Posted on 12/20/2007 5:36:13 AM PST by Sopater
WASHINGTON — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.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.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yes They did learning from Custer’s mistakes along the way
Send in the 8th army air cav and just shut this assclown up.
On a human-being to human-being level, my heart goes out to the American Indians. There’s so much bad history between them and the whites. I wish I knew what to do to help them, but I fear anything we try is going to be viewed with suspicion and distrust, and I can’t blame the people for their lack of trust in what we say.
I suppose the sad truth is that the American Indians really can’t live the ways of their ancestors ever again. But then none of us can. We have to pick up and move on. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks the problems on the reservation have many, many small incremental solutions and not one big one-size-fits-all program or project.
Oh, then who is it surrounded by. (on the sides that are not ocean) I have the National Geographic Atlas of the World , what map are you looking at.
Russell does like the publicity he gets and may have smoked a little too much peyote, sort of like a Native American version of Willie Nelson. But he's genuinely a nice guy.
So, unlike all the land around them, the reservations in Minnesota, N&S Dakota, Wyoming and Montana just happen to be on the land that you can't raise cattle on, corn won't grow, wheat won't grow, trees don't grow and the ultra-lucrative ginseng (which naturalized immigrant Korean-Americans make millions on in Minnesota) won't grow? BS!
There is a liquor store just across the line out of one reservation that supplies alcohol and thus promotes the rampant alcoholism.
The liquor store promotes alcoholism? Only in the Marxist view of things where actions have no consequences and demand has nothing to do with supply. If you want to see a modern day Indian uprising just outlaw sales of liquor to Native Americans. The ACLU will lead the charge waving the biggest Race Card you've ever seen. And for once they would be right.
If liquor stores cause alcoholism then Rosie's spoon causes fat!
Every thing you say is true. That was never my argument. My point was that IF, get it, IF, the Reservations were the same status as a foreign country, the US could not and would not be able to tax them.
Your clearly an angry person and have alot of chips on your shoulder. You throw out alot of garbage in hopes that someone will agree with you. If you think all men are created equal you’re head is too deep in the sand. Wake up.
Why should our generation be held responsible for actions that were taken 150+ years ago? I don’t feel the least bit bad for the people living on the reservations. It is nobody’s fault but their own for not leaving and trying to make a better life for themselves. You said it best...”Alternatively, tell us your solutions for making unfarmable industryless land productive.” You have just painted the region as a dead part of the planet. Thats extremely ignorant of you to suggest.
I’ve been there and I never want to go back. I personally hope the people who are ‘stuck’ there can find a way out. There’s much more in this Great country than a life in a welfare ridden lifeless dead region.
Russell Means is an old left-wing jerk.
In the 1990s I drove across northern Montana on US 2, which crosses a couple of Indian reservations. They have a custom of putting up crosses along the highway where someone has been killed. It seemed there were lots of them near the reservation boundaries...presumably most of them a result of drunk driving.
AMEN to that!
I never said nor intended to say that Native Americans had to renounce their citizenship to live on the res. Just the opposite. Many Lakota have NOT chosen to become uS citizens. But I have to disagree with you about sovereignty. The recognized tribes are free to run their own court systems and self determine the running of the reservations (within some bounds). If you break the law on a res you go to THEIR court not a state court.They are exempt from many Federal laws and from many laws in the States the reservations are in. The Lakota are somewhat different because of the terms their treaties were initiated under and the circumstances they were "negotiated" under. Native Americans are a unique type of person in the united States. They can choose to be citizens or not - unlike one who is born in a state and automatically given a Birth Certificate.
It is unfortunate that this recent move is done by Russell. His baggage will cloud the real issue of how the BIA treats the NA's. Rosebud Reservation is one of the poorest places on Earth. The Feds will claim that because they have paid all of the $$$ granted in treaties has been paid and that the treaties are in force and valid. As I said in my first post when it comes to court time the Lakota need to be very careful about what questions they ask the court.
BTW I know this because my hunting guide is a Lakota Elder and one of my buddies is married to a direct descendant of Sitting Bull. I am one of the few white people granted specific permission to visit Wounded Knee. No I am not an "Indian" proponent; I just understand their side of this issue.
Obviously smoking more than tobacco in their pipes.
And, as I said, I understand how the reservation works...I know they have their own tribal police and courts. My point is simple, if they start to blatantly violate US Federal law, the US Federal government WILL intervene. Let them shut down one Interstate Highway, let them try and harbor one federal fugitive, even if it is one of their own, and you will see how far their "soveriegnty" extends.
The entire reservation system is corrupt IMHO, despite some individual contradictions to that rule.
Any Indian who wants off the reservation can get off it, but the tribal councils and the US taxpayers through the Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal and Reservation "welfare" system perpetated by scheming and self-serving politicians, give these people housing and allowances and have enslaved them and removed incintive from them to engraft themselves into the American system and improve themselves. Very similar to the overall welfare system...in fact, in many ways the overall system has been modeled after this...and both are abject failures.
Many, many who leave the reservation (and that is their choice) do improve their lot and it is because of the American system.
It is long past time to end this farce and engraft the indigenous people as a whole into the American system IMHO.
But that's all it is, is my opinion.
Fact is, there was a war, it lasted for a couple of hundred years against all of the Indian cultures who resisted the American expansion. There were depredations and lying and tragedy on both sides...but the Indian nations lost. And given the history that played itself out thereafter in the World Wars...thank God they did lose.
Does this mean a state of war has been re-established between the United States and the Lakota Nation?
“Alternatively, tell us your solutions for making unfarmable industryless land productive.”
An interesting bit of history: After the Lakota were settled on the Pine Ridge reservation, among other things to turn them into white men they were issued cows. In a while cattle herds were built up and it appeared that the Indians would join the world as cowboys. World War I came about and the government pursuaded the Indians to sell their cattle and rent out their land to raise wheat. This resulted in big money to the Indians. However, soon the war was over and there was a large surplus of wheat. No one wanted to rent the ground to raise wheat, the grass was plowed up and the Indians had no cattle anyway and likey all their money was gone.
The wheat surplus lasted until last year with a short exception in the 70s when Nixon sold wheat to the Russians.
American Indians are not full citizens of the United States. In other words, they are not citizens under the Constitution (they are excluded from the 14th Amendment), but merely by virtue of a Congressional Act passed in the 1920s. Under its “plenary power” with regard to Indians, Congress can revoke their citizenship; I don’t know whether the Lakota members themselves can do it.
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