Californian Only Wanted to Help Sioux but Things Got Out of Hand

Phil Stevens, the California millionaire who only wanted to help, never dreamed that things would get so out of hand.

A Newport Beach engineer who is part Sioux Indian, Stevens wanted to lead the Sioux nation in its 111-year-old quest to reclaim the sacred Black Hills.

After all, nobody else had been able to do it and Stevens certainly had the expertise. He was the East L.A. street kid who rose above poverty to own a posh home in Newport Beach, drive a Cadillac and dine at The Ritz.

If only things were so simple.

“I guess you could say he’s caused a real mess out on the reservation,” said David Miller, a professor at Black Hills State College. “He has really upset the apple cart. He came blundering in like the bull in the china shop.”

To Get Ceremonial Rank

Stevens is in South Dakota this week to assume the title of “Itancankel,” or special chief. An elaborate ceremony will be staged this evening on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in southern South Dakota, and Stevens will ascend to the ceremonial but important central position.

He’ll get there with the support of only one of eight tribes that make up the Great Sioux Nation. The title is not one he has gained through an election but will be bestowed upon him by the Sioux thanks in large part to the influence of Oliver Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala tribe. Red Cloud said he conceived the idea of getting a title for Stevens as a way of giving him some legitimacy to his work on the Indians’ behalf.

The goal is to regain 1.3 million acres of Black Hills land that was taken by the federal government more than a century ago. Stevens is also seeking $3.1 billion for the tribe in compensation for gold mined from the land. Stevens, who recently sold his Irvine-based engineering company, Ultrasystems Inc., for $89 million, sees himself as something of a corporate white knight who will wage the war to reclaim the Black Hills like a takeover battle.

But he is being depicted by some Sioux as a smooth-talking interloper and self-promoting dilettante who would be better off if he went home to California.

‘Very Impressed With Himself’

“Phil Stevens is a hustler. He is an East L.A. street kid who has hustled his way up the ladder, and a man who seems very impressed with himself. But he’s doing us no good whatsoever,” said Charlotte Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux and tribal historian.

“That’s just not true,” Red Cloud snapped. “He’s a good man and we’re going to win this battle. And when he wins, we’re going to give him a feather or a war bonnet.”

“What is it that Phil Stevens wants?” asked the influential Indian weekly, The Lakota Times, in an editorial that ran the day Stevens arrived in Rapid City. “Does he want to help the Sioux or does he want to put on a war bonnet so he can play Indian.”

“We are just a little sick and tired,” the editorial continued, “of this whole Phil Stevens episode.”

The Phil Stevens “episode” started about two years ago during a stay in Rapid City.

Stevens, who is three-sixteenths Indian and claims to be the great-grandson of the warrior chief Standing Bear, said he awoke in a cold sweat with the realization that he must lead the Sioux fight to regain the Black Hills.

“Nothing has been the same since then,” Stevens said.

Stevens said he empathized with the poverty of reservation life, where the jobless rate tops 90% and alcoholism runs rampant.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, he learned salesmanship at an early age by peddling flowers, using sleight of hand to make the bunches appear bigger than they actually were.

Rose Through the Ranks

His street sense served him well. He earned a master’s degree in engineering at UCLA, then rose quickly through the ranks of Hughes Aircraft Co. and TRW Inc., gaining the reputation as an aggressive self-promoter who could get things done. He eventually rose to become manager of the Minuteman III missile program, a position that put him into contact with influential government defense specialists.

His real knack, however, seemed to be in understanding how to attract government contracts.

“Phillip Stevens,” said a recent profile in Forbes magazine, “has a talent for exploiting government programs for all they are worth.”

In 1969, Stevens founded Ultrasystems, which builds electric power plants and has benefited from its share of defense contracts. He recently sold it to an Oklahoma City corporation.

Stevens, who has three grown children and has been married to his wife Joan for more than 30 years, said he will continue to live in Newport Beach, but will devote the rest of his life to helping the Sioux regain the Black Hills. He already has organized a fund-raising event in Orange County last year for an Indian school in Pine Ridge.

He said he plans to play on the national guilt of the white man and to enlist Hollywood celebrities to the cause.

An unabashed publicity seeker, Stevens rarely returns to the South Dakota reservations without first notifying or inviting the press, and in the days before his induction as special chief this week, Stevens gathered news crews for the motorcade through the Black Hills.

Glossy Press Packets

Reporters were given glossy press packets with pictures of Stevens dressed in full Indian regalia, and the motorcade wound through the Black Hills with all the hype of a presidential campaign.

Dressed in black jeans, a matching black Indian shirt and wearing a black bone choker, not to mention black designer sunglasses, Stevens led the entourage through Bear Butte State Park and the Mt. Rushmore Memorial, stopping at each site to allow “photo opportunities.”

In a short speech to about 20 Sioux supporters the night before the tour began, Stevens likened the event to a holy crusade and said he would not be surprised “if someone tries to arrest me.”

“Now if I get arrested, I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” he said. “Just remember that the federal marshals are only doing their jobs. I don’t mind going to jail if I have to.”

No Indication of Arrest

A short time later, Stevens told aides that he would spend most of the tour with the “Good Morning America” crew.

There never were any indications that Stevens might be arrested.

“Publicity is important,” he said recently. “Once the American people hear about the injustices, there is no doubt in my mind that they will want to right this terrible blight on our history.”

Against the opposition of South Dakota’s entire congressional delegation and the majority of the state’s white residents, who comprise 90% of the population, Stevens wants the government to return 1.3 million acres of the Black Hills to the Sioux, in addition to $3.1 billion in compensation for illegally stealing the land in 1877.

Stevens has said that the money would serve as back rent and mineral royalties for Black Hills land that was seized 111 years ago.

The entire Black Hills, as well as most of western South Dakota, was given to the Sioux in the 1868 treaty. Gold was discovered in the area six years later and by 1877 the tribe had been forced into surrendering the land.

After a 60-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the U.S. government had “breached its treaty obligations” and was guilty of “starving the Sioux to get them to agree to the sale of the Black Hills.” The court noted that a “more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealing will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”

Refuses Award

The Sioux Nation was awarded $105 million, but refused to accept the settlement since it did not involve the return of the Black Hills, which the Sioux hold sacred.

The money is sitting in an escrow account collecting interest. It now totals about $191 million.

Since the court ruling, the eight Sioux tribes scattered throughout the state have been working to find a way to get some of the Black Hills area returned.

They found a sympathetic ear and willing sponsor in Sen. Bill Bradley, the New Jersey Democrat and former professional basketball player who was moved by the poverty he saw while holding a basketball camp in Pine Ridge in 1975.

Return of Land

A bill sponsored by Bradley provides for the return of the 1.3 million acres of the Black Hills National Forest, carefully excluding the Mt. Rushmore monument, Ellsworth Air Force Base and all privately held land.

Enter Phil Stevens.

In addition to the land, Stevens chose to demand the $3.1 billion, creating a firestorm of controversy on the reservations.

Stevens’ proposal has split the Sioux nation, pitting tribal councils against one another and disrupting the carefully constructed unity that had been forged to support the Bradley bill.

Some Sioux leaders say Stevens has hurt the chances of the Bradley proposal by making outlandish monetary demands that most certainly will be rejected by a budget-conscious Congress.

Others are turned off both by Stevens’ self-promotion and the concept that money, even $3.1 billion, could compensate for the loss of the Black Hills.

‘Give Us the Land First’

“Why should we negotiate for something that is already ours?” said Louis Whirlwind Horse, a Sioux leader. “It’s like if you have a car stolen from you and then you had to negotiate to get it back. Let them give us the land first and then we’ll talk about compensation.”

They also worry that Stevens’ involvement will only serve to stiffen the already strong opposition among white Dakotans to the Bradley bill.

“That is the real tragedy in all this,” said Gerald Clifford, chairman of the Black Hills Steering Committee, a Sioux leadership organization that has been working with Bradley on his bill for the last five years.

Another effect of Stevens’ involvement, Clifford said, has been renewed feuding among the eight Sioux tribes.

Planning Upset

“The Indian community has always had to deal with unanimity before anyone would take us seriously,” he said. “We finally got all eight tribes to agree and we put together this credible piece of legislation . . . and then suddenly this guy from California comes along.”

Clifford said that by demanding the cash settlement, Stevens was trampling on the real issue, the sacredness of the land.

“He has completely missed the underlying soul of this whole effort and that is that the land is sacred. His bottom line is profit. Our bottom line is getting the land back.”

Along the dusty, wind-whipped streets of Pine Ridge, where trash blows between the dilapidated houses and the young men hang out near the tribal office drinking for lack of work, skepticism and apathy run high.

“Yes, I have heard of this Stevens,” said Freddie Pack, a 43-year-old unemployed laborer from the town of Kyle. “But I have heard stories about the Black Hills, and how we’re going to get them back, for years. This man Stevens is just the latest to come around.”

Yet Stevens does have his supporters, including many who look on him as a hired gun who possesses the kind of corporate savvy and expertise to pull off what no other man has been able to do.

“I have good feelings about Stevens and I think he can deliver,” said Gremaine Tremmel, the great granddaughter of Sitting Bull, who led the victory over Gen. George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn in 1876. “You can’t say it will succeed, but at least give him the benefit of the doubt and see how far it goes.”