After Tragedy, Turmoil on Reservation

As the federal investigation into the deadly attack at a high school on the Red Lake Reservation continues, residents are struggling with a mounting fear that their own children may have known about the plot or been involved.

Dozens of students, here and in the nearby town of Bemidji, have been questioned about the crime. Federal agents this weekend seized scores of computers from students’ homes, as well as from computer labs at Red Lake High School.

And as the days pass, political and family lines of loyalty have grown blurred in this Chippewa community of 5,000, about 250 miles north of Minneapolis.

Few understand the difficulty of such interconnectedness more than the Jourdain family. Since the adoption of the Red Lake Nation’s constitution in 1958, there have been four tribal chairmen. Two have been Jourdains.

Roger Jourdain, who was a leading voice on Indian matters in Washington, held the post from the 1950s until 1990. Floyd “Buck” Jourdain Jr., a third-cousin once removed, is the tribe’s youngest elected chairman. He stepped into the role in August.

His 16-year-old son, Louis, was arrested March 27 and charged in connection with the school shooting that left 10 dead. At least a third of the victims were related to former or current political rivals of the Jourdains. And gunman Jeffrey Weise, 16, is a distant cousin of Louis’.

Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion on March 21 before heading to Red Lake High School. There, he fatally shot five students, a teacher and a security guard before killing himself. Weise, who had a history of depression, wounded seven others.

Now, some residents are calling for Floyd Jourdain’s resignation.

“He needs to step down,” said Francis Brun, a political rival of Jourdain’s and father of Derrick Brun, the security guard. “How can he lead us now?”

The Jourdain legacy is connected more by political ambition than by family ties, say longtime residents. Yet the Jourdain family has left a lasting imprint on the tribe, often because of the controversies it has fought or faced.

Standing before a group of teachers and grief-stricken parents recently gathered at a local community center, a police official told the crowd that as many as 20 students may have known about the plot.

“This is a nightmare,” Jourdain, 40, said afterward. “There are no clear lines of who is, and is not, affected. We cannot afford to let this pull us apart.”

Roger and Floyd Jourdain rose to power in a tribal culture shaped in part by decisions made in the late 1800s. Tribal leaders at that time resisted a federal push to allot land to individual Indians and instead laid claim to it by right of conquest in order to create commonly held property. Tribes that took property individually saw many members sell their land, often taken advantage of by real estate speculators.

Though greatly diminished and more isolated than the Red Lake Nation’s original holdings, the reservation included a vast expanse of pine forests.

Roger Jourdain, born in 1912, was raised at a time when the Bureau of Indian Affairs heavily influenced tribal leadership. He and a group of school friends left the reservation for work and to get an education. He worked construction jobs in Canada, said Kent Smith, an associate professor of Indian studies at Bemidji State University.

By the 1940s, Roger Jourdain and his friends had returned and formed the Red Lake Young Man’s Council, one of several political factions fighting the established leadership. They ultimately gained control of the tribe’s government. By 1958, a revised constitution had been written, the role of tribal chairman had been created and Roger Jourdain was elected to the post.

He lunched with national leaders, including Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, which led to job-training programs. Meetings with President Carter helped secure funding for a medical center and hospital.

But many small businesses failed, as did much of the subsistence farming. By the time Floyd Jourdain Jr. was born in 1964, many residents lived in poverty.

Floyd Jourdain grew up in the village of Little Rock, where modest houses sat side by side with tarpaper shacks. His childhood home didn’t have running water or electricity.

When the federal government passed its antipoverty programs in the 1960s, the Jourdains were able to move into a larger home on the Red Lake Reservation.

“I remember my little brother holding his hand over the floor vent as heat blew from the furnace downstairs,” Floyd Jourdain recalled in a statement posted to his personal website. “My sisters ran up and down the hallway of our new house flicking the light switches as my mom shouted out for them to settle down.”

In the 1970s, Indian activism and civil unrest was on the rise across the country. Political feuds and complaints over corruption within the Red Lake government led to five armed men taking over the reservation’s police station in 1979. Two teenagers were killed and a number of buildings destroyed, including Roger Jourdain’s house.

The violence continued through the 1980s, said Floyd Jourdain, who has said he and friends struggled with alcohol and drugs. When he graduated from Red Lake High School in 1984, he moved to Duluth and spent some time in the Minneapolis area, taking college classes and volunteering at drug recovery programs. He also worked with the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis.

By the time Floyd Jourdain returned to Red Lake in the 1990s, Roger Jourdain had been voted out of office and was dependent on government benefits. He died in 2002 at age 89.

The drug trade -- including marijuana, crack cocaine and methamphetamine -- emerged as a dominant, though illicit, employer at the reservation, according to former and current law enforcement officials.

Alcohol abuse is prevalent. An independent review of the Red Lake Tribal Court issued last year found that there were nearly 1,200 cases of violent or alcohol-related criminal cases involving juveniles in 2003.

Drive-by shootings, including at police officers’ homes, were commonplace. So were robberies. In 2002, a woman broke into the home of George Stately, a 68-year-old member of the tribe. She beat the elderly man with a hammer, slit his throat and set his house on fire -- to get $50 worth of crack cocaine.

Floyd Jourdain said the drug and crime problems convinced him to run for chairman last year.

During the campaign, say friends and family members, his son Louis would hang out with Jeffrey Weise. The pair became close friends after Weise returned from Minneapolis to his grandparents on the reservation in 1999, when his mother was severely injured in a drunk-driving accident. Weise’s grandfather was a veteran tribal police officer.

“They weren’t jocks, so they were seen as separate,” said Bill Lawrence, publisher of the Native American Press/Ojibwe News and a godson of Roger Jourdain’s. “They had spent part of their lives off the reservation, so they were seen as outsiders. When [Floyd Jourdain] won the election, they both had parent figures who made a good salary and were well known. They both had enough money to own computers in the house and pay for an Internet connection at home.”

Authorities declined to say what role Louis Jourdain may have played in last month’s killings at the high school. But sources familiar with the investigation and speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators had found evidence against him in e-mails, archived copies of instant messages and other electronic documents between the two young men.

Floyd Jourdain, who said he wouldn’t resign unless the public wanted him to leave, insists his son is innocent.

“His only crime is being friends with [Weise],” he said.

But residents say their loyalties are torn by grief and fear.

On Friday, a group of teachers and grief-stricken parents gathered for a school board meeting at Red Lake to get the latest news. The room was still as Red Lake Police Capt. Dewayne Dow told the crowd that other students might have been involved.

“We need to make sure there’s no one else,” Dow told one group of parents afterward. “I wish I could tell you more. We’re still trying to figure things out.”