The head of an American Indian tribe in Michigan signed a law approving same-sex marriage on Friday, joining at least two other tribes nationwide in doing so, then immediately wed a gay couple who had been together for 30 years but never thought they would see this day come.

Dexter McNamara, chairman of the 4,600-member Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in northern Michigan, and a member of the tribe wed Tim LaCroix, 53, and Gene Barfield, 60, of Boyne City. McNamara read the couple's vows and led the ceremony in English, and the tribe member conducted a traditional tribal ceremony in their language before dozens of wellwishers.

“I’m proud of my tribe for doing this and I love my husband,” LaCroix said. Barfield, who is not a tribe member, chimed in:"How could the world be better? … I'm just ... full of joy and happiness and I love my husband."

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A maple sapling, bent into a hoop with cedar, sage, tobacco and sweetgrass tied to it, was used in the tribal ceremony. The sweetgrass was lit, and the hoop was waved up and down over the couple to ward off evil spirits and bring in good spirits.

“To have Tim’s tribal community, which are an ancient people, welcome me into their midst and …that we are welcome as a married couple in a community, I’m just flabbergasted at how good this makes me feel,” Barfield said, chuckling as he later added, “This goes to prove that the great American author Mark Twain was right: all things come to him who waits and doesn’t die in the meantime."

It was not certain the tribe would recognize same-sex marriage: In 2012, the tribal council voted down a resolution, 5-4, to allow gays and lesbians to wed, but on March 3, the balance shifted and it was approved, 5-4. The resolution, which requires one member of the marrying couples to be a tribe member, then went to the desk of McNamara, who figured that if he vetoed it, the legislation would be unlikely to get the seven votes needed for an override.

While he was mulling his decision, McNamara said LaCroix called and asked him what he was going to do. They and Barfield had once worked together for the tribe.

“I started thinking about it, and that’s when I decided that, you know, we all deserve to be happy," he said, "and everybody is happy in different ways, they show their love in different ways, and I decided to sign it.”

The newlyweds said that after McNamara signed the legislation, he received a standing ovation.

"I’ve always felt that there’s two ways to do things and look at things … you believe in equal rights or you want to discriminate," McNamara said Thursday, noting he'd received mainly positive feedback in response to the decision.

Two other tribes -- the Coquille in Oregon and the Suquamish in Washington state -- have in recent years approved same-sex marriage. Other tribes -- perhaps from five to 10, though there could be more -- have open ordinances that don't define marriage as between a man and a woman, said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at Michigan State University College of Law and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center.

"It's pretty remarkable," Fletcher, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, said of the tribe's action. "I mean Indian Country is mostly rural and insular and pretty conservative, so it's unusual for a rural community like this to sort of stick their necks out like this, but it gives you a sense of where I think we are as a nation in terms of being much more open toward same-sex marriage in a fairly short period of time."

However, large tribes, such as the Cherokee Nation and Navajo Nation, ban same-sex marriage. The Cherokee Nation took action when a lesbian couple sought the right to marry in tribal court. The pair was ultimately successful in 2006 though the ban was imposed, scholars said.

In smaller tribes, such as the Coquille and Suquamish, people know one another and so legally excluding same-sex couples has a more significant impact socially and politically rather than with a large tribe like the Cherokee, who have a big bureaucracy and are aiming to behave more like a nation-state, said Brian Joseph Gilley, a professor of anthropology and head of the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The impact of the Little Traverse Bay decision was unclear, though Fletcher said he thought it would carry weight with other tribes. Little Traverse Bay was an influential, average-sized tribe that has been, along with some other Michigan tribes, "very much in the forefront of some good progressive tribal governance measures in the last couple decades."

"I do think it’s going to be influential," he said of the decision, "and it’s sort of a groundswell building in Indian Country that’s a little bit slower than the rest of the country, but it’s definitely building."

McNamara, who said it was an "historic" day for the tribe, agreed, saying he thought other tribes in the state might take their lead.

“We’ve been a role model, I think, for the federally recognized tribes of Michigan and it seems like we’re out in front -- and not taking anything away from the other federally recognized tribes -- but, you know, it seems like we kind of opened the door for other tribes and I think other tribes will follow," he said.

Nine states plus the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, while more than 30 ban it, including Michigan -- where that law will apply outside the reservation. The Supreme Court in less than two weeks will hear cases challenging California's same-sex marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, and the federal law (Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA) barring recognition of same-sex couples.

The federal law applies to tribes, too, said Melissa Tatum, director of the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program at the University of Arizona. It is up to each tribe -- there are nearly 570 -- to decide where they fall on this issue, she said.

"Some tribes have a culture and a history of accepting same-sex relationships and they don’t view it as anything unusual or different and some tribes have, like many states … they don’t have a culture of accepting it," she said. "Just like within the state populations you’re going to get the whole spectrum of attitudes in favor and against it in tribal governments."

Whether a tribal government accepted such marriages was "not just based on changing social opinions but based on tribal culture," she added. "Tribes who take control of their own laws, who make culturally appropriate decisions about what their government policies are going to be, have far and away more successful, more stable tribal government."

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A man shot four people dead, including a child, on a Central California Indian reservation and wounded two other children before being killed in a shootout with detectives after a car chase, authorities said.

The violence started Saturday night on the Tule River Indian Reservation in Porterville, Calif., the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies responding to a 911 call found a man and a woman shot inside a trailer and a male juvenile suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. Irene Celaya, 60, and Francisco Moreno, 61, were confirmed dead. Six-year-old Andrew Celaya was transported to a hospital.

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At a shed on the same property, deputies found the body of another man, Bernard Franco (AKA Moreno), 53, who died of an apparent gunshot wound.

The person who called police said the suspect fled the scene in a green Jeep Cherokee.

Authorities identified the suspect as Hector Celaya, 31, and said he had taken his two daughters, 8-year-old Alyssa Celaya and 5-year-old Linea Celaya. Deputies said the suspect had allegedly shot the children.

A deputy spotted the suspect’s vehicle and tried to stop it but the driver kept going, the sheriff’s office said. Linea received non-life threatening injuries. Alyssa died from her gunshot wounds.

The suspect eventually stopped on the side of a road and a shootout ensued, authorities said. The suspect was shot and was transported to the hospital. He later died, the sheriff’s office said.

All victims were related to the suspect and members of the Tule Indian Reservation. No further details were released.

The sheriff’s office did not say what may have precipitated the shootings.

 

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Police in Pennsylvania have arrested a suspect in the kidnapping and killing of a 10-month old girl and the slaying of her grandmother who was taking care of her in a Philadelphia suburb. According to the affadavit for his arrest, Raghunandan Yandamuri, after telling police he committed the crime, asked police to say his wife turned him so she could claim a cash reward being offered for the child's return.

The body of the baby, Saanvi Venna, was discovered overnight, police said Friday. Her grandmother Satyavathi Venna, 61, was found slain on Monday in the family's apartment in King of Prussia, about 15 miles north of Philadelphia and it was then that the baby was discovered missing.  

Yandamuri, 26, an acquaintance of the family who lives in the same apartment complex, faces charges of first and second degree murder, kidnapping and burglary in what police say appears to have been a kidnapping for ransom that went awry.

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Near the body of the grandmother, who died from stab wounds to her neck and chest, investigators found a ransom note demanding $50,000 for the return of Saavni, investigators revealed on Friday.

"If you want your daughter alive and safe, follow our instructions carefully," said the message, which is attached as an exhibit to the criminal complaint provided by police. It called for the baby's mother to deliver the $50,000 by 8 p.m. the same day, and warned, "Any cunning act from anyone of you will lead to your daughter's death."

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Investigators issued an Amber Alert just before 5 p.m. Monday after the child's father and slain victim's son, Venkata Konda Siva Venna, found the woman's body and realized his daughter was missing.

Police say Venna left work to check on the pair after receiving a call from a worried relative who was unable to reach them.

The baby’s mother, Chenchu Latha Punuru, was at work when Venna was killed and the child was taken, police said.

In the ransom note, the writer used the nicknames "Shiva" and "Lata" for Saanvi's parents, which were known only to a handful of people, all of whom were in the community of Asian Indian Americans, according to an affidavit for Yandamuri's arrest.

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One of the people who knew those names was Yandamuri, who first told detectives he had no idea who had killed Satyavathi or taken Saanvi. He had attended a vigil held for the child and helped create and distribute missing child posters of the girl, it said.

Later in the interview on Thursday, Yandamuri said he was responsible for both deaths. He said he targeted the family because he believed they had money, and said his intention was to hide the child until the ransom was paid, the affidavit said. 

According to the document, he told police he had stabbed the grandmother with a kitchen knife in a tussle for the child, stuffed a handkerchief into the child's mouth to stop her from crying, and then put her in a blue suitcase, which he later abandoned in a sauna at the apartment complex gym.

Following Yandamuri's description, investigators went to the sauna, the affidavit said.

"Hidden inside a dark wooden sauna under a deep bench, they found the lifeless body of Saanvi Venna. There was apparent blood on her white dress."

The grandmother had been visiting from India since July, authorities said, and was planning to return in January.

A reward for information leading to the safe return of the child had jumped from $30,000 to $50,000 on Thursday.

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Russell Means, the American Indian activist who helped lead the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee and who later became a Hollywood actor, has died. He was 72.

Means died Monday at his ranch in Porcupine, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Oglala Sioux Tribe spokeswoman Donna Salomon said. The firebrand former leader of the American Indian Movement and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. president had been battling advanced esophageal cancer.

 

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Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Means joined the American Indian Movement in 1968 and soon became one of the group's prominent leaders. He took part in an occupation of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington in 1972, and helped lead the 71-day standoff with federal authorities at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge in 1973.

He found himself dogged for decades by questions about AIM’s alleged involvement in the slaying of a tribe member and the several gun battles with federal officers during the occupation of Wounded Knee, but denied the group ever promoted violence.

"You people who want to continue to put AIM in this certain pocket of illegality, I can't stand you people," Means said, lashing out an at audience member question during an April gathering commemorating the uprising's 40th anniversary. "I wish I was a little bit healthier and a little bit younger, because I wouldn't just talk."

Means told The Associated Press in 2011 that before AIM, there had been no advocate on a national or international scale for American Indians, and that Native Americans were ashamed of their heritage.

"No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry," Means said. "And there was a plethora of dozens if not hundreds of athletic teams that in essence were insulting us, from grade schools to college. That's all changed."

The movement eventually faded away, the result of Native Americans becoming self-aware and self-determined, Means said.

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Means had fought for Native American rights since the 1960s, when he first protested college and professional sports teams' use of Indian images as mascots, which he said were demeaning caricatures of his people.

Means was arrested numerous times during his long career of protest and spent several periods in jail.

He ran unsuccessfully for president of his tribe and sought the Libertarian nomination for U.S. president, losing to Congressman Ron Paul at the party's 1987 national convention.

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Means’ acting career began in 1992 when he portrayed Chingachgook alongside Daniel Day-Lewis' Hawkeye in "The Last of the Mohicans." He also appeared in the 1994 film "Natural Born Killers," voiced Chief Powhatan in the 1995 animated film "Pocahontas" and guest-starred in 2004 on the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Means kept busy with his Hollywood career even as he battled the cancer that finally took his life. The Internet Movie Database reports that Means had recently completed projects, and had more in the works.

Means appeared in a film called "Tiger Eyes," which was based on a Judy Blume novel. Means' son, Tatanka Means, starred. The film screened Sunday at the Sante Fe Independent Film Festival.

The Means duo also are credited in "Winnetou: The Beginning," set for a 2013 release.

Means recounted his life in the book "Where White Men Fear to Tread." He said he pulled no punches in his autobiography, admitting to his frailties and evils but also acknowledging his successes.

"I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be," he said.

Salomon, the tribal spokeswoman, called Means' death a "great loss" for the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

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By Stephanie Woodard
100Reporters

A youth-suicide epidemic is sweeping Indian country, with Native American teens and young adults killing themselves at more than triple the rate of other young Americans, according to federal government figures.

In pockets of the United States, suicide among Native American youth is 9 to 19 times as frequent as among other youths, and rising. From Arizona to Alaska, tribes are declaring states of emergency and setting up crisis-intervention teams.

“It feels like wartime,” said Diane Garreau, a child-welfare official on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota. “I’ll see one of our youngsters one day, then find out a couple of days later she’s gone. Our children are self-destructing.”

So dire is the alarm that of 23 grants the U.S. federal government awarded nationally to prevent youth suicides in September, 10 went to Native American tribes or organizations, with most of them receiving nearly $500,000 per year for three years.

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A former Democratic senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for 18 years, called those efforts good but insufficient. Dorgan is founder of the Center for Native American Youth, which promotes Indian child health and emphasizes suicide prevention. He describes the Indian Health Service, which serves the nation’s 566 tribes, as chronically underfunded.

"We need more mental-health services to save the lives of our youngest First Americans,” Dorgan said. “Tribes and nonprofits may get two- or three-year grants to address an issue that cannot possibly be resolved in that amount of time. We fund programs, then let them fall off a cliff.

"The perception may be that tribes have a lot of gaming funds, but that is simply not true for more than a few,” Dorgan said.

Legacy of trauma
The suicide risk factors for Native youth are well known and widely reported. In their homes and communities, many Native youngsters face extreme poverty, hunger, alcoholism, substance abuse and family violence. Diabetes rates are sky high, and untreated mental illnesses such as depression are common. Unemployment tops 80 percent on some reservations, so there are few jobs—even part-time or after-school ones. Bullying and peer pressure pile on more trauma during the vulnerable teen years.

Native youngsters are particularly affected by community-wide grief stemming from the loss of land, language and more, researchers reported in 2011. As many as 20 percent of adolescents said they thought daily about certain sorrows—even more frequently than adults in some cases, the researchers found.

“Our kids hurt so much, they have to shut down the pain,” said Garreau, who is Lakota. “Many have decided they won’t live that long anyway, which in their minds excuses self-destructive behavior, like drinking—or suicide.”

Suicide figures vary from community to community, with the most troubling numbers in the Northern Plains, in Alaska and in parts of the Southwest. In Alaska, the suicide rate for young Native males is about nine times that of all young males in the United States, while Native females in Alaska kill themselves nineteen times as often as all U.S. females their age, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

After a cluster of suicides in 2001, the White Mountain Apache Tribe wanted to develop a prevention program. It mandated reporting of all suicides and attempts on their Arizona reservation, discovering that between 2001 and 2006, their youth ended their lives at 13 times the national rate.

The trauma behind the numbers is excruciating. “When my son died by suicide at age 23, I didn’t even know how to think,” said Barbara Jean Franks, who is Tlingit and was living in Juneau, Alaska, at the time. “I couldn’t imagine that hope existed.”

The tragedies ripple through entire communities. Reservations are essentially small towns, and tribal members are often related, whether closely or distantly, Garreau said. “People are numbed, overwhelmed. Sometimes they’ll say, I just can’t go to another funeral.”

Because suicide is so common in some Native communities, it’s become an acceptable solution for times when burdens build up, said Alex Crosby, medical epidemiologist with the CDC’s injury-prevention center: “If people run into trouble—relationship problems, legal problems—this compounds the underlying risk factors, and one of the options is suicide.”

"Is it in our blood?"
“It crosses your mind,” said Jake Martus, whose Yupik/Eskimo/Athabaskan father was born in a tiny, remote village on the Yukon River. “I’ve never acted on suicidal thoughts, but they’ve been there my entire life. It’s sad, it’s shocking, but in our communities it’s also somehow normal.”

Martus, who is 26 and a patient advocate for the Alaska Native Epidemiology Center, said suicide is so frequent among his people, he has to ask, “Is it in our blood?” Martus’ father killed himself in jail after being arrested for drunk driving. Behind his dad’s alcoholism were overwhelming memories of sexual abuse by his village’s Catholic priest, Martus said. Similar stories echo throughout Indian country, where lawsuits against the Catholic Church have detailed sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by clerics in parishes or on staff at the notoriously violent boarding schools that Native children were forced to attend until the 1970s.

The lasting effect of the abuse and the loss of land and culture is often called historical trauma. Martus calls it genocide. “They set us up to kill ourselves," he said. "The point of all the policies was ‘take them out.’”

In some communities, suicide has become so ordinary that boys in particular may dare each other to try it, said Ira Vandever, a Ramah Navajo chef in western New Mexico. He works with Music Is Medicine, a local group that brings guitars, drums and lessons from rock and traditional musicians to Native youngsters. Speaking after dinner at his restaurant, La Tinaja, he said, “Around here, some who have died by suicide weren’t depressed. They were just responding to a dare.”

Incredible as it may sound to adults, adolescents may not fully understand that shooting or hanging themselves can have permanent results, said social worker Patricia Serna, who helped develop a nationally recognized suicide-prevention program for a New Mexico tribe. “Youth who survived suicide attempts would tell us they just wanted a break from their problems, a little time off.” She explains that important decision-making parts of the brain are not fully developed in adolescents—of all population groups, not just Native youngsters. As a result, they may not foresee the consequences of their actions.

Part of the boys’ difficulty is misunderstanding the warrior tradition that makes up much of Native male identity, according to Alvin Rafelito, Ramah Navajo and director of his community’s health and human services department. “We have a prayer that describes a warrior as someone who goes the distance spiritually for his people. Nowadays, that ideal has been reduced to simply fighting and violence. In teaching kids to be modern warriors, we have to convey the term’s full, traditional meaning.”

Tradition as a life raft
Tradition is key, said Anderson Thomas, Ramah Navajo and director of the community’s behavioral health program. On his reservation, he points out, it’s typically young men who are dying by suicide, not young women. “I’d say more than 90 percent of girls here go through their traditional coming-of-age ceremony,” he said. In contrast, little is done for young males. In large part, he said, that’s because traditional male activities like hunting have diminished, so rituals related to them have dropped off as well. Though Ramah Navajo men and boys can obtain conventional therapy, they also need ceremonies, Thomas said.

“It was my tradition that brought me to safety,” Franks said. As time went on, she went back to school, got a degree and these days promotes suicide prevention statewide on behalf of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. “Now, I can move forward. Instead of saying my son died by suicide, I can say he gave me 23 years of his life.”

According to Crosby, tradition is one of the so-called “protective factors” that can counter the risk factors—even the deeply embedded ones that afflict tribes. For indigenous people, tradition is distinctive and powerful, say researchers. It incorporates family and clan relationships, reverence for elders and a deeply-held spiritual life. Supporting these traditions and ties makes Native youngsters feel valued and gives them encouragement to seek help, U.S. and Canadian scientists have concluded in study after study.

You don’t have to be a scientist to figure this out. Alaska Native Tessa Baldwin was a 17-year-old high school student when she learned that feeling connected is vital. At age 5, she had lost an uncle to suicide and in succeeding years, several friends and a boyfriend. “I finally realized it wasn’t something affecting just me,” she said. “It was a lot bigger.” In 2011, she founded Hope4Alaska, one many small grassroots suicide-prevention groups in Indian country.

Through Hope4Alaska, Baldwin traveled to schools in Alaska Native villages to tell her story and find out what other teens thought would help.

“We had youth–elder discussions, and the kids said they felt useless. They wanted to better their communities but saw no way to make a contribution. The elders were touched, and the kids felt they’d connected with them in an important way,” recalls Baldwin, who has just started her freshman year at the University of California, San Diego.

To make sure Cheyenne River’s children feel part of a community that values them, Diane Garreau’s sister, Julie, runs the Cheyenne River Youth Project, a busy after-school facility. Kids listen to elder storytellers, play basketball and tend a two-acre organic garden. They get healthy meals and homework help. They study in a library, go online in an Internet café, stage fashion shows and organize local beautification projects. In 2011, a youth-leadership group visited the White House.

“Everything we do—from serious to seemingly frivolous—is about letting our kids know we care,” Julie Garreau said.

Continuity counts
“You could define many things—a school camping trip, a traditional dance group—as suicide prevention,” said Zuni Pueblo’s Superintendent of Schools Hayes Lewis, co-creator  of the Zuni Life Skills Development curriculum, one of the first suicide-prevention programs designed for Native Americans, in the late 1980s. The school-based lesson series teaches coping skills like stress management, as well as role-playing responses to suicide threats. It was created after a rise in youth-suicide rates at Zuni—thirteen deaths between 1980 and 1987, according to a paper Lewis co-wrote in 2008.

After Zuni adopted the curriculum in 1991, youth suicide stopped almost immediately, according to Lewis’s co-author, Stanford University education professor Teresa LaFromboise. Fifteen years later, the pueblo’s schools shelved the program. Suicides crept back, and the shocked community asked Lewis to resume the post of school superintendent and re-establish the curriculum. Over the past two years, he’s done just that, he said.

When the Zuni school system ended its program, the officials there didn’t realize “how fragile the peace was,” Lewis testified to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in 2009, telling then-Senator Dorgan and other members: “Suicide prevention and intervention require constant vigilance.”

Agencies, nonprofits, foundations and others can partner with tribes in the effort to protect Native children. Ultimately, though, it’s up to the communities, Lewis said. “We adults have to practice our core cultural values of compassion, respect, cooperation and concern for our children. We have to talk to youngsters about relationships, clans, societies—all the connections they’re a part of.”

“We have to tell our kids how wonderful they are,” adds Julie Garreau. “We have to give them safe places to learn and have fun and reassure them that they can have a productive life with healthy relationships.”

Franks recently participated with grieving family members in a memorial walk. The group circled a lake in one direction to honor those they’d lost, and the other direction to express support for those who remain. “Prevention includes acknowledging the bereaved and helping them talk about what happened,” Franks said.

Rafelito was hopeful. He was standing in a Ramah Navajo community garden, surrounded by ripening squashes, corn and other heirloom crops. He noted that today’s Native people and their traditions endure, despite centuries of depredations and violence. “Look at our history,” Rafelito said. “It’s been survival of the fittest. We’re the smartest and the toughest anyone can be.

“Our message to our kids should be, ‘We’re OK.’”

Stephanie Woodard is a member of 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative news center. This article, the first in a series on preventing Native youth suicide, was made possible by grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. The series will be co-published with Indian Country Today.

RAPID CITY, S.D. -- Hundreds of people marched in support of a tribal elder who says the letters “KKK” were carved into his stomach by a surgeon at a South Dakota hospital.

A YouTube video featuring 69-year-old Vern Traversie, a Lakota man who lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation, has gone viral in Native American communities. In it, Traversie recounts his hospital experience. Though he is blind, Traversie says he was told by others that the scars left after his heart surgery make out the hateful letters, and he is outraged.

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Another video posted on YouTube purports to show a photo of the the scars, which he says were left on his abdomen.

The problem is, not everyone sees it. Like those spotting the Madonna in a water stain, Traversie's advocates are staunch believers. Those who aren't include police who investigated his allegations and officials at Rapid City Regional Hospital, where the Aug. 26, 2011, surgery took place.

“We are deeply committed to providing excellent care to everyone, regardless of race. No one at RCRH would stand idly by and allow abuse to occur in this hospital,” hospital CEO Tim Sughrue said in a statement Monday.

He said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the case due to patient privacy laws.

Rapid City police say they conducted an investigation but found no evidence of a crime. Craig Saunders, a cardiologist at Barnabas Hospital in Newark, N.J., said incision marks can take many different shapes, depending on where the doctor needs to get into the body. Saunders, who did not operate on Traversie, said surgical tape also can leave scarring and lesions depend on the make-up of the person's body.

The lack of clear letters hasn't deterred Traversie, his supporters or those who see the scars as more evidence of continued mistreatment of Native American people.

"Rapid City ... we understand you have been carving up our people. This is going to end today," American Indian Movement founder Dennis Banks said to a roaring crowd Monday before leading the supporters on a more than two-mile-long march from a Rapid City plaza to the hospital.

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While Traversie's story spurred the protest, many in attendance referred to broken treaties, unsolved murders and incarceration rates among Native Americans as their reasons for showing up.

"We're classified as second-class citizens," said Hap Marshall, 69, a resident of the Cheyenne River reservation. "But when they want our votes, we're their brother."

The protest was relatively peaceful. Officers from the Rapid City Police Department blocked off traffic as the supporters, many dressed in red shirts and waving American Indian Movement flags, marched to the beat of a drummer riding in a truck leading the way. Passing cars occasionally honked.

A group of about 15 people — including Banks and Oglala Sioux Vice President Tom Poor Bear — met with officials at the hospital, while police prevented other supporters from entering the building.

The march was largely organized by Cody Hall, who lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation, and Chase Iron Eyes, who lives on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border, in an effort to bring attention to what they say is continued mistreatment of Native American people.

"We have organized to send a message for once and for all that we are not going to stand for anymore hate crimes or racial violence in this region. It doesn’t matter where you are from; once you get to Rapid, when an Indian steps out of their car, they are labeled as a target,” Hall told Indian Country Today Media Network.

Many in the Native American community believe there are different standards of justice for them and for other races, said Stew Magnuson, who writes a column for a Native American newspaper and wrote a book about issues on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation.

Prior to the 1970s and the American Indian Movement, Native Americans felt powerless without representation on juries. AIM changed that by marching into towns and demanding justice, which no one had ever seen before, Magnuson said, adding: "So, I think some of these feelings live on, rightly or wrongly."

Traversie didn’t attend Monday’s rally.

In a YouTube video interview last month, he says a home health care worker photographed the marks on his front torso when she visited him at home a day after his discharge.

“She said, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know what they did to you,’” Traversie said.

The pictures and video were later posted  on a “Justice for Vern Traversie” page on Facebook.

Msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this report from The Associated Press.

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