Red Lake Struggles To Cope

Efforts to cope began Wednesday as teachers met to work out ways of helping young survivors of the nation's worst school shooting in six years.

Five students remain hospitalized at least two are listed in critical condition at MeritCare in Fargo, N.D.

But as outsiders streamed in to help the tight-knit community cope with the tragedy, the Red Lake reservation called for privacy and clamped down its doors to many non-Chippewa.

"Kids, if you're out there listening, please, we'll be there for you. Come back to school and we'll get through this together," Red Lake High School Principal Chris Dunshee told KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul. "Please, let us help you."

The school remained closed Wednesday, as Dunshee and others assessed what kind of counseling the students in this tight-knit community would need. Teachers and staff were called to a morning meeting at the nearby elementary school on the Red Lake Reservation.

Reporters weren't able to approach the school, which is set back from the main road, because the Red Lake Band of Chippewa sharply restricted their access, warning that venturing off the main road through town would be trespassing and threatening arrests.

CBS' Drew Levinson reported from the outskirts of the reservation as tribal leaders have ordered all reporters and photographers to remain inside a fenced area or risk arrest. Federally designated reservations are able to make most of their own laws, including media access.

The head of the tribe says he is afraid the media will exploit his people, despite reporters' requests to tell the tribespeoples' stories.

"Eventually those stories will be told, but in our desired time," Tribal chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. said. "Right now we are trying to keep that at a minimum."

He also said that the meeting at the elementary school was intended to produce a strategy to help families and victims.

"We're just coordinating our efforts with our community professionals and spiritual elders and then also we have people who are coming here to assist the community today," Jourdain said.

The reservation and its people have never warmed to outsiders. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa have been here for more than a century, fighting among themselves and others for sovereignty in the cold, hard landscape of northern Minnesota.

They have closed ranks even more tightly since one of their own, a 16-year-old boy, shot to death his grandfather — a beloved, veteran tribal police officer — and then killed nine others, including himself.

"They are a very private people," said Sister Marina Schlangen, who has lived among the 7,000 Chippewa for the past 15 years as development coordinator for St. Mary's Mission, a school, convent and ministry on the edge of the flat, 880-square-mile reservation. "They live in private and they grieve in private."

Life is not easy here. The unemployment rate was estimated in the 2000 Census at 40 percent, but others, including Schlangen, who writes federal grant applications for the reservation, say it may actually be as high as 65 percent.

Many live below the poverty line, dependent on state and federal aid. School test scores rank among the lowest in Minnesota. Drug and alcohol abuse is a crippling problem; there is a treatment center for juveniles here.

The schools here are closed until Tuesday out of respect for the dead, who included five high school students. St. Mary's Mission elementary school, with an enrollment of about 70, is providing grief training this week for its teachers.

"People are so sad here," Schlangen said. "They're just hanging their heads. They stand together in solidarity, but people here just don't talk much. It's just not their culture."

Authorities were still trying to determine why 16-year-old Jeff Weise went on the shooting rampage that began at his grandfather's house and ended at Red Lake High School. Nine people were killed and seven were wounded before the gunman apparently shot himself.

Many students saw their friends shot, or heard gunshots and screams. Some students said they saw dead bodies in the hall and trails of blood when they evacuated the school.

"First and foremost, we've got to be focused on getting our kids through this," Dunshee told The Associated Press. "They're good kids. They don't deserve this."

Dunshee said many of his colleagues have offered support and encouragement, including Scott Staska, the superintendent of the Cold Spring school district where two students were killed in September 2003. A 15-year-old student was charged in the slayings and is awaiting trial.

Dunshee said Staska told him "we belong to a rather exclusive and undesirable club now — and we can get through it." Staska recommended Dunshee investigate grants that may be available to schools affected by such incidents.

Paul Fleckenstein, a mental health leader with the American Red Cross, said the organization is out in the community asking questions, learning about American Indian traditions and assessing what the families need.

"We are being particularly sensitive to the needs and the traditions of the community," Fleckenstein said.

It was the nation's deadliest school shooting since the Columbine High School rampage in Colorado in April 1999, which ended in the deaths of 12 students, a teacher and the two teen gunmen.

The Red Lake killings began at the home of Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 58, a tribal police officer who was killed with a .22-caliber gun, according to the FBI's Michael Tabman. Also killed was Lussier's companion, Michelle Sigana, 32.

Weise then drove his grandfather's police car to the school, where he gunned down unarmed security guard Derrick Brun, 28, at the door and spent about 10 minutes inside, targeting people at random, authorities said.

Students and adults barricaded themselves into offices and classrooms and crouched under desks. A teacher and five students were shot to death. Two 15-year-olds remained in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the face.

Weise, hard to miss at 6 feet, 250 pounds, often was seen alone on the school grounds, said Lorene Gurneau, a bus driver for the district who knew Weise and his mother, Joanne Weise.

"I used to see him standing near the fence looking out, but not really looking out at anything," she said. "I never saw anyone stop and talk to him."

Gurneau said she knew the family from when they all lived near each other in Minneapolis in the early 1990s. She said her ex-husband; Weise's mother, Joanne Weise; and Joanne Weise's husband at the time, who was not Jeff Weise's father, often used to drink too much.

Joanne Weise has been in a nursing home since suffering brain damage in a March 1999 car accident, said Kim Desjarlait, a former sister-in-law. She said Joanne Weise was a passenger in a car driven by a cousin, who was killed, and both women had been drinking. Because of his mother's drinking, Weise often was left home alone, she said.

Gurneau said Weise's father, Daryl Lussier Jr., killed himself in 1997 after a daylong standoff with tribal police. Red Lake police did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday morning.

The Red Lake Reservation is in northern Minnesota, about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. According to the 2000 census, 5,162 people lived on the reservation, and all but 91 were Indians.