Lakota Indians Withdraw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago
Lakota Indians Withdraw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago
Thursday, December 20, 2007
WASHINGTON — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.
"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 said.
A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.
The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.
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 U.S. citizenship, Mr Means said.
The treaties signed with the U.S. were merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists said.
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 U.S. "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 U.S. 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 per cent above the norm for the U.S.; infant mortality is five times higher than the U.S. average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.
You don't happen to...
Submitted by Adam Hintz on Fri, 2007-12-21 00:25.
You don't happen to have a link for that do you?
Thanks,
Adam Hintz
-an hour south of the Lakota nation
Yeah
Submitted by locke on Fri, 2007-12-21 00:38.
Yeah, I linked it to Fox News, just under the headline, but here's the URL anyways: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html.
-an hour south of the Lakota nation
Planning on moving? 
--
God against man, man against god, man against nature...
Nature against man, nature against god, god against nature...
Very funny religion.
(grinning)
Submitted by Adam Hintz on Fri, 2007-12-21 00:42.
I was hoping for info on the Iroquois Nation a few years back. I want to know how survivable this sucession is.
To move is tempting. But I'll be more valuable to them here in the neutral zone. Maybe a dual citizenship? I'd rather be lakota than a U.S. citizen.
Take Care,
Adam Hintz
Haudenosaunee
Submitted by Huby7 on Sat, 2007-12-22 03:42.
Adam,
A friend of mine was told a story by Jake Swamp (One of the chiefs of Haudenosaunee) that you need or needed a passport to enter the Iroquois Nation. I’m not sure if he meant that this was so in the present or at one time in the past. He also told my friend about various occurrences that involved the United States and Canadian governments using various surveillance technologies against the Haudenosaunee nation. Which, of course, I don’t doubt that a bit going on the track record of how these governments have treated various Indian nations. A movie that illustrates this really well is Thunderheart.
So, that is where my comment came from. But here is what I found as far as information goes:
-------------------
ON EDIT: I found some better information over at www.rewild.org. Thank you to the Prissiest Primitivist for posting this.
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.
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Take care,
Curt
Another Bit of Info.
Submitted by Huby7 on Fri, 2007-12-21 20:00.
Adam,
This essay talks a lot about citizenship, vision, etc.
Take care,
Curt
Quote from essay: This last point is, it seems to me, crucially important. Partly, this is because of the persistent question of who gets to remain in Indian Country once land restoration and consolidation have occurred. The answer, I think, is, up to a point, anyone who wants to. By “anyone who wants to” I mean anyone who wishes to apply for formal citizenship within an indigenous nation, thereby accepting the idea that s/he is placing him/herself under unrestricted Indian jurisdiction and will thus be required to abide by native law.57 W. Churchill
Serious?
Submitted by Ghost on Mon, 2007-12-24 18:11.
Hey, erbody.
Ok. Does someone know the deal with this? Is this serious or what?
I've been searching and nobody is saying boo about this. There's some indy media joints that are covering it, but no CNN, BBC, CBC, MSNBC, WKRP, coverage at all. Now I'd figure that the creation of a new country inside the continental United States of these here Americas would be an explosive story that would be getting 24/7 blanket coverage. But so far, not so much.
I went to the department of the Interior's website and their news coverage stops on December 18th.
One article said they tried to contact the State Department, but the SD said it wasn't their problem, it was a matter for the Department of the Interior. That tells me that the US sure as hell isn't recognising the validity of their claim, otherwise, it would be a state department matter, n'est ce pas?
The people who issued the press release... do they actually have the authority to take this action on behalf of the Lakota, or are they just activists trying to make a point? I read that one of the lead figures was an actor... not to bash actors, they're fine upstanding citizens 
... but I didn't hear "Chief X of the Lakota said".
There was a lot of legal jargon bandied around about the US 6th amendment, the UN resolution on the rights of aboriginals and so on. It was enough for me to buy that the Lakota have a serious legal claim to doing this. Whether or not other countries will recognise their sovereignty or whether or not the US will crush them (cause there's no way the US is letting this happen without a serious fight) is another matter, but it has the indgredients of being serious.
So my question is this... how serious is this?
Peace and Love and Empathy,
Matt
On whether it's serious...
Submitted by TwoRoadsTom on Mon, 2007-12-24 20:19.
Russell Means, one of the organizers, is a serious activist and well respected (as I understand it). Some folks I've talked to say he has the backing of the tribal elders in this matter and that might make a difference.
That said, it's a crapshoot as to how serious it will end up being. I've got a person I respect home in Montana right now and she'll probably return with news about the People.
As to why it's not being reported, why would anyone take it seriously? They're just Indians, right? And it's Christmas time here so credit card debt and people returning to Bethlehem because those oh-so-clever Israelis have stopped all the Palestinian violence once and for all -- those are the top stories. That and Britney Spear's pregnant 16-yr old sister.
The hope, I assume, is that is will just go away over the holidays and nothing further will be spoken about it. We'll see... :)
"Change comes from giving up the myth that you are in control."
Rapid City Journal
Submitted by Adam Hintz on Tue, 2007-12-25 14:31.
Here's an article from Rapid City, South Dakota. Check out the comments left. It really illustrates what's going on around Pine Ridge.
Take Care,
Adam Hintz
Interview with a Lakota Delegate
Submitted by Adam Hintz on Fri, 2007-12-28 16:36.
Here's an interview with a delegate from the Lakota Freedom Organization. This was conducted by a fellow like mind Runs Without Clothes.
Take Care,
Adam Hintz
Interview with Russell Means
Submitted by Adam Hintz on Mon, 2007-12-31 03:44.
Here's a place to hear it.
Good!
This is really good news. Thank you for posting this, Locke.
I'm not sure, but didn't the Iroquois Nation attempt this a few years back?
Take care,
Curt