory.
The Native American Council of Tribes, an organization based at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, asked the U.S. District Court to prevent the policy from being enforced. Inmate Blaine Brings Plenty, the group’s chairman, said in the complaint that for Native American prayer to be effective, “it must be embodied in ‘tobacco’ and offered within a ceremonial framework.”
The suit filed Dec. 9 lists Warden Doug Weber, Corrections Secretary Timothy Reisch and Attorney General Marty Jackley as defendants.
Corrections spokesman Michael Winder said Dec. 14 that the department does not comment on pending litigation.
The state prison system went tobacco free in 2000 but made an exception for tobacco used in Native American ceremonies. In an Oct. 19 letter announcing the policy change to tribal liaisons, spiritual leaders, pipe carriers and sundancers, Weber said tobacco used during ceremonies was becomingly increasingly abused and inmates have been caught separating it from their pipe and tie mixtures.
“The tobacco is then sold or bartered to other inmates,” Weber wrote. “Sometimes the prison gangs are pressuring the inmates to sell their tobacco instead of using it for spiritual reasons.”
Weber said the change was requested by Native American spiritual leaders who come to state facilities to conduct ceremonies. He said they told prison officials that tobacco is too addictive and is not traditional to Lakota and Dakota ceremonies.
The Council of Tribes said in the lawsuit that the change violates U.S. Constitutional rights ensuring that no prisoner be penalized or discriminated against solely on the basis of Native American religious beliefs or practices.
The council said in its lawsuit that prisons have been reluctant to give Indian inmates the same rights that non-Indians have enjoyed under state law, and “these attitudes still linger.”
In his letter, Weber said prisons will continue to allow the use of other botanicals such as cansas, sage, bitter root, bearberry, lovage, flat cedar and sweet grass.
Other states, including Nevada and New Mexico, have prison smoking bans but allow American Indians to use tobacco during religious ceremonies. In Nevada, state officials have said the inmates could smoke pipes as long as there were no abuses.
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