The Lakota Indians, descendants of Crazy Horse and and Sitting Bull, have officially withdrawn from the treaties they had with the United States, the AFP is reporting, meaning they have declared themselves a new nation formally separate from America. The article quotes Indian rights activist Russell Means as saying: "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area [Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming] that encompasses our country are free to join us."
It also points out that the new Lakota country plans to issue its own passports, driving licenses and tax plan (that is, there will be no taxes). We went to the Lakota Freedom Delegation to find out more about their plans, but the site appears to have been downed by too much traffic. Here's the link if you want to try it.
How will this new nation survive? Well, their one advantage is they have almost nothing left to lose: The Lakota's men have a frighteningly short lifespan: forty-four years. Teen suicide, infant mortality and unemployment are all very high.
And on one hand, they certainly have every right to want nothing more to do with the U.S. (Wonkette has some details about recent mistreatment). On the other, it doesn't seem likely this is all going to go smoothly . Somehow we think the U.S. might have a little something to say about this secession plan, especially given the fact that the Indians are inviting regular old Americans to renounce U.S. citizenship and live in their community tax-free.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 4)
16. Russell Means is an idiot and only Ada Calhoun would take him seriously. The guy is a major league drunk and it has finally fried his brain.
IRONBLUEEYES at 6:05PM on Dec 20th 2007
17. Yep. Means even tried to start his own brand of booze. He has no official status to speak for anyone.
Only Fox News and Ada Calhoun would believe anything he says.
Yuwipi at 6:11PM on Dec 20th 2007
18. Maybe we should kill what's left of the savages!
mac65 at 6:47PM on Dec 20th 2007
19. Michele wrote: "Will those who secede from the US not accept welfare, free medical and other assistance programs from the US government? If you are not part of the country you are not entitled to assistance programs.
Michele"
Dear Michele,
You state that as if it were a 'bad' thing! The Lakotans, if the succeed in this endeavor would be free from the inefficient tyranny of taxation and government. They could easily provide for their own healthcare, welfare programs, and 'other assistance' much more effectively than how the US government forces them to accept right now. I do envy these souls, and wish them every luck to pull this stunt off.
LPM at 8:21PM on Dec 20th 2007
20. I'd like to apply for citizenship of this medivial soverignty.
I am originally from the Caribbean Trinidad & Tobago.
My Father's mother was of Indian origin 100% shipped to the Caribbean Island during Spanish and American slave and genocide period of North America.
We have suffered too equally with the Africans bought to the Caribbean when both the British and the Spanish eventually took the whole region America and the Caribbean for our resources and human subjugation.
Davy de verteuil at 3:30AM on Dec 21st 2007
21. Congratulations Lakota Nation, and a Happy New Year. I hope you meet these resolutions.
As for stopping the America hating and America bashing, I agree %100. America has hated and bashed enough, and it needs to stop, yesterday. Anytime I hear somebody say "just be happy because it could be worse" makes me want to scream. I got news for you, it is worse. Its worse for our native tribes once (and still) pillars of nobility. And its worse for the millions we (WE!) are killing around this amazing Earth. Because you got Fruit loops and a Plasma screen doesn't meen we're "the most advanced nation in the world", it means we're wasteful S.O.B.'s who have been given an amazing gift (or we stole it) and used it to kill and mame or out right threw it away. If there is a God he/she would spit in our collective face for the kind of mistreatment we've visited on his children and creation. We are true savages.
America has done all this and "advanced" so far only let just a small portion of it own citizens reap the rewards (show of hands, who's got affordable health insurance? House/rent payments? Unpolluted food? There own land?). Middle America, you're a little sheltered or fooling yourself if you think the US Govt. is all it says it is.
Lakota people, Great Spirit be with you. Be a good example to those of us in America who have hope for a better future. "In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds" -M.L.K. Jr.
You have an ally here in northern California (land of the Karuk) and I would come and live in your new nation if I did not love this land so much, it is my home. Be strong, dilegent, AND HOLD FIRM, do not lose focus. They will try to use every conceivable trick to divide and conquer you and your ideals. Good fortune.
-Feral
Feral at 9:12PM on Dec 20th 2007
22. I hope Cheney's house in Wyoming is on Lakota territory, so he can experience being a refugee, once UN recognizes Lakota.
ivo at 9:05PM on Dec 20th 2007
23. I wish them well.
Now it's time for whites of european ancestry to start their homeland known as the Northwest Republic.
Here's the proposed Constitution:
http://subfighter63.blogspot.com/2007/12/constitution-of-northwest-american.html
ALL WHITE NATION at 3:18AM on Dec 21st 2007
24. Russell Means is a fool, albeit a very educated, wealthy one. It's ironic how the American system seems to have failed his people, but not him. He has taken advantage of the opportunities offered to everyone in this country, and has used those opportunities to take advantage of the very people whose cause he claims to champion. It's common knowledge that most Americans are deeply concerned about the economic and social problems of Native American Indian tribes, but we become frustrated when every effort to solve them is met with unrestrained, unproductive resistance from the likes of the pathetically self-absorbed Means. How sad...
Steve at 10:01PM on Dec 20th 2007
25. Congratulations to the new Lakota Nation!!!
I wish you all the best.
I love your Tax policy.
What is your immigration policy? I would like to move there, learn your culture and invest in the development of your nation.
Long Live the new Lakota nation!!!
andy654321 at 10:43PM on Dec 20th 2007
26. True or no, this is a great starter for a grand discussion about First Nations desires for recognition and response from a Government, society and world that has seen fit to degrade and dehumanise so many for so long. New nation or not, let discussion rage until the right people finally smarten up and start paying attention. Are you paying attention?
scott at 11:22PM on Dec 20th 2007
27. In fact it [America] will probably make things very bad for not just your people. But other peoples that feel they have been wronged.
_________________
America making things bad for Native Americans? Where would you get such an idea?
And Michele, I pay in property tax alone at least five times as much as I my entire family incurs in medical expenses all year. We are being punished for good health by the government!!! Yes, I'd rather be tax free, because the money saved would be more than enough to pay for EVERYTHING else.
emma at 11:25PM on Dec 20th 2007
28. Steve? When you say "It's common knowledge that most Americans are deeply concerned about the economic and social problems of Native American Indian tribes", which 'most Americans' are you refering to? Are these the same Americans who cannot form a link between First Nations being constantly demoralized by sports clubs using character depictions of 'American Indians' as mascots, reminded every Thanksgiving that intruders onto native soil decimated First Nations populations, stole their lands, rights and freedoms and celebrate these accomplishments oblivious to the contiued suffering of the many blood lines that have survived the culturation, assimilation and decimation perpetuated by 'deeply concerned' Americans and that these First Nations do not want to be fixed to be just like you? The economic and social problems exist because Americans only like Americans who look, act, and think like all the other Americans. Show me an school text book that explains in anything more than a footnote where 90% of of first nations populations 'disappeared' to after first contact and I might be convinced 'some' Americans are concerned. Until the mascots stop jumping around in some White idea of respect for first nations during a home run or a Field goal however, stating 'most Americans care' just doesn't fly.
scott at 11:54PM on Dec 20th 2007
29. What everyone fails to notice is: if those freakin indians didn't like the way they were being treated, they had every right to leave and be normal US citizens. The only reason why this group of people were so deeply impoverished is because they wasted all the (US) government assistance they received on booze and on starting up those infamous indian casinos. If they had actually gotten off their fat red butts they could have become prosperous; however, they were just waiting for the benefits of what their ancestors lost (150 years ago!) to fall into their laps. If they had taken any initiative whatsoever, then they would have had a better life. You can't reap rewards without putting hard work into them.
Furthermore, if the indians were really serious about their "independence," then how are they going to provide for all their people? If they can't make it with the US government's assistance, then how the heck are they going to make it on their own? How are they going to provide medical treatments (from the knowledge given them by the US, I might add) if they have no source of revenue on the land? How are they going to afford millions of dollars worth of equipment, not to mention the pay of medical workers? Or rather, are they going to revert back to their traditional healings-- yes, let's cover that gash on your arm with mud, that'll heal you... As enticing an offer as THAT sounds, any half witted person would run in the opposite direction from these crazy indian folks.
Long story short, I think it's good that these Indians will finally stop leaching off our government. I am tired of my taxes going to pay for their whiskey. In the end, they will meet their demise, to which I will say, "good riddance."
hannahbanana981 at 1:08AM on Dec 21st 2007
30. 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
Justin Case at 2:39AM on Dec 21st 2007