LAKOTA SIOUX DECLARE THEMSELVES A SOVEREIGN NATION INDEPENDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

http://www.lakotafreedom.com/media.html

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S. West

Lakota Satisfies Treaty Council Mandate of 33 Years, Drafted by 97 Indigenous Nations

Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law


Washington D.C. – Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign . Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Young added, “The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people”.

Following Monday’s withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

Lakota’s efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are “very, very interested in the Lakota case” while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with “respect and solidarity.”

“Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations,” explained Garry Rowland. “As a nation, we have equal status within the national community.”

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. “Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty,” said Means. “Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people.”

The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average . 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.

“After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative,” emphasized Duane Martin Sr. “The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.”

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com (http://www.lakotafreedom.com).
###

This is from an acquaintance of mine, an educator and former BIA employee who has worked with several tribes in the past.

I posted the story to my local pagan list and he responded with this. I asked his permission and he said I could cross-post his reply to DU.


Here's what he has to say about the matter:



This is a very interesting article, http://nz.news.yahoo.com/071220/8/3db9.html , and one that should probably startle, surprise, and confuse most Americans who know nothing of the background behind the story. So here is a little of it, just to spark your interest.

The Lakota (Brother) Peoples were a confederacy of twelve tribes who inhabited the high plains from Western Wisconsin to Eastern Montana, and from South Dakota north into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Lakota spoke a Siouxan language and, along with many other tribes who were not Lakota, they were referred to by the French Canadian fur trappers who were the first Europeans to meet them, as the "Sioux."

In 1869 several of the Lakota tribes met with the United States representatives to negotiate a treaty at Fort Laramie, which the U.S promptly began violating. The treaty set up what was called "The Great Sioux Reservation," which, at that time, included most of North and South Dakota and part of eastern Montana. Other Lakota tribes living farther east, who were collectively called the "Dakota," had already signed treaties on their own with the U.S. several years before. In that treaty the U.S. agreed to respect the territorial sovereignty of the western Sioux Nations. But when the government needed to put the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Sioux Reservation, and the deal with the railroad was a gift of every other section (a square mile) of land in a checkerboard pattern fifteen miles deep both north and south of the tracks, from St. Paul Minnesota to the Puget Sound, which the railroad could use for lumbering, mining, and sale to settlers, then the government needed to take back a big hunk of the reservation. A plot was worked out that involved General Philip Sheridan and Colonel George Custer, and several other leading officials in the Territory to fake a gold discovery in the Black Hills, which were the most sacred lands on earth to the Lakota, the sacred Paha Sapa, the center of the world. A supposedly innocent survey party arranged the gold discovery using a few lumps of quartz, a hand-full of placer gold dust from Montana, and a shot gun, and when they returned to civilization with the evidence they deliberately let everyone know about it in the newspapers, thus starting a massive gold rush. The Lakota, of course, defended their lands against the invading gold hunters, and the U.S. Army, of course, was called in to protect the gold seekers, not the Indians. This started the war that culminated in the Little Bighorn massacre, and the flight of about half of the Sioux peoples into Canada that winter. The United States then terminated the Great Sioux Reservation and replaced it with a double hand-full of very small reservations scattered across the territory on some of the worst land the government could find.

Today, the various Sioux Reservations make up a collection of some of the poorest communities in America, literally third-world islands in the middle of the wealthiest nation on earth. By every measurement the U.S. Government uses to measure poverty, the Sioux Reservations are the poorest of the poor anywhere in the country. An Indian comedian once spoke of them as being "Behind God's back."

The problem for the Sioux, of course, is that they are as far away from any jobs or industry as you can possibly get in America. The problem for the U.S. is that the letters between General Sheridan and his other conspirators still exist, and they form a body of evidence proving the government's perfidy and bad faith. In the 1970's the Sioux nations filed suit in Federal Courts seeking the return of the sacred Black Hills to the Sioux peoples, something that is actually possible, as most of the hills are either national monument land, like Mt. Rushmore, or bureau of Land Management lands, and in federal ownership. But the courts, while they were forced to find for the tribes, given the solid historical evidence presented, they did not agree to order the return of the hills, but instead offered a three billion dollar land settlement, which all of the tribes, the poorest Indians in America, have refused to accept for the last thirty years.

Now, to shift focus a little, back east in 1971 the Iroquois Six Nations of the U.S. and Canada, my people, sent delegates of the six tribes and fourteen reservations in two countries to the Wold Court at the Hague, where they filled suit against the U.S. and Canada, claiming that all nineteen of their treaties with the U.S. government and the British Crown had been violated, and that nothing specific in any of those treaties, all dating back to the eighteenth century, actually ceded Iroquois sovereignty to either nation. After six months of review, the World Court, citing international laws established in treaties to which both the U.S., Britain, and Canada are signatories, the Six Nations indeed never ceded their sovereignty to anyone else, and the traditional government of the SIX Nations never actually ceased to exist and to conduct tribal and national business, and therefore we were still, by the standards of modern international law, a sovereign peoples.

After that decision the Six Nations then filed an application for membership in the United nations (this is the honest-to-gods truth). They also began issuing their own passports and other official documents. Because of the complexities of world politics at that time, a majority of the member nations in the U.N. actually approved the application, probably to irk the U.S., but both the U.S. and Canada vetoed it from the security Council. In a partial override of that veto, 80% of the member nations voted the Six Nations a "seat without voice" in the General Assembly, and Iroquois representatives have been sent to the U.N. every year since, and so far, seventy-three nations have recognized the Iroquois passports. The greatest achievement of this largely unheard revolution was the establishment in the 1980's of the U.N. Office of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, headed by the delegates of the Six Nations and of one hundred and forty-nine other indigenous peoples from around the world.

Now of course, real sovereignty is a lot more than just issuing passports. An Indian nation can never be truly sovereign, for example, as long as its citizens are still taking welfare, and medical services, or any other services from the "foreign" government that has claimed their sovereignty for the last two hundred years. Real sovereignty is the day-to-day exercise of control over your own present and future.

For the past thirty years, the people of the little Onondaga reservation in central New York have done just that, they have refused to take one penny of federal handouts. Sadly, the other Iroquois reservations of New York have not yet had that much resolve, though they have all been working towards real economic and political independence. A similar "drop-out" movement has also dominated the politic and economics of the Six Nations Reserve of the Grand River in Ontario, and three other Iroquois reservations in Ontario and Quebec for decades.

Now back to the Lakota, inspired by a U.N. action, this is exactly what the Sioux reservations are contemplating here, the gradually increasing refusal of any and all state and federal services from the United States, and a campaign of acting like a "sovereign" peoples in the world once again. No guns and no shootings like the tragic second battle of Wounded Knee back in the 1970's that first brought Russel Means into public recognition, at least no one hopes so, but rather a classic mobilization of peaceful un-cooperation (Like Ghandi's Civil Disobedience Movement in India) and exercises of economic and political independence. Good luck to them.

Courtesy of:

Chuck L, Ohstowe hajuks

Originally posted over at DU.

Hi Chlamor, I just read your friend's words in a blog from the Rapid City paper that I found by Googling Russell Means and Onondaga as I was also wondering if he had been with the Onondaga at all when they were harboring Dennis Banks; I lived in Syracuse for 15 years and recall many incidences of the Onondaga holding strong. I had been going to post it myself and was considering whether to post the whole thing or just the section you had posted. I've decided the article is worth reading as well, as it implies this may be a rogue group as do some of the comments following your friend's. I say this country needs many more rogue groups, even if from other sovereign nations. I also am very familiar with the Seneca at the Irving reservation as our antique store was one quarter mile from their border on rt 5. This reservation is the only Iroquois reservation sovereign to the US and not the state of NY. I stood on the NYS Thruway with them when Pataki was trying to force them to charge tax to non natives; they are an extremely well-armed people, (extremely and if this is valid I am sure will be backing the Lakota). The governor backed down, however US Rt. 5 went through years and years of unnessesary renovation afterwards, which I am sure was a ploy to affect their businesses (I know because it affected ours quite adversely).

Here's the article with your friend's words the first comment following:

http://rapidcityjournal.com/blogs/editor/?p=339
Typos and tribulations



Dec
20
Lakota announcement: Where does it go?
Posted by Mikel LeFort in The issues

Where should a story like this be played in the Journal? That’s what we asked ourselves after Native American activist Russell Means and his Lakota Sioux group declared Thursday the Lakota Sioux land was a sovereign nation and they were withdrawing from all treaties from the U.S. government.

The debate was compelling in the afternoon meeting.

On the one hand, this was going to be one of the biggest ‘talkers’ of the day, and had already had 121 comments since being posted early afternoon. The LNI is in town. Russell Means is a prominent figure in the Native American community. The treaties and sovereignty are key issues in Indian Country.

On the other hand, there were no tribal presidents in the group which made the announcement, no one from the top ranks of any of the Lakota Sioux tribes. The timing with the LNI was curious. Russell Means has been known to stage public events to get his message out, and there are some Lakotas who don’t feel Means speaks for them.

And so we determined the story would not go on A1, unless we could confirm support of this group’s decision by any of the top officials from any of the Lakota tribes. Otherwise, this may amount to nothing more than talk.

The story:

A group represents the Lakota Sioux Indian representatives from various reservations and states said Wednesday that it is declaring sovereign nation status and withdrawing from all treaties with the U.S. government.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” said Native American action and activist Russell Means. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

Means was part of a four member Lakota delegation that traveled to Washington, culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Other delegation members included Women of All Red Nations founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

The move to form an independent nation will focus on property rights in a five-state area where the treaties in question were drawn up. The states include South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana – areas that the group say have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as the historic owners.

If the U.S. government does not immediately enter into diplomatic negotiations, the group said in a news release, liens will be filed on real-estate transactions across the region — an action it says could cloud title issues over thousands of square miles of land and property.

“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Young added, “The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people.”

The group has been meeting all week with foreign leaders in an effort to gain political support for sovereign nation status, including Bolivia Indigenous President Evo Morales. Morales said his country is “very, very interested in the Lakota case.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 5:19 pm and is filed under The issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
24 Responses to “Lakota announcement: Where does it go?”

1. Added by Justin Case on December 21st, 2007 at 12:36 am

This is a very interesting article, http://nz.news.yahoo.com/071220/8/3db9.html , and one that should probably startle, supprize, and confuse most Americans who know nothing of the background behind the story. So here is a little of it, just to spark your interest.

The Lakota (Brother) Peoples were a confederacy of twelve tribes who inhabited the high plains from Western Wisconsin to Eastern Montana, and from South Dakota north into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Lakota spoke a Siouxan language and, along with many other tribes who were not Lakota, they were referred to by the French Canadian fur trappers who were the first Europeans to meet them, as the “Sioux.”

In 1869 several of the Lakota tribes met with the United States representatives to negotiate a treaty at Fort Laramie, which the U.S promptly began violating. The treaty set up what was called “The Great Sioux Reservation,” which, at that time, included most of North and South Dakota and part of eastern Montana. Other Lakota tribes living farther east, who were collectively called the “Dakota,” had already signed treaties on their own with the U.S. several years before. In that treaty the U.S. agreed to respect the territorial soverginty of the western Sioux Nations. But when the government needed to put the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Sioux Reservation, and the deal with the railroad was a gift of every other section (a square mile) of land in a checkerboard pattern fifteen miles deep both north and south of the tracks, from St. Paul Minisota to the Puget Sound, which the railroad could use for lumbering, mining, and sale to settlers, then the government needed to take back a big hunk of the reservation. A plot was worked out that involved General Philip Sheridan and Colonel George Custer, and several other leading officials in the Territory to fake a gold discovery in the Black Hills, which were the most sacred lands on earth to the Lakota, the sacred Paha Sapa, the center of the world. A supposedly innocent survey party arranged the gold discovery using a few lumps of quartz, a hand-full of placer gold dust from Montana, and a shot gun, and when they returned to civilization with the evidence they deliberately let everyone know about it in the newspapers, thus starting a massive gold rush. The Lakota, of course, defended their lands against the invading gold hunters, and the U.S. Army, of course, was called in to protect the gold seakers, not the Indians. This started the war that culminated in the Little Bighorn massacre, and the flight of about half of the Sioux peoples into Canada that winter. The United States then terminated the Great Sioux Reservation and replaced it with a double hand-full of very small reservations scattered across the territory on some of the worst land the government could find.

Today, the various Sioux Reservations make up a collection of some of the poorest communities in America, literally third-world islands in the middle of the wealthiest nation on earth. By every measurement the U.S. Government uses to measure poverty, the Sioux Reservations are the poorest of the poor anywhere in the country. An Indian comedian once spoke of them as being “Behind God’s back.”

The problem for the Sioux, of course, is that they are as far away from any jobs or industry as you can possibly get in America. The problem for the U.S. is that the letters between General Sheridan and his other conspirators still exist, and they form a body of evidence proving the government’s perfidy and bad faith. In the 1970’s the Sioux nations filed suit in Federal Courts seeking the return of the sacred Black Hills to the Sioux peoples, something that is actually possible, as most of the hills are either national monument land, like Mt. Rushmore, or bureau of Land Management lands, and in federal ownership. But the courts, while they were forced to find for the tribes, given the solid historical evidence presented, they did not agree to order the return of the hills, but instead offered a three billion dollar land settlement, which all of the tribes, the poorest indians in America, have refused to accept for the last thirty years.

Now, to shift focus a little, back east in 1971 the Iroquois Six Nations of the U.S. and Canada, my people, sent delegats of the six tribes and fourteen reservations in two countries to the Wold Court at the Hague, where they filled suit against the U.S. and Canada, claiming that all nineteen of their treaties with the U.S. government and the British Crown had been violated, and that nothing specific in any of those treaties, all dating back to the eighteenth century, actually ceeded Iroquois soverignty to either nation. After six months of review, the World Court, citing international laws established in treaties to which both the U.S., Britain, and Canada are signatories, the Six Nations indeed never ceded their soverginty to anyone else, and the traditional government of the SIX Nations never actually ceased to exist and to conduct tribal and national business, and therefore we were still, by the standards of modern international law, a soverign peoples.

After that decision the Six Nations then filed an application for membership in the United nations (this is the honest-to-gods truth). They also began issuing their own passports and other official documents. Because of the complexities of worl politics at that time, a majority of the member nations in the U.N. actually approved the application, probably to irk the U.S., but both the U.S. and Canda vetoed it from the security Council. In a partial override of that veto, 80% of the member nations voted the Six Nations a “seat without voice” in the General Assembly, and Iroquois representatives have been sent to the U.N. every year since, and so far, seventy-three nations have recognized the Iroquois passports. The greatest achievement of this largely unheard revolution was the establishment in the 1980’s of the U.N. Office of Indiginous Peoples Affairs, headed by the delegats of the Six Nations and of one hundred and fourty-nine other indiginous peoples from around the world.

Now of course, real sovereignty is a lot more than just issuing passports. An Indian nation can never be truly soverign, for example, as long as its citizens are still taking wellfare, and medical services, or any other services from the “foreign” government that has claimed their soverignty for the last two hundred years. Real sovere ignty is the day-to-day exercise of control over your own present and future.

For the past thirty years, the people of the little Onondaga reservation in central New York have done just that, they have refused to take one penny of federal handouts. Sadly, the other Iroquois reservations of New York have not yet had that much resolve, though they have all been working towards real economic and political independance. A similar “drop-out” movement has also dominated the politic and economics of the Six Nations Reserve of the Grand River in Ontario, and three other Iroquois reservations in Ontario and Quebec for decades.

Now back to the Lakota, inspired by a U.N. action, this is exactly what the Sioux reservations are contemplating here, the gradually increasing refusal of any and all state and federal services from the United States, and a campaign of acting like a “soverign” peoples in the world once again. No guns and no shootings like the tragic second battle of Wounded Knee back in the 1970’s that first brought Russel Means into public recognition, at least no one hopes so, but rather a classic mobilization of peacful un-cooperation (Like Gandi’s Civil Disobedience Movement in India) and exercises of economic and political independance. Good luck to them.

Courtesy of:

Chuck L, Ohstowe hajuks
2. Added by yancyg on December 21st, 2007 at 1:31 am

I did not see any support in that article from any of the currnt tribal presidents or council members. Our tribal government relationships are based on the treaties it would be ignorant go down this path. I just want to know where they got the support for the tribal members from I live on the rosebud and this issue was never mentioned in my community.
3. Added by Patrick Slimmon on December 21st, 2007 at 1:40 am

This is a very real story. Ignore it if you wish. However, serious consequences COULD arise from this action by the Lakota people beyohnd a spike in vitamin sales, though this is likely. As precedent for other sovereign disputes - Basques, Quebecers, Kurds - and for mere mental exercise for your readers, this story deserves to be told to its fullest.

Should your publication believe in the principal of an educated public, then running this as close to A1 as possible is your duty as providers of information, and informers of the public good.

Debates about the meaning and value of sovereignty can only benefit the American people in an age of vanishing borders, and the slow erosion of nationalist fervour.

My two cents…
4. Added by Liz on December 21st, 2007 at 7:53 am

Lakota Sioux Nation, bravo! A bit of bitter medicine is what the USA deserves right about now, when it feels it has the right to decide the fate of others in far off lands. It is time for the USA to be called back home to deal with solving so many of its own problems.
5. Added by Phiber Optik on December 21st, 2007 at 9:37 am

*yawn* Who really cares?? The damage done to this culture has all been self inflicted and has nothing to do with anyt of the treaties they’re looking to withdraw from.

Maybe they should try and stop the cycle of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and infant mortality before they worry about the US Government.
6. Added by Trish on December 21st, 2007 at 9:45 am

More power to them! Shame on you for sitting back and taking the ‘easy road’. If there are no other Sioux leaders represented in this current drive for independence, you should be publishing this on A1 to bring these issues to light. We hear the ins and outs of Hollywood-types’ marital woes on the national and local news; why not print something that actually has impact on your local community? Part of your responsibility to the local community as purveyors of the ‘news’ is to provide current issues that need to be seriously addressed. To not do so places you solidly in the same place the US Government has occupied since these treaties were signed… that of saying one thing and doing another.

- Trish, we did provide the story to people this morning in our newspaper (and on our Web site earlier in the day). The debate in our newsroom was merely over which page to place it on in our print edition.
7. Added by PV Miller on December 21st, 2007 at 10:38 am

Having met Russell Means while stationed in Washington, D.C.years ago, I found him to be the same sort of bigot that he found offensive when I told him I was from Custer. Although the United States made many errors in its past, and still continues to make them, what he and the orthers propose will do nothing but hurt the Lakota people. Does he realize that without a US passport he may not be able to get a visa to come to Rapid City to buy groceries or get a plane to Bolivia. He could become a prisoner in his own country. Anyway, he doesn’t speak for the Lakota people, so it is probably a moot point.
8. Added by self-sufficient on December 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am

We should look to Russel Means for clarity on the plight of the American Indian, just like we should look to Lynn Spears for clarity on proper parenting skills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good Grief!
9. Added by Hyrum on December 21st, 2007 at 11:34 am

I don’t think this is going anywhere. I don’t think the Lakota will be able to unify and get behind this because then they won’t be getting any money from the Federal Government. If they are not going to have any taxes how are they going to create passports and drivers licenses? I lived on a reservation for a few years and think that these people are full of talk and wont take action.
10. Added by Grand Wizard on December 21st, 2007 at 11:45 am

Which chapter of the KKK are you with Phiber Optik? I would like to commend you to your local leadership for spreading our message.
11. Added by Greg Logan on December 21st, 2007 at 12:40 pm

I am delighted to hear real, free, peaceful human beings seeking their own freedom - especially in contrast to the bloody, fascist US Federal Government - We will see just how much the US Feds care about freedom and peace.

I can already tell you the answer….

Peace,
Greg Logan
12. Added by Elder on December 21st, 2007 at 12:52 pm

I agree that the US government may have acted in a duplicitous manner 150 or so years ago, but… This matter has been properly decided by the US Supreme Court in favor of the aggrieved tribes. Unfortunately some people like Mr. Means favor headlines over substance. Absolutely nothing is stopping the Pine Ridge Tribal government, for example, from refusing all US federal money and acting as their own sovereign nation right now. Why not start today ?
13. Added by Arthur Sayre on December 21st, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Are you actually serious Phiber? Or are you just being blatantly and willfully ignorant? Just how do you think the cycle of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and infant mortality STARTED?

Here’s a bit of education for you: We invaded their territory, waged a war of aggression, and inflicted outright genocide. We, as in the United States of America, rounded these people up at gunpoint and put them in concentration camps. We kidnapped their children and transported them to reeducation centers where we brainwashed them into rejecting their native languages and cultural heritage.

Far as I can see it, the U.S. government has had the responsibility to these people to combat the problems you mention and has utterly failed. High time they took it upon themselves and reclaimed the freedom endowed by our creator.
14. Added by wicakte cikala on December 21st, 2007 at 1:18 pm

Unfortunately the I.R.A indian has been spoon fed so long by the U.S. Government, that they stand opposed to outstanding agreements that have not been obligated by the U.S. It is a pitiful circumstance these yes men have put us in, representing the Great Sioux Nation. If Russell can take us out of this meat grinder, I as a Lakota man stand behind him. As it is the treaties have been neglected and our human rights have been violated by those whom we catered to and living illegally on the reservation and the Black Hills. Futhermore, we need the people to take close consideration that if we don’t take care of these violation nobody is going to benefit in the long run. Then we will have to answer to the blood on our hands. This is very pertinent and vital to all races. Please remember Sodom and Gommarah, Rome and Germany!
15. Added by Mrs. Meenz on December 21st, 2007 at 1:36 pm

Ah yes Mr. Means using the
Lakota name — once again — to garner media attention for himself.

The RCJ should put this story on A1 but I hope they will take the time to deeply investigate the matter before running subsequent articles about it.

Let’s hear from all the stake holders involved, not just from
Narcissto Means. If this notion of sovereignty is what they want then give it to them .
16. Added by Larry Miller on December 21st, 2007 at 2:16 pm

I’m disappointed but not surprised that the Rapid City Journal editorial staff quibbled only over where to place the story rather than consider its real significance and whether or not it justified more than a few column inches.

Clearly, this is a “hot button” issue that easily evokes emotion, but it does little to inform us of other more complicated but significant issues. Open government, health care costs, poverty, crime, education, media consolidation, and a long list of other topics may seem bland, but they needn’t be. They are more deserving of your time and effort. Yes….I know you have done these stories (and will continue covering them down the road), but doing them with greater depth and analysis would be a blessing.

I fear we’ll only see a continuation of titillating reports like the antics of Russell Means and the plight of mountain lion “kittens” that have been orphaned.
17. Added by east-coast here on December 21st, 2007 at 5:43 pm

your story had made the link sites

the truth is NOT, what we learned in school folks!

for starters, google “Red Cloud”-PBS link-see page links also, get enlighten!

it should be their’s, it’s quite sad really, the governments deceit
18. Added by Lonnie on December 21st, 2007 at 7:54 pm

If they want to do this and want to leave the country great. But to go along with that then they can stop expecting the free money they get, the handouts they get so they don’t have to get off their butts and earn an honest living and finally be productive members of society instead of the drag they have been for years. I am so sick and tired of hearing about the poor Indians and how bad the United States is. If you don’t like it get the HELL out and go to some place else, since you have the FREEDOM that many have given their lives for you to do.
19. Added by Red Bear on December 22nd, 2007 at 12:15 am

This is a rather interesting development, and would seem to be a windfall for the Lakota people. If Russell Means (not a tribal representative) is successful and the U.S. government returns the land to the Lakota/Nakota/Dakota tribes then the next logical progression would be for the Lakota people to return Paha Sapa to the original dwellers–the Crow.
20. Added by Honor on December 22nd, 2007 at 6:40 am

Russell Means is a main force behind this stunt of withdrawal from the United States. Russell Means shows up wherever there is a camera and/or a microphone and disappears just as fast when the cams and mics do. Russell Means is self-serving. And most importantly:

Russell Means does not speak for anywhere close to all of the Lakota Oyate (”Sioux” People).

The Lakota nation does not have Russell Means as its mouthpiece. Russell Means is remembered for the agitation and disgrace he heaped upon the Lakota People decades ago… and the People do not forget.

Publicity stunt… and a sad one at that. My heart is Lakota through and through and what Russell Means does here is worthy of walking away from him once and for all.

Do not speak to us of freedom.
Speak to us of HONOR.
That is all I have to say.
Pilamayayelo.
21. Added by Devin on December 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 am

According to www.lakotafreedom.com (http://www.lakotafreedom.com) all the proper channels have been persued, the move has been discussed for a long time by Treaty Councils and Means was brought in at their request as a spokesperson.
22. Added by Byron on December 22nd, 2007 at 11:36 am

You people who live here in the good usa who put the first american people down should be ashamed of ur selves. you would think of the way that U think of these people that they are something of lower than the most evil thing on this earth.I’m from eastern america, for I would be proud of them for what great pride that they have within themselves. U people of America need a great wakeup to put U in the right frame of mind. These people have the God given right to have back what was there’s from the git-go. DO THE RIGHT THING.
23. Added by Sparrow on December 22nd, 2007 at 6:06 pm

Mikel, I think you put this story in the section entitled: “Old Wounds We Can’t Seem to Heal.”
24. Added by LaDonna on December 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm

Thank you “Honor” for writing what you did, about Honor and Freedom. Those are good words, worthy words.

I would urge all Rapid City Journal editors, reporters, readers, and those who are leaving comments here, to read those words posted by “Honor” on December 22 at 6:40 am - Post no. 20. That post encapsulates all there is to say about the last publicity stunt of a man who craves for attention and will say anything to get it. Russell Means is a smart manipulator, though, who knows that the white mainstream press will pounce on anything sensational and print it, and that’s what he wanted in the first place… He got the press, he got the attention, and unfortunately such a stunt might hurt the Lakota people for whom he cares not, one more time. But Russell Means is a very selfish man.

I have known him well for over twenty five years now, and this reminds me of so many rash or disturbing things he has said and done; this reminds me for instance of the time he pocketed a $1,000.00 cash donation, money I had saved over a period of time for Christmas presents for my own children and a trip. I personally remitted the cash to him for Yellow Thunder Camp during a snow storm, in response to his urgent plea to keep his grand children warm and fed, and instead he took that money to go away to a warmer climate for Christmas, leaving his own children and infant grand children without fuel to keep warm or food to eat over the holidays while stuck in a snowed in camp. This was a time of winter when elders were gathered in the community centers of Pine Ridge to keep them from freezing to death. Everyone pitched in to help. Ted Means, Russell’s brother, was one of those who worked ceaselessly until everyone was safe. We tried to locate Russell: he could not be found. When he got back to town on January 6th, once the emergency was over, there was a gathering in Kyle to thank those who helped the elders, and he had the guts to stand in front of all of us and perorate about how much he had suffered - more so than anyone else - all that time, stuck at Yellow Thunder Camp without food or heating….. His two daughters were sitting by my side on the bleachers listening to his boast, with other residents of YTC ,and all of us sat with our mouths and eyes wide open, not believing our ears. He not only took for himself the important money needed for warming and feeding his children, and selfishly left a frozen South Dakota for the warmth of some other unknown place, but he lied about his own actions to the Oglala elders, boasting about his supposed suffering…

Since that particular day, I have never believed a single word of what Russell Means may say, and I know for a fact that he is capable of saying anything to look good at the detriment of his own family or his people. By the way, he is not the “Oglala Lakota Patriot” that he claims to be, since he was born of a Rosebud mother, and a half-breed father who was the son of a Crow woman and a white military man. This precise genealogy is in the archives of the Oglala Lakota College: so, at best, he would be a Rosebud person, and not an Oglala. People should know that. He keeps trying to get elected by the people of Pine Ridge, but he is not even an Oglala; he is a member of the Rosebud “fire.” His own brothers Ted and Bill both live on Rosebud reservation, and not on Pine Ridge, honoring their ties.

Enough said.

Pilamayelo.

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From a 2003 article some background about the Wounded knee folks: (I find the date significant in a skew non-sequiter form, just days before we entered Iraq,)


Where are they now?

Peter Harriman
Argus Leader

published: 3/16/2003

Leaders follow occupation with decades of fighting for Indian causes

DENNIS BANKS

After Wounded Knee, American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks faced federal felony charges, ranging from burglary and assault to conspiracy to commit criminal acts. Those charges eventually were dismissed.

However, he was convicted of inciting a riot and assault in connection with the disturbance at the Custer County Courthouse in 1973 just before the Wounded Knee occupation. He fled to California, where he received amnesty from Gov. Jerry Brown between 1976-83. He taught at Stanford University in 1979. Banks faced extradition when Brown's term expired. He moved to New York, where he received sanctuary from the Onondaga Nation. In 1985, he surrendered and served 18 months in prison in Sioux Falls.

After his release from prison, Banks organized long-distance runs to draw attention to Indian issues and a Walk for Justice in 1994. He opposed the disturbance of Indian gravesites in Kentucky in 1987. In 1988, he published his autobiography, "Sacred Soul," in Japan, where he had been stationed as an Air Force cartographer in the late 1950s. In the past decade, Banks has had roles in three movies and has been active in efforts to free AIM member Leonard Peltier from prison.

Banks is chairman of AIM's Grand Governing Council. He is a member of the Anishinabe-Ojibwe tribe and lives in Federal Dam, Minn., on the Leech Lake Reservation, where he has developed a business marketing maple syrup, wild rice and canoeing.

PEDRO BISSONETTE

In the last year of his life, Pedro Bissonette, founding member of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, made a pair of unequivocal stands on behalf of tribal sovereignty and return to traditional practices. A member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, he was instrumental in bringing AIM to Pine Ridge to oppose the government of tribal President Dick Wilson.

Because of his participation in the Wounded Knee occupation, Bissonette faced a possible 90-year prison sentence on federal charges, ranging from conspiracy to assault. He was offered probation on those charges if he would testify against AIM leaders. Bissonette refused.

He was out of jail on bail and awaiting trial when he was charged with assault, based on the testimony of a man who said Bissonette threatened him in Whiteclay, Neb. Bissonette's bail was revoked and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. On Oct. 17, he was shot by a Bureau of Indian Affairs Police Officer outside of Pine Ridge village and died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

CARTER CAMP

One of the AIM national leaders in the 1970s, he served a three-year sentence in federal prison for convictions stemming from his participation in the Wounded Knee occupation. Camp, an Oglala Sioux Tribe member, is a former national AIM chairman. He founded AIM chapters in Kansas and Oklahoma, and he edits and publishes a tribal community newsletter in Ponca, Okla. Camp remains active in Indian sovereignty issues. In 2001, he joined tribal opponents of a massive hog-farming operation on the Rosebud Reservation.

CLYDE BELLECOURT

Clyde Bellecourt, who co-founded AIM with Dennis Banks in 1968 and remains involved with the group, has used the Wounded Knee occupation as a platform for activism ever since.

Similar to Banks, he was charged with a 14-count federal indictment after Wounded Knee including conspiracy and assault. The charges were dismissed during trial. As the AIM leadership began to fracture after Wounded Knee, Bellecourt says he nearly was killed when he was shot in a dispute with another AIM leader at Wounded Knee. He says he refused to file charges after the shooting, "because you can't talk about sovereignty and self-determination then turn around and rat out somebody and turn it over to an all-white jury, even if they try to kill you."

Bellecourt is a member of the Anishinabe-Ojibwe tribe and remains active in Indian issues in Minnesota. He started the Heart of the Earth Survival School, the first culturally based alternative school in Minneapolis. He founded a job training center in 1979 that he says has trained 19,000 Indians for employment, and a Legal Rights Center, which he says has represented 35,000 clients.

Before Wounded Knee, Bellecourt says, tribal chairmen talked about how to work within the tribal system established by the U.S. government in 1934. Afterwards, "every one of them is talking about sovereignty," he says.

VERNON BELLECOURT

Vernon Bellecourt, an early AIM member, was only at Wounded Knee for a short time and spent much of the occupation on the East Coast, where he raised money to buy supplies for those inside the camp and served as a spokesman for Indian issues.

He founded an AIM chapter in Denver and remains a key figure as the international representative to the group's Grand Governing Council. He is a member of the Anishinabe-Ojibwe tribe and is also president of the National Coalition of Racism in Sports and Media and speaks widely on such issues.

"For the vast majority of people who came into the movement, AIM was like the University of Life," he says. "Elders look me in the eye. I was proud I was at Wounded Knee. It instilled optimism in my people."

RUSSELL MEANS

Both in South Dakota and in Washington, D.C., Russell Means was a prominent spokesman for the American Indian Movement during the Wounded Knee occupation. But Means says the defining event for him as an activist happened earlier, in 1970, when AIM members briefly took over Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

"That's when I learned I was a leader, and people would listen to me," he says.

Wounded Knee provided an international forum, though, that Means has used since to advance a message of Indian sovereignty. After serving a year in prison in Sioux Falls for a riot conviction stemming from a fight with police in a Minnehaha County courtroom in 1975, Means became prominent in efforts to restore the Black Hills to Lakota control.

In 1988, he ran as the Libertarian candidate for president. In the 1990s, he began to make use of a wide variety of media, recording two albums, selling limited edition art prints and publishing his autobiography, "Where White men Fear to Tread," in 1996.

Since 1992, he has had roles in a dozen movies and is currently filming "Tremors IV."

A member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, he twice ran for the tribal presidency. In 1974, he lost to incumbent Dick Wilson. In 2002, he was the leading vote-getter in the primary election but lost the runoff to incumbent John Yellow Bird Steele.

Means also is building the Total Immersion School, based on Lakota language and culture, at his home in Porcupine. In January of this year, he received a pardon for the riot conviction from outgoing Gov. Bill Janklow.

Thirty years after the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, Means says the missed story was the spirituality of the event.

"I realized the spiritual power of our people was real," he says.

MADONNA THUNDER HAWK

After riding into Wounded Knee in the caravan of original occupiers, Madonna Thunder Hawk remained until the occupation ended in May.

"It hasn't slowed down for me since then," she says. "I have worked on treaty rights, water rights, everything that pertains to our lives. There was no time to sit back and reminisce and write my memoirs."

Thunder Hawk is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is Means' sister.

After Wounded Knee, she founded a group home and alternative school in Rapid City, then moved it to Porcupine. She was an enthusiastic proponent of the Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., to restore the Black Hills to the Lakota people.

"I took time out in the late 1980s to earn a bachelor's degree," she says. Thunder Hawk is now a lobbyist for First Voices in Pierre, serving as an advocate for Indian issues in the South Dakota Legislature.

STAN POTTINGER

After Wounded Knee, federal negotiator Stan Pottinger created a new Office of Indian Rights in the Department of Justice. He worked as the head civil rights attorney for the U.S. attorney's office in the Nixon administration as the Watergate scandal unfolded.

He left the Justice Department in 1977 and practiced law privately for three years before briefly working as an investment banker. Then he went to film school and became a best-selling author. His third novel will be published this fall. He says he is working on a fourth, which features a significant Indian character.

Pottinger remains proud of the fact that the federal government exercised sufficient patience that the Wounded Knee standoff ended with the loss of only two lives. He laments what he says is a loss of institutional memory in federal law enforcement from Wounded Knee. He says this contributed to the widespread loss of life at later standoffs, like the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Wounded Knee "was a lab for learning about real danger and how to contain it," he says.

KENT FRIZZELL

Kent Frizzell began negotiating on behalf of the federal government at Wounded Knee as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. During the standoff, he moved to the Department of Interior as its solicitor.

After the occupation, he served as undersecretary of the Interior Department from 1975-77. When he left the federal government, he served 18 years as a law professor at Tulsa University. When he retired, he gave all the papers he acquired during the Wounded Knee negotiations to the TU library.

"I have not looked at them since," he says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0JIgVHypQ

Can everybody here watch video? Its around 10 minutes, I believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0JIgVHypQ

Can everybody here watch video? Its around 10 minutes, I believe.

Video impaired here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0JIgVHypQ

Can everybody here watch video? Its around 10 minutes, I believe.

Video impaired here.

sorry Mike, real super quick its just Russell Means expounding on the state of the Lakota Nation and their reasons for leaving the USA...

[quote="Mary TF":hl0cb83u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0JIgVHypQ

Can everybody here watch video? Its around 10 minutes, I believe.

Video impaired here.

sorry Mike, real super quick its just Russell Means expounding on the state of the Lakota Nation and their reasons for leaving the USA...[/quote:hl0cb83u]

Thanks.