WINNER - Winner is farm country where dodging a low-flying pheasant is a daily occurrence for people traveling Tripp County highways.

Until one of the brilliantly plumed birds crosses your path, they blend into the landscape, and it's easy to forget their presence.

The same could be said for the relationship between Winner's American Indian community and its white neighbors.

That indifferent, occasionally confrontational coexistence is about to change because of a mediated settlement recently reached between the Winner School District and 14 Indian families who claimed the district's discipline practices unjustly treated Indian children more harshly than their white classmates.

About 9 percent of Winner's 3,000 residents are Indian. About 25 percent of the school district's student body is Indian, according to the South Dakota Department of Education's Web site.

Located about 18 miles east of Rosebud Indian Reservation, Winner is a typical reservation border town, according to Jennifer Ring of Fargo, N.D., director of the ACLU of the Dakotas.

Ring has made several visits to Winner in the past three years for the ACLU.

"There's a huge disconnect between the two communities," Ring said. "If anything, I think the Indian community is a lot more aware of what happens in the white community than vice versa."

A small, tribal housing development sits just outside of Winner's city limits. Another Indian community is at Ideal, about 14 miles north of town.

The class-action lawsuit was filed two years ago on behalf of children living in both communities and in Winner who attended Winner public schools.

"It's almost like there's two separate communities," Ring said. "The Indian community tends to live in Indian housing. They have their own social calendars, their own events, and the white community is practically not aware of it at all."

Winner Mayor Richard Lewis grew up in Winner in a neighborhood with several Indian families. He has employed Indian carpenters on several of his building projects, including his home, which was built with all Indian labor. On his construction projects, Lewis has dealt with reliable and unreliable white and Indian employees, he said. "It's like any business; You deal with absenteeism."

The lawsuit was unfortunate for everyone, White said.

"The majority of people in Winner do not discriminate against Indian people because they have no reason to," Lewis said.

The business community recognizes the contributions the Indian community makes to the local economy, which also relies heavily on agriculture, he said.

As the agricultural economy changes, fewer people remain on area farms and ranches. Tripp County once had a population of 11,000. Now, only about 6,800 residents remain.

As the white work force disappears, more Indians are finding jobs in the community, Lewis said.

As in most towns bordering a reservation, Indians help boost the local economy.

Lewis said Winner businesses realize that the Indian community is a client base they need to serve.

A clerk in a local retail store said the manager has cautioned employees not to treat Indian customers suspiciously because it could lead to charges of racism.

But Winner resident Vonna Lopez says she knows many Indian people who refuse to shop in Winner because they are treated differently and are shadowed by employees when they go shopping.

"Plus, the Highway Patrol tends to stop them," Lopez said. Cars with Todd County license plates are frequently stopped on the highways around Winner, she said.

Picking up a copy of the local newspaper, Lewis turned to the listings from magistrate court.

If there is discrimination, it can be found in the lists of Indians who are stopped for minor traffic violations, he said. Indians are three times more likely to be stopped than non-Indians, he said.

"Why hasn't the Indian community gone after the court system, the Highway Patrol, the county sheriff and police departments across the whole state?" Lewis asked.

Racism bridges generations

Roger Milk had a "pretty good childhood" in Winner, but he never graduated from high school.

Instead, he has a union card proclaiming him a journeyman member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. He earned the card while working in Chicago in the 1970s.

Now 73, Milk returned to Winner 30 years ago. His step-grandson, Samuel Antoine, was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Life in the small Indian community just south of Winner's city limits is good for those who live there, according to Milk, whose home is down the road from the Rosebud housing unit.

It's a good community, but things are different for the Indians living in Winner, Milk said.

"There are some people in town who put up with us," he said. "Some people in town who will tolerate us and some people in town who will genuinely say 'How are you?' but they are few and far between."

Milk has white friends he has known since middle school and high school.

"We get along good, we're good friends," Milk said, "but, that's not the whole family."

The friendship he shares with former schoolmates has not been passed down to the younger white generations, he said.

"The younger ones don't understand Indian people," Milk said. "The younger group seems to think we are automatically the enemy."

Ring believes that fear is behind the racial discrimination Indians feel in South Dakota.

"There's a sense that somehow Indians are dangerous," Ring said.

And, in this case, many white residents were not even aware of what was happening at the school and how Indian students were being treated, Ring said.

But Winner is not unique among border towns, Ring says. About 60 percent to 70 percent of her work involves racism.

"It's hardest in border towns, but it can happen anywhere," she said.

White people who once exchanged greetings with Christine Rinker often don't acknowledge the mother of three since she became involved in the lawsuit.

But she said it was important to take a stand against the unfair treatment her son, John, suffered in middle school.

John Rinker was charged with disorderly conduct after striking back at a white student who had hit him with a metal-edged ruler. John was briefly suspended from school, and the juvenile court gave him probation and community service. The incident also gave him a juvenile record.

School officials did not notify Rinker that John was involved in a fight. She found out about the trouble when she went looking for John after he didn't come out of the middle school at the end of the day.

She learned from the principal that John was going to be arrested, but the white boy who slapped him with the ruler was not.

It was only after she had spoken with the superintendent and contacted the school board that the white student received two days of in-school suspension.

Not long after the incident, Rinker learned that other Indian children attending the Winner Middle School had experienced similar treatment. She was shocked and relieved to learn she was not alone.

"It's still unbelievable that they could take children and just make these choices that give them these criminal records," Rinker said.

During his time at Winner Middle School, John, who was 13 at the time, felt intimidated and worried that he would get in more trouble, his mother said.

An enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Rinker grew up in Indiana and brought her family to the Winner area about four years ago.

Even the racially mixed neighborhoods in Indiana had not prepared her for the discrimination her children faced, she said.

"I never realized the kind of problems that were here," she said.

The boundary blur

The small pockets of tribal trust land scattered throughout Tripp County create mini-reservation communities that depend upon the Winner Fire Department and ambulance for emergency assistance.

"We take care of the people of Tripp County," Winner police chief Paul Schueth said. Schueth, who was police chief for 23 years, was not with the department during the years covered by the lawsuit. Schueth was reappointed by Lewis in 2006.

Schueth is also a member of the Winner School Board, but like school officials has declined to talk about the lawsuit.

"We have a very nice community. Most of the time, everybody gets along with everybody," Schueth said.

If there are occasional lapses in behavior in the white or Indian community, drugs or alcohol is usually involved, Schueth said. When law enforcement responds, "it's not because of who they are. It's because of what they've done."

Winner has a regional jail that also serves as a federal detention center. Schueth has several Indians on his law enforcement staff. A tribal member has worked for Schueth's small business for more than 20 years.

Some of the claims of racism have been blown out of proportion, Schueth said. Winner does have people who bring "some baggage with them" when they move to town, he said. Some of those issues are related to poverty and others to alcoholism or drugs, and they transcend race, he said. "It's the same in every community."

"Ninety percent of Native Americans are great people, and everyone gets along," Schueth said.

City and county law enforcement officers have no legal jurisdiction on tribal trust lands, but Winner officers do everything they can to help the Indian community, even offering rides home for people who need them, Schueth said.

"We do a lot of things that a lot of places don't do," he said. "If they need something, we try to take care of it."

All that's asked in return is respect, Schueth said. "If they're respectful, we treat them as they want to be treated."

Trouble at school

Lopez disagrees with Schueth's assessment of Winner. Lopez was involved in the school lawsuit because of charges leveled against her son, Lance.

Three of her six children "persevered and got a diploma" from Winner High School. Lance and two other siblings did not. Each of her children "experienced trouble" in the Winner schools, she said.

"We always tried to help them live in a blended community," Lopez said. The children joined Boy Scouts and played baseball. "They had a lot of non-Indian friends, but they still experienced racism."

It was worse at school, Lopez said.

Many in the Indian community believe that Indian children have been victims of discrimination for decades, Ring said. "There is a sense of not feeling welcome."

There is also resentment in Winner's Indian community that the discrimination against Indian students has gone on for this long, Lopez said.

One family searched for their child for three days only to find out the child was in custody because of an incident at school, Ring said. School and law enforcement officials all denied knowing where the student was, she said.

"There is a deep, deep frustration because they feel the white community still wants to deny that there was anything wrong," Ring said.

The white community has a strong ownership of the school, and people are not happy about the claims that there is something wrong, she said.

The school was sensitive enough to change the high school's "Warrior's" mascot a few years ago, Lopez said.

The Indian head warrior was replaced with a knight's shield and crossed swords. Several homecoming practices that were not part of the traditional Lakota culture were also eliminated.

School - the nucleus

School is the nucleus of the Winner community, according to Blake Gardner. Gardner, a Hill City teacher, graduated from Winner High School in 2001. He has good memories of the white and Indian people he knew growing up in Winner.

Gardner remembers Indians living in the "so called" white part of town, and whites who lived in the "so-called" American Indian part of town.

"When I think of Winner, I don't think of Native Americans and white; it's all just one, because that's how I remember it," Gardner said. "There was a Native American community, but it was subliminal."

If there was one difference that set whites and Indians apart in Winner, it was their standard of living, he said. Many more Indian families were low-income.

Gardner cannot recall any specific incidents at school that he could attribute to racism. He doesn't remember school officials treating Indian students differently than the white students.

If anything, discipline was more lenient toward the Indian students, Gardner said.

Since becoming a teacher, Gardner has had students in his own classes charged with disruption of school because of their behavior.

Many changes are because of "zero tolerance" policies many school districts have adopted, he said.

"With zero tolerance now, there's not as much latitude," Gardner said.

In the past year, school officials have changed their discipline practices, according to a group of white students gathered in the Armory parking lot after a recent wrestling camp. The boys declined to give their names.

"It used to be fair. Now we get punished worse," one boy said. "It isn't torture, by any means. We get treated pretty fair."

The Winner school system sets high expectations for its students, the kids said. "School is pretty tough compared to a lot of schools around here."

The Winner school system has been a good place for younger students, according to Ring.

The problems begin surfacing in middle school, and by high school, many Indian students drop out or transfer to reservation schools.

It was encouraging that this year's graduating class included the largest group of Indian graduates ever, Ring said.

Just seeing her grandchildren finish high school is not enough for Lopez. She wants them to go to college and have careers.

"That's my ultimate dream for them," she said. "I just want the normal things that everyone wants for their kids … I want good things for them."

Looking to the future

Lopez is optimistic that the points in the mediated settlement will lay the foundation for a new relationship between the white and Indian community.

She has seen changes in attitudes among the white community in the past year. More people are willing to "extend a wave or a handshake" than in the past, she said.

"But I don't know how long it is going to stay," Lopez said.

Attitudes and relationships change through understanding, according to the Rev. Lyle Martin, pastor of Winner's Trinity Episcopal Church.

Martin is active with a local cultural committee that wants to improve understanding between the races and various cultures that consider Winner home.

In addition to its Indian community, Winner has a Bohemian heritage that can be traced back to early settlers of the area, he said.

"We want to see if we can't get together and maybe find out more about each other," Martin said. "It's time for us to get along."

With the lawsuit settlement fresh in the community's minds, Ring said, it might be hard for whites to think the lawsuit was good for the community - but it can be.

"Both sides are talking more and are going to talk more," she said.

Change will not happen overnight, Ring said. But it will come with the maturing of new generations of Caucasians and Indians who grow up together with a new understanding of each other.

Lopez is looking forward to the promise of a better future for her grandchildren.

The lawsuit settlement also creates pathways for Indian parents to be active in their children's education, which is good, she said.

"The way our kids were being treated is not right or fair," she said.

Indian children have loving parents who want the best for them without the fear of their rights being violated.

They have the right to a good education, Lopez said.

"We see the future in them," she said. "And, we want that future to be with them in a good way."

Contact Andrea Cook at 394-8423 or andrea.cook@rapidcityjournal.com