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• Many reservation families are on fixed incomes and can no longer afford propane.
• "As far as supply goes, we haven't had any problems," said Snider, the propane truck driver. "The normal person -- how do you afford the price? I filled a guy's 1,000-gallon tank, and $2,475 is what it cost him, and the tank wasn't even empty."
• The tribe has opened six shelters across the reservation, and the Red Cross provided cots, blankets and food. The shelters have not been heavily used so far, in large part because the tribe has provided propane through a program that helps the needy pay to heat their homes. But that money is limited. Budget cuts mean the tribe received $1.5 million from the federal government this winter, down from $2.5 million last winter.
• "We do have resources, but when you have a lot of people below 20 percent (propane in their tanks), you get a big, long list," Archambault said. "And it's a temporary fix, a Band-Aid."
• Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and American Indian advocate who grew up on Standing Rock, hopes he has a solution. He has launched a fundraising program dubbed "Heating the Rez" through www.indiegogo.com .
• His initial goal is to raise $50,000 to fund a pilot project to outfit 20 homes with heat stoves that burn pellets made from natural materials that can be found on the reservation, such as wood, cherry pits and grasses.
• "If we can start a shift away from market dependence, from prices we can't control, that's the long-term solution," he said. "We need a strategy to grow, produce and manufacture our own heating sources."
• The situation was bad enough without a death to augment it, Iron Eyes said.
• "I haven't been that shaken up in a long time," he said. "That circumstances had come to a point where as humans, not as Indians but as humans, we allowed somebody to meet their death in preventable circumstances ... I consider it to be a human right. Everyone has a right to a warm house."
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard says he believes the Common Core educational standards will help improve student achievement levels.
• A number of measures have been introduced in the South Dakota Legislature seeking to repeal the standards, block any expansion or study them.
• South Dakota has adopted the Common Core standards, which establish what students should know at each grade level in math and English.

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