Lakota secede from United States

[spook]

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"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," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.

One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Descen...orse_1220.html

[Cliff Huckable]

Awesome.

[Cliff Huckable]

Totally awesome.

Can't wait to see how this plays out...

[stupendous man]

Aren't these tribes close to getting hundreds of millions of dollars in back due royalty payments via the Cobell lawsuit, based on those treaties?

[supermodel159]

So will you need a special passport or visa to get into their casinos?

[Tippster]

Damn - I was supposed to cover this before they sent me to the Cheney Office Fire (TM) instead.

[Buster Highmen]

Oh great, Wounded Knee again.

[AsheanMT]

FKN Kick ASS!

[Tye 1on]

This could be interesting...
Not sure on the Cobell thing, that's back royalty payments for mineral extraction on tribal/reservation lands. So I guess as far as the treaties defined the res boundaries? So if they are renouncing all treaties, do they still have a reservation? I'm easily confused on tribal sovereignty/law.

[DJSapp]

Can California be next?


Please?

[Tippster]

This could be interesting...
Not sure on the Cobell thing, that's back royalty payments for mineral extraction on tribal/reservation lands. So I guess as far as the treaties defined the res boundaries? So if they are renouncing all treaties, do they still have a reservation? I'm easily confused on tribal sovereignty/law.

If they chuck out the treaty due to "our" non-compliance the US just got smaller. The Lakota don't hold any valuable land, unless you count Badlands NP as valuable, so it's not like we'll actually "miss" anything. The large beef Conglomerates will be pretty pissed, I think, since they graze a lot of cattle on Pine Ridge Rez... but I bet the Nation will continue their land lease, maybe raise the rates a bit.

I shot a story about Diabetes 4 years ago on that Reservation - those are some poor motherfuckers who got a very raw deal. Really nice folks, however.

[PNWbrit]

Oh great, Wounded Knee again.

Keep your whacked knee in Gimp Central.

Please.

[Tye 1on]

If they chuck out the treaty due to "our" non-compliance the US just got smaller. The Lakota don't hold any valuable land, unless you count Badlands NP as valuable, so it's not like we'll actually "miss" anything. The large beef Conglomerates will be pretty pissed, I think, since they graze a lot of cattle on Pine Ridge Rez... but I bet the Nation will continue their land lease, maybe raise the rates a bit.

I shot a story about Diabetes 4 years ago on that Reservation - those are some poor motherfuckers who got a very raw deal. Really nice folks, however.

Hard to think of any of 'em that got a great deal.

Guess where i'm confused is that their historic lands were much broader than what ended up defined as the rez. [keen sense of the fkn obvious]. So if they chuck the treaty, why stick with the boundaries described in the treaty? Why not say, ok, we're giving you back x [say, 15,000] acres. We want to re-assert our ownership of...some federal lands in Fargo, or Cheyenne, etc...totalling the same # of acres...
Guess it would just really muddy the waters, and most anglos consider the rez already transferred to the tribe...

[mr_gyptian]

in other news, Jack Daniels, Old Crow, Jim Beam, Black Velvet, and Macormacks have cut back production based upon fears that they will not be able to import whiskey into the new Lakota lands.

[Buster Highmen]

in other news, Jack Daniels, Old Crow, Jim Beam, Black Velvet, and Macormacks have cut back production based upon fears that they will not be able to import whiskey into the new Lakota lands.

Is that really necessary? I mean doesn't it get just a little bit old?

[Hugh Conway]

Is that really necessary? I mean doesn't it get just a little bit old?

He has to fulfill a quota to keep up his membership in the local chamber of commerce. Let him keep his fantasy than drug abuse is the cause of a stressed, depressed society and not the symptom.

[PNWbrit]

in other news, Jack Daniels, Old Crow, Jim Beam, Black Velvet, and Macormacks have cut back production based upon fears that they will not be able to import whiskey into the new Lakota lands.

My turn!

Polyester shirt and clip-on tie wearing, oversized gold watch sporting, "what's it going to take to get you into this" spouting, phoney back slapping, rust sealant pushing, warranty dodging, steak knife winning car salesman.

Someone do the bad teeth and big eared Englishman one - I love it!

[Tourette Dude]

Is that really necessary? I mean doesn't it get just a little bit old?

No its great! Let the wingnuts show themselves for what they truely are.......... 1) bigots and/or 2) religious freaks and/or 3) uneducated and/or 4) greedy.

Almost always includes 1 and 4.

[AsheanMT]

Someone do the bad teeth and big eared Englishman one - I love it!

Meh. You're all just a bunch of wankers.

[smoothious]

“Opinion” column --

Read the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868

(From Columnist Alan Aker, published in the December 9, 2007 edition of the Rapid City Journal.)

Yale Law School maintains a website which includes the text of the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty between the Federal Government and the Sioux tribes, and everyone in western South Dakota should read it.

It’s fairly short and really easy to read, and you can find it at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avaln/ntreaty/nt001.htm/.

Whatever else this treaty is, it is not a mutual agreement between two “nations” or equal sovereigns.

The second and third paragraphs being, “If bad men among the whites . . .” and “If bad men among the Indians . . .”

This is not the language one sovereign nation uses in treaties with another.

It’s the language a parent uses with a naughty chilled. The condescension in the tone matches the lack of reciprocity in the content.

Article I stipulates that if whites commit crimes against Indians, they’ll be tried in white courts and that if Indians commit crimes against whites, they’ll also be tried in white courts.

This lack of respect for the tribes is a unifying theme of the entire document.

In Article VII, the Lakota agree to compel every one of their children aged 6-16 to attend a federal school in which they’d get an “English” education.

Article XIUV sets up a contest among the Indians: the federal Indian Agent gets to decide which 10 Lakota are the best farmers in a given year, and they each get a $500 prize.

Clauses like the one requiring an “English” education for all their children indicate that the Lakota either didn’t know what they were signing or had no intention of complying with it.

It’s true that in later decades, Lakota children were forced to attend white schools, but it was the federal government, not the tribal chiefs, who forced Lakota children to attend schools intended to assimilate them into white culture.

If a white guy had ridden up to a Lakota encampment in 1868 and announced that he was there to collect all children aged 6-16 to commence giving them that “English” education, the response would most likely have been laughter or the business end of a rifle.

The treaty also required the Lakota to cease all violence and raiding against all white settlers and travelers on the fringe of the reservation. The chiefs likely understood this part of the treaty, and made some attempt to implement it, but their political structure made strict compliance impossible.

The horde of white gold prospectors which started digging up the Black Hills in 1876 was a more obvious treaty violation than anything the Lakota did, so neither side fulfilled its treaty obligations.

The 1868 treaty has always been a sham, and there’s been a great misunderstanding about what the Supreme Court did in its 1980 ruling.

It didn’t affirm the treaty as binding on either party. It didn’t breathe new life into the treaty. It didn’t invite the parties to open negotiations on a new treaty.

Quite the opposite.

The court’s ruling ended all litigation on the treaty.

A bedrock principle of our jurisprudence is finality. Once a court has found you innocent of a crime, you can’t be tried again.

Once the Supreme Court declares how a treaty violation shall be resolved, you don’t get to try again. It doesn’t matter whether or not the plaintiff takes delivery of the cash the court awards.

The court only rarely reverses itself on large constitutional questions, but never does so on matters as specific and narrow as this.

To do so would undercut their own authority, and that’s one thing we can count on them to preserve.

(Another link to the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868 is: http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/1868_la.html

[Danno]

First off, I'm not convinced that these "leaders" actually lead any federally recognized indian tribe. I don't think Russell Means is a formal leader. So his pronouncement really means squat.

The Lakota don't hold any valuable land, unless you count Badlands NP as valuable, so it's not like we'll actually "miss" anything.

Here's another thing: they don't "hold" any land. Some tribes do own lands in fee, but most "indian owned" lands are actually owned by the United States, held in trust for the tribe. SO how do you secede and then retain ownership of lands that you don't technically own?

Would they get deported since they have renounced their citizenship?

[Tye 1on]

Damn Smooth, 32 posts in 4 years? What do you do, work or something?

Very interesting post there dude. So if the Supremes 'ended all litigation', that would be all litigation in US courts, eh? So what if, hypothetically, the 'sovereign nation' chooses to litigate at, i dunno, is there an international level? UN? Or are they basically forced to accept the US Courts ruling...?

[Danno]

Damn Smooth, 32 posts in 4 years? What do you do, work or something?

Very interesting post there dude. So if the Supremes 'ended all litigation', that would be all litigation in US courts, eh? So what if, hypothetically, the 'sovereign nation' chooses to litigate at, i dunno, is there an international level? UN? Or are they basically forced to accept the US Courts ruling...?

Indian tribes are not true sovereign nations. To put it in the most condescending terms, they are wards of the federal government. Their sovereignty is akin to the sovereignty of the states, and they could no more sue the US in a foreign/international court than California could.

[Tippster]

Pretty sure they're considered Nations in the eyes of the UN - see the Inuit in Canada. Just because a Nation is subjugated and assimilated by it's oppressors doesn't mean it ceases to exist. I'm also not so sure about their being "wards" of the state, since they are governed by themselves separate from the States they are located in.

[ill-advised strategy]

my time in NM has left me bitter about teh natives

let me say this: I think they're best served, as a people, to move forward, disperse, interbreed, assimilate, and prosper as best they can. Sitting around the res sniffing paint, chucking rocks and constantly trying to figure out some way to defeat 'the white man' does nobody much good.