HARLEYWOOD.BLOGSPOT: 2007

Phyllis_Young-WARN_founder.jpg

Washington, D.C.
19DEC2007

Lakota Sioux Indian Freedom Delegation Declare Sovereign Nation Status

A press release issued today by the Lakota Freedom Delegation, made up of Russell Means, well known actor, Phyllis Young, founder of Women of All Red Nations (WARN), Duane Martin, Sr., Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society, and Garry Rowland, Chief Big Foot Riders officially declared an end to all treaties between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States.
Means, Martin and Rowland were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee incident while Phyllis Young was an Indigenous representative to the United Nations from Standing Rock. The presentation was made on Monday, the 16th of December, 2007 to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department and a press conference followed at a local church in Washington neighborhood.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people - United States colonial rule is at it’s end”, Russell Means said. “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, D.C. 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.” Phyllis Young remarked, "We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children. The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but simply to save the lives of our people”.

LAKOTA MEDIA ADVISORY (full text - www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com)

HISTORY

The Lakota, a Native American tribe are formed of a confederation of seven tribes or Great Sioux Nation and speak Lakota, one of the three major dialects of the Sioux language and are the westernmost of the three Sioux groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota.

EddiePlentyHoles.Sioux.1899.ws.jpg - c1899; CREATOR- Herman Heyn

Initial contacts between the Lakota and the United States, during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06 was marked by a standoff - the Lakota refusing to allow the explorers to continue upstream countered by the Expedition preparing to battle. Formally, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 acknowledged Indian sovereignty over the Great Plains in exchange for free passage along the Oregon Trail, for "as long as the river flows and the eagle flies". In Nebraska on September 3, 1855, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenged the "Grattan Massacre" by attacking a Lakota village, killing 100 men, women, and children. Other wars followed; and in 1862–1864, as refugees from the "Dakota War of 1862" in Minnesota fled west to their allies in Montana and Dakota Territory, the war followed them.

The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota, and they objected to mining the area, which had been attempted since the early years of the 19th century. In 1868, the US government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. Four years later, when gold was discovered there, prospectors descended upon the area, abetted by army commanders like Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer resulting in the Black Hills War of 1876–77. Hunting and massacre of the buffalo were urged by General Philip Sheridan as a means to ‘destroy the Indians'.

The Lakota with their allies, the Arapaho and the Northern Cheyenne, defeated General George Crook's army at the Battle of the Rosebud and a week later defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1876 at the Battle at Little Big Horn, killing 258 soldiers, more than 50% of the regiment. But it proved to be a useless victory. The Teton were defeated in a series of subsequent battles by reinforced U.S. Army, and were herded onto reservations, prevented from hunting buffalo and forced to accept government food distribution.

Pine Ridge Reservation was originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and originally encompassed approximately 60 million acres - parts of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. In 1876, the U.S. government violated the treaty of 1868 by opening up 7.7 million acres of the Black Hills to homesteaders and private interests. In 1889 the remaining area of Great Sioux Reservation was divided into seven smaller reservations.

On December 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee, over 300 men, women and children were killed by the United States 7th Cavalry. The Lakota, compelled to sign a treaty in 1877 ceded the Black Hills to the United States, but war continued, and fourteen years later, resulted in the killing of Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890 at Standing Rock and the Massacre of Wounded Knee at Pine Ridge.

Tashun-Kakokipa Pine Ridge, S.D. - CREATOR; G.E. Trager 17January 1891

RESERVATION REALITY

Pine Ridge is the biggest reservation in the United States, but it is also the poorest. It is probably easily comparable to the least developed countries of the Third World. Unemployment on the Reservation hovers around 35% and 61% live below the Federal poverty level. Adolescent suicide is four times the national average. Many of the families have no electricity, telephone, running water, or sewer. Many families use wood stoves to heat their homes. The population on Pine Ridge has among the shortest life expectancies of any group in the Western Hemisphere: approximately 47 years for males and in the low 50s for females. The infant mortality rate is five times the United States national average.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has some commercial businesses with private operators, but most employment is provided by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Lakota College, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Indian Health Service. The tribe operates the Prairie Wind Casino, a Parks and Recreation Department, guided hunting, cattle ranching and farming. The Oglala Sioux Tribe also operates the White River Visitor Center near the Badlands National Park. A newly renovated casino, hotel and restaurant, the Prairie Wind Casino provides 250 jobs mostly to tribe members. Large numbers of Lakota also live in Rapid City and other towns in the Black Hills, and in Metro Denver. Lakota elders joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) seeking protection and recognition for their cultural and land rights.

Beginning in 1974, some Lakota activists have taken steps to become independent from the United States. These steps have included drafting their own "declaration of continuing independence" and using Constitutional and International Law to solidify their legal standing.
Reasons given by the activists for the movement are wide ranging, but focus on the treaties they made with the U.S. in the past and the negative effects these treaties have had on their people. Furthermore, they have attributed their high teen suicide rate and low life expectancy to the conditions forced on them by the United States. The current President of the Oglala Sioux, the majority tribe of the Lakota, is John Yellowbird Steele. He was elected in 2007.

Akta Lakota Museum.jpg - Chamberlain, South Dakota

MORE INFO
Media Contacts: Naomi Archer, Communications Liaison (828) 230-1404 lakotafree@gmail.com
www.lakotafreedom.com Lakota 444 Crazy Horse Drive P.O. Box 99 Porcupine, SD 57772

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