The Sioux have always been, well, problematic to everybody.
I mean , all these lands they claim, they only lived out there because the Ojibwa ran them out of Wisconsin and Minnesota. How about the Mandan and Arikera and crow and everybody else they displaced. But I forget, the Lakota are the human beings of this world and everybody else are just here.
So if we truly have an enclave of armed non-citizens within our borders, just exactly do they think America will do? Russel means is suffering from advanced dementia if he thinks this is going to be reasonably received.
The pictures on this blog I took three years ago in Bismarck, North Dakota at a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial meeting. I have also included the actual documents that they handed out at the time. Just click on the document for the full size versions.
Hell the rest of the Nations are scalping the white man with car tags and casinos and smoke shops. Leave it to the Sioux to want to use guns and mess it all up.
Below is the USA Today article that prompted this tirade:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/12/lakota-withdraw.html
Text:
Lakota withdraw from treaties, declare independence from U.S.
The Lakota Sioux Indians, whose ancestors include Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence. A delegation delivered the news to the State Department earlier this week.
Portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming comprise Lakota country, and the tribe says that if the federal government doesn't begin diplomatic discussions promptly, liens will be filed on property in the five-state region. Here's the news release.
"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," said Russell Means, a longtime Indian rights activist. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically Article 6 of the Constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," he added during a press conference yesterday in Washington.
The new country would issue its own passports and driver licenses, and living there would be tax-free, provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, he said, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.
The Lakota say the United States has never honored the pacts, signed with the Great Sioux Nation in 1851 and 1868 at Fort Laramie, Wyo.
"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," said Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977.
Means said the "annexation" of native American land had turned the Lakota into "facsimiles of white people."
In 1974, the Lakota drafted a declaration of continuing independence. Their cause got a boost in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Bush administration opposed the measure.
I've seen their "herd". The Blackfoot tribe has it all over them, not to mention all of the commercial herds all over America.
Actual Brule Sioux bison south of pierre SD 2004
Standing Rock Bison sign 2004
Standing Rock Bison Herd of spikers (yearlings)
Sioux document one
Document two
2 comments:
Considering the way American Indians have been treated, it's a wonder only the Sioux are displaying a grand middle finger to the US gov't. Your citing the various struggles amongst the Indians (and not citing their exploitation by the US) as well as forgetting to mention the simple truth that the treaties weren't worth the ink they were printed on ignores the reality the Sioux have faced. Not to mention the slaughter at Wounded Knee, the parentalism of BIA policy, the entire history of dehumanizing at the hands of whites convinced of their cultural, religious, and racial superiority.
Sorry, but I'm with the Lakota on this. They should spring Leonard Peltier from prison while they're at it.
There is no argument that the American Indian got a raw deal in the U.S.. I live in a State with 34 tribes and the second largest Indian population in the U.S..
Hell, I'm a card carrying libral pro-Indian but... my knee don't jerk....
There are no "simple truths" when it comes American Indians and their treaties. As for the Lakota, even within their own larger Tribal and Clan structures they are seen as the cousins that should have stayed home from Christmas dinner. They are claiming the lands, leadership position, and soveriegnty of the Santee, Brule, as well of other Greater Sioux Nation sub-tribes as their own. It is as much a family matter as it is a national matter.
I'll give you the point on the BIA, and raise you two points in that the best way to kick their ass is with lawyers, much like the Oklahoma tribes have done within the last 30 years. The Lakota have benifited more from our tribal efforts than anything they have done in a 100 years.
As for the point"... the entire history of dehumanizing at the hands of whites convinced of their cultural, religious, and racial superiority." Now that is much too simple. Much of what is popularly seen as that activity is the maddness of post-civil war America and the behavior of psychotic military leadership enured and hardened to the point of insanity by the slaughter they saw and perpetrated in that war. They just exported the maddness to the western frontier.
In many ways, America today and America then was not holding its own psychos accountable for their actions. Better to fight them there than here, is not a new concept.
Just for the record the worst "racial hatred" I've ever seen has been between American Indian tribes, and "racial hatred" used to be part of my professional portfolio.
Russell just wants to feel the warm lights and dance for the cameras one more time, and perhaps, just perhaps go out like the warrior he believes himself to be.
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