Posted on 09/15/2004 12:50:23 PM PDT by Horatio Gates
CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. (AP) — A group led by a man from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is planning "an action of the Lakota people" against Lewis and Clark re-enactors who are coming to Chamberlain this weekend.
"They're just opening up all the old wounds that we're still trying to heal from," Alex White Plume said. "They should have been a little bit more courteous and asked us about what they are doing, and maybe they could have joined in the healing effort. Instead, they're just coming through and bragging about what they did 200 years ago."
About 20 people who are part of the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles, Mo., are scheduled to be in Chamberlain through Monday. The group travels aboard a replica boat to retrace the water route that explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took 200 years ago, which ended in Oregon.
White Plume said his group will ask the re-enactors to go home.
Larry McClain, executive director of the expedition, said there have been rumors of a possible "protest." His organization has been trying unsuccessfully to contact White Plume, said McClain.
He declined to say whether the re-enactors would consider ending the expedition.
"We've had incredibly positive experiences with Native Americans starting in Monticello all they way out," McClain said. "We're kind of a platform for education on a lot of issues. We obviously would like to help them have a voice and a platform for education."
Brule County Sheriff Darrell Miller said he had no knowledge of any protest plans, but said he would meet with the local police chief to talk about the matter.
"I suppose everybody has a right to protest, as long as there's no violence," Miller said.
White Plume said the event will not be a protest but instead prefers to describe it as an "action." He expects the re-enactors will cooperate with his request.
"I'm going up there with one peaceful purpose, and that's to stop them," he said. "We may even capture their boats — who knows?" he added with a laugh. "I just want to sit down and talk to them. I've got some things to say to them."
Fliers have gone out to announce a Friday planning meeting.
"We, the descendants of the free Lakota, will make a stand to tell the world about the 1851 & 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaties & how America fails to abide by its own laws," the fliers state.
The treaty designated 60 million acres, including land in present-day South Dakota, as the Great Sioux Reservation. Another part of the treaty encouraged Indians to become farmers.
White Plume has drawn interest in recent years with attempts to grow hemp as a cash crop. Federal Drug Enforcement agents confiscated his crops in 2000 and 2001.
Don't you hate it when someone drags up a painful memory of something that happened 200 years ago? Of course, we were all much younger then.
is land they took from others.
>>The treaty designated 60 million acres, including land in present-day South Dakota, as the Great Sioux Reservation. Another part of the treaty encouraged Indians to become farmers.
White Plume has drawn interest in recent years with attempts to grow hemp as a cash crop.<<
BWAA-HA-HA-HA!
"Unhealed"? After eight generations of government checks?
Guess that kills the reparations argument, then...
I don't think they have a casino that that res, out in the middle of nowhere.
reservtions here: rez girls with commod bods in pick-ups chasing dogs (thousands running loose) off life. through the incredible litter that is everywhere. i dont know about the men.
If I had only know then what I know now...
In the case of the Sioux, you are probably wrong. The upper Great Plains were largely uninhabitable to Indians peoples; it is dry, barren and prone to temperature extremes. Thus, both farming and even hunting-and-gathering are impractical. Contrary to their legends, the Sioux almost certainly came from Western New York and the Allegheny region. As white man encroached, the Sioux found that, with horses, previously uninhabitable areas to their west offered a new way of life, and moved West rather than fighting for the lands they were more familiar with. With the advantages they gained from white men, they were able to live in this new land as well as they had lived in their ancient homelands.
MOst of the time, I defend the white man's taking of "Indian lands" by pointing out that Indians had never really possessed the lands in the first place. The Indian population density was at its greatest about 1 person per square mile in the U.S. We were moving into largely empty land.
However, the means we used of doing so were unenlightened, un-Christian, and sometimes simply vicious. While areas of the East coast now team with population densities in the tens of thousands, South Dakota is still largely uninhabited. The abuse of the Sioux was entirely unnecessary and unjust.
I'm always curious when I read about lakota gripes over land. A tribe of 5-7 thousand people, in its glorious past, supposedly today lays claim to places as far removed as Minnesota to Wyoming and Montana. The lakota people never bother to explain that "their" lands once belonged to other peoples, some of whom no longer exist.You can be sure these lands were not acquired by treaty
Dammit, give everyone guns and lets settle this mess once and for all. Personally, I'm rooting for the Indians for a change.
When the Europeans first came to the Americas, the rule in place on these continents was very simple: "If someone has something you want, kill him and take it." This is how the Aztecs and the Incas conquered their empires. This is how many of the various American Indian tribes operated, but the Europeans, with their superior organizational skills and technology, were a lot better at it.
Some of my ancestors were the Huron, and it was not the White Man who decimated them and drove them from their homes, it was the damned Iroquois, and if there were enough of us left, we would go to war against them.
Our problem was that we allied ourselves with the French white men, and they were not as good as fighters as the English white men, something that is true to this day. Of course, we were not as good as fighters as the Iroquois, so that may have had something to do with it.
My point: relay the whole history.
From the land of sky blue whiners, thumpa thump thump.
Actually there is a nearby casino. If you consider Chamberlain the “middle of nowhere” you might as well consider all of South Dakota to be such a place. All he would have to do is visit the Load Star Casino. I think you would be surprised how many casinos there are in South Dakota on the various reservations in the “middle of nowhere.”
How's that medical research project on Lewis and Clark coming along? That was you, right?
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