How I met Vern Ashley — A True “Living Legend” and Crow Creek's First Tribal Chairman — And Why His Story Needs to Told in a Book and Documentary
Written by: Diversity Foundation's Executive Director Lyle Rustad
Since the Crow Creek-Dakota Memorial Dedication Ceremony in 2002, Diversity Foundation has interviewed and recorded Vern Ashley numerous times — we have well over 20 hours of video footage — at various locations, including his Pierre, South Dakota home, Crow Creek, Mankato, Winona, and Rochester.
I first met Mr Vern Ashley at Crow Creek's first and only Dakota Memorial Ceremony in 2002 at the Big Bend Dam. Rod Steiner and the Hereditary Chief Ernest Wabasha Family had invited me to videotapeand photograph the day long ceremonies. Mr. Ashley, along with Crow Creek's Don Loudner, served as Co-Emcees for the day long event. I was the only person taping this traumatic, historic and long overdue event.
Following the ceremonies, they held a feast where I was again fortunate to do further interviews with Vern, Don and other Dakota elders attending the event from many Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Tribes across the Great Plains.
Rod Steiner and I stayed a few days to do some fishing, giving me an opportunity to spend some quality time talking with him. Rod and I didn't catch any fish one day --he claimed that I jinxed his fishing -- so I was forced to offer to buy him supper at the nearby Crow Creek Casino Restaurant.
That is where I learned that Crow Creek was actually a Dakota Reservation and not Lakota as Rod & the Wabasha's had previously thought. Not much was written or known about the early history of what had happened since the Dakota people were exiled here from Minnesota in 1863. Most of the oral stories that had been passed down stated that all the Dakota survivors, including Chief Wabasha III, had left Crow Creek in 1865 and walked down to the Santee Reservation, where Chief Wabasha III died and was buried in 1876.
In talking and interviewing Melvin Greyowl and other elders, we found that chief Big Eagle, Vern Ashley, Don Loudner, and many other Dakota survivors had stayed back, along with the Winnebago and other tribes.
Diversity Foundation has interviewed Vern numerous times since 2002 at various locations, including his Pierre, South Dakota home, Crow Creek, Mankato, Winona, and Rochester. Diversity Foundation has recorded at least 15-20 hours of footage.
Vern Ashley talks about his trips to Washington D.C.
“My first trip to Washington was to try to get authorization to form a government, a written form of government, for the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. I finally got that. And you know, after we wrote the Constitution and bylaws, then of course people had to adopt it all over the reservation. Crow Creek had three districts, Big Bend, the Agency and the Crow Creek. After the votes were counted my own district turned it down, and I had thoroughly explained what was going to take place in English and Dakota both. But at least it went over. So we wrote the constitution and bylaws for the tribe and I was known as the father of the Constitution.”
“The next big challenge I faced was the Pick-Sloan plan to harness the Missouri River and the Fort Randall land-taking on the Crow Creek. That would be the late ’40s –In ’49 the tribe adopted the bylaws. So the next thing we had to battle was the Corps of Engineers taking thousands of acres of Indian trust land, mind you, trust land,” Ashley said.
They lost that fight.
“After that we had to fight for the intangible damages and tangible damages. The harnessing of the Missouri took away a lot of stuff from the Indian people. Intangible damages were something like fruit – all the grapes, plums, chokecherries, buffalo berries, Juneberries – those are gone.
“And the wildlife. Back then I tell my daughter that furs were worth money. They used to make them into coats and caps and stuff like that. We lost all those things. So in my testimony before Congress I told them. And then we lost our firewood, too.”
Also in 1954, with the Crow Creek country in turmoil from the dam work, they moved the BIA agency and tribal offices to Pierre for some years.
“When we were negotiating to relocate the agency, the people wanted Chamberlain because that was their hometown, you know – the tribe. So then Chamberlain’s city leaders, was the merchants up and down the street, came out and met with the tribe. We had a good visit. And when they got done one of the city councilmen said, ‘Mr. Ashley would you come down and meet with the city commission?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’d be glad to.’ So the Bureau put together all the income that was coming to the agency, the leasing of land, funding the Bureau of Indian Affairs and all these other things. The agency was pulling in millions of dollars. So then I went down and went to the city commission. The councilmen and the merchants sat with me.”
But after he got done with his presentation, one of the city’s leaders stood up.
“He said, ‘Well, you heard him,’ he said. ‘But if you want those stinking Indians here in Chamberlain, I’ll put him by you,’ and he named all of the merchants. And he was a lawyer. I just thought: A well-educated man, to talk like this? And so I just decided it wouldn’t go to Chamberlain.
“Who welcomed the move of the agency was Pierre. Pierre came down and they came down in full force, they brought food and everything else. Pierre was really receptive to the move of the Crow Creek Tribe to Pierre. They helped us with housing. We established offices at the Indian School. That would have been 1954.”
Somewhere in those years he earned a degree from Dakota Wesleyan University, and he ended up working for three governors.
“When I was in Flandreau, my junior or senior year, you had to write a little essay: What do you plan to do when you finish high school? And I said, Well, what could I say? I’m going home to the reservation. I’m going to try to find a job to take care of my older parents.
“If they said, ‘You’re going to be working for governors in 30 years’ – that would have been a pipe dream. But that’s exactly what happened. Thirty years later I worked for three governors in South Dakota, 1965 to 1972. I worked for three governors – Nils Boe, Frank Farrar and Dick Kneip.
“I was also South Dakota’s first coordinator of Indian affairs starting with Gov. Nils Boe, and continuing with the next two administrations.”