Treaties, self sufficiency and hemp

See these guys? They are drug war enforcers, government bullies who break into people's homes and destroy things like medical marijuana and cart people off to jail for such heinous offenses as relieving pain and nausea from chemotherapy. In this particular picture they are trespasing on Lakota land on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, specifically a farm belonging to Alex White Plume. Are they after such horrifying stuff as medical marijuana? NO. In this instance the thugs are there to rip up a crop of industrial hemp, stuff that has so little THC(the stuff that gets you buzzed) you couldn't ingest enough to get high! Why, you might ask, was White Plume foolish enough to even try such a thing as planting a wonderfully useful crop that poses no danger to anyone(not that fully active marijuana is dangerous, but it does get you high and according to the puritans running the government, that job is best left to addictive, organ destroying alcohol)?
Well Alex White Plume was acting in response to an initiative passed by the Oglala Lakota tribal government . The Oglala Sioux Tribe passed a hemp legalization ordinance in 1998 to encourage agricultural economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The White Plume family planted its first hemp crop in 2000 hoping to establish a business that also would help the environment. The DEA destroyed the crops on Oglala land as part of its "war on drugs." Yhis land was designated "... set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians..." by this exact wording of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868. They went in with machine guns and air support. Our tax dollars at work.

For many practical benefits of industrial hemp, see http://alliesanswers.com

A Dance of Deception
(Original article here: http://www.motherjones.com/reality_check/pineridge_contradiction.html

A leading Native American scholar and educator says the federal raid on Alex White Plume's hemp crop is yet another manifestation of the US government's two-faced policy toward Indians. by Don Trent Jacobs Feb. 20, 2001

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." -- George Washington, 1794

The US government's raid on Alex White Plume's industrial hemp crop on the PineRidge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation is merely the latest chapter in a long legacy of genocide that has been practiced on the American continent 500 years.Alex White Plume and his tiyospaye (extended family) planted their hemp inaccordance with tribal ordinances. It was the beginning of hope and a way to emerge from poverty. On Aug. 24, 2000, federal agents robbed them of that hope.If White Plume or any of the other Lakota individuals had resisted, they might have been shot or imprisoned, and who knows for how long. Consider White Plume'snephew who is serving his third year in jail for having broken out the windows ofa car. Then there is Leonard Peltier, another Lakota from Pine Ridge, now listedby Amnesty International as one of the top 10 political prisoners in the world.Alex's wife, Debra, a strong, beautiful woman, has fought relentlessly andarticulately to implement traditional Lakota values for many years. A month afterthe raid, she appeared more ready than ever to continue the good fight. "In theold days," she said, "they could not tell the difference between good Indians andbad ones so they killed us all. Now they do not know the difference between hempand marijuana so they kill all of it."The worldview of Lakota people demands economic projects on the reservation thatare friendly to the earth and beneficial to all. Hemp is one of the few productsthat fulfills this vision. It is a very earth-compatible, pesticide-free crop.Just ask Ralph Nader, who made hemp production a campaign issue and who probablyknows that major chemical, paper, and timber industries have much more to do withmaking hemp illegal in the US than any concern about drugs.The contradictions surrounding this issue are just part of the endless dance of deception the US government does with American Indians. For example, the PineRidge Indian Reservation was designated a federal empowerment zone in 1998 inorder to "help individuals and communities achieve self actualization and fullcitizenship." This goal aligns well with official federal Indian policy aimed atself-determination and viable economic independence.One cannot imagine an industry more appropriate to the empowerment zone goal than hemp production. The White Plumes currently make $450 dollars a year by renting their 160 acres to a white cattle rancher for grazing -- which can do untold damage to the fragile ecology. The seized hemp from the acre and a half they planted was estimated to have been worth between $12,000 and $20,000.After two years, however, the $20 million empowerment-zone allocation has been no more fulfilling than other half-hearted and bureaucratically stifled gestures. As has been the case for the past 100 years, they are just enough to keep the reservations dependent upon and at the mercy of the feds.Consider that the US government sanctions environmentally disastrous pig farmsand the extraction of minerals on tribal lands while denying a right to tribal nations that it gives to many other nations. Recent trade agreements such as GATTand NAFTA have allowed countries such as Canada to grow and export hemp products grown on their sovereign land to the US. The sovereign rights of the Lakota nation as spelled out in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868 and numerous Supreme Court cases should give the Lakota nation similar trading rights.But Indian sovereignty has never been a goal of the US government. Consider theIndian Reorganization Act of 1934, a statute that robbed what was left of traditional indigenous sovereignty by setting up highly corruptible tribal councils whose main function was to sign off on federal development programs on the reservations. Reservation resources, had they not been co-opted by the US government with the help of these corrupt tribal councils, might have made PineRidge one of the the wealthiest regions in the country, rather than the poorest. The US government's treatment of American Indian sovereignty is, for all of us,of great significance. If American Indian sovereignty is under siege, so is American sovereignty. If US wealth is dependent upon impoverishment of its Indian peoples, we are all impoverished.In their 1998 book "Sovereignty under Siege: A Study of Federal Seizure of Indian Jurisdiction," Robert L. Pirtle and M. Frances Ayer say the Supreme Court has, in past decisions regarding American Indians, rewritten the Constitution like so:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men except Indians are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator except in the case of Indians with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit ofhappiness except in the case of Indians ... to secure these rights, governments are institued among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed unless they are Indians."This Anglo folly has finally caught up with us in our polluted environments. At least Indians, refusing to blend into the dominant culture, continue to live insocieties that are more personal and more humane. They continue to fight for ecological sustainable products like hemp houses and clothes. They continue to honor the universal values of courage, humility, honesty, fortitude, and patience.This is not just about giving American Indian people back their dignity by allowing them to prosper economically through ecologically sound, spiritually based farming of hemp. It is more than an issue of justice, sovereignty or constitutional revision and interpretation. Nor is it merely about an out-of-control Drug Enforcement Administration or the negative influences of multinational corporations. Ultimately, this issue is about saving a world viewthat recognizes that we are all shaped and formed by our relationship to the earth. Mitakuye Oyasin. We are all related.

Don Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D., is chair of education at Oglala Lakota College on thePine Ridge Indian Reservation.

A Pioneer By Any Other Name

Here you have it, the classic picture most people would conjure if you say the word,"pioneer". Conestoga wagon, strong, independent folk, colorful guide replete with buckskin and feather. Rugged individualists forging a new future for America.


It certainly took courage, naievete or flat out desparation to strike out for parts relatively unknown. At least unknown to white folks. of course the places they headed for weren't unknown to the people who already lived there, the people we called 'Indians'. The people who typically referred to themselves, 'the people' in their various languages.


I was listening to NPR the other morning and heard an announcement for the South Dakota State Historical Society 2009 History Conference entitled, "Immigration:A New Beginning". The subject is white folks moving onto the plains of what would eventually become South Dakota beginning around 1855. What most Americans would call 'pioneers'. I got to thinking about that term, 'immigration'. An immigrant is defined as " A person who comes to a country where they were not born in order to settle there." While this an apt term for the folks who went into this part of the country before it was even a territory, the concept doesn't address the legality of this action. I suspect the conference won't either. In 1855 there were no treaties ceding any land to the US in what we now call South Dakota. There was the so-called Louisiana Purchase wherein the United States gave France a chunk of dough to buy land that France neither owned nor controlled militarily. In other words, it wasn't France's land to sell. There were tens of thousands of people living in the area 'sold' by France, including the Mandan, Arikira and Oceti Sakowin(Seven Council Fires, commonly called 'Sioux'). The first treaty signed by any of the Oceti Sakowin was in 1855 and it was a Yankton action, one of the Seven Council Fires, not the consensus of leaders of all seven of the Oceti Sakowin, much less that of other nations living there. Actually, it was the action of one leader, Strike-the Ree. And this man's decision was not binding on any of the other people of the Yankton nation. The people were not bound by any one else's decisions except in limited circumstances such as a hunt or war.

Smutty Bear who opposed it; Charles Picotte who was the interpreter and profited from it; and Strike-the-Ree, Yankton chief who was resigned to white settlement saying that, "The white men are coming like maggots. It is useless to resist them....Many of our brave warriors would be killed, our women and children left in sorrow, and still we would not stop them".(SD State Historical Society)

The U.S. understanding was that this one man had the right to give away close to 38,000 square miles of land, even though the leader of similar or equal rank sitting next to him said no. Of course the U.S knew this was not valid, but it served the purpose of providing a legal-seeming pretext. So what it boils down to is that the US bought the area from a country that didn't own it and then got a treaty signed by one leader from one group of the people who lived there who had no authority to give any land.

My point in all of this is that historical accuracy might dictate a somewhat different term than 'immigrants' or 'pioneers'. While I wouldn't suggest the South Dakota State Historical Society use the term apparently preferred by Strike-The-Ree, "maggots", to refer to the white incursion, 'colonizers' would be more appropriate. 'invaders' would work even better, but most accurate of all would be 'thieves' and unfortunately, all of us whose ancestors came from elsewhere(excluding descendants of slaves) are the benefactors of those thefts. I wonder if the SDSHS will address this in the confeence.

Native American Awareness Week is April 13-19

Did You Know

Did you know that there were more Congressional Medals of Honor given out for the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek than for any other single engagement in US history? Twenty medals were awarded for that action. Spotted Elk and his followers were running for their lives in frigid winter temperatures trying to reach Red Cloud at Pine Ridge following the murder of Sitting Bull. They were captured by the Seventh Cavalry and forced to camp suerrounded by Hotchkiss guns and troopers. The army decided they wanted to disarm the band of the few weapons they might still have. A shot was fired, no one knows with certainty by whom, and the gallant forces of the Seventh Cavalry began firing. Since they surrounded the people, most of the 25soldiers killed and 45 wounded were struck by their own shrapnel and bullets. These bold fellows slaughtered at least 200 hundred and possibly closer to four hundred mostly elderly men, women and children. You can go to this site for a lot more informatin and to sign a petition to rescind those medals.
http://www.dickshovel.com/RescindMedals.html






This is actually the gate to the mass grave. When it came time to deal with the bodies of the people that the army had slaughtered in the sub-zero weather of Dec 29, 1890 it seemed expedient to them to dig a trench and dispose of them like so much rubbish.





I feel that the continued honor of this brutal murder of freezing, sick, starving people is a national disgrace.

Akta Lakota?

"Just like us!" Hotchkiss leaned over and slammed the butt of his rifle against Cuthbert's head. "Not hardly."
"You are right," said Asiginak in Ojibwe. "You are a madness on this earth."

The Plague of Doves Louise Erdrich

Akta Lakota means 'honor the people' and the question for me is, does the 'Crazy Horse' monument do that?
Claire and I did pony up the twenty bucks for admission to the Crazy Horse monument site, although this thing is so huge you can see it almost as well on the highway leading into the town of Custer for free. We toured the Native American Heritage Center at the monument site and it was well done with many beautiful artifacts and Native American artists/craftspeople on site. We watched the film about the history of the project and ooed and aahhed at the night explosions from the 60th anniversary celebration. I was very impressed at the hard work and sacrifice of Korczak Ziolkowski, the sculptor. This project was initiated by Lakota elders; Henry Standing Bear and several other elders approached Ziolkowski in 1948 to undertake a mountain sculpture that would honor the Native Peoples to whom these Hills rightly belong, according to treaty and federal court decision. An interesting thing about the film is that its as much about Ziolkowski and his family as it is about the project. So is the rest of the place, featuring his work, his home etc. Not that they aren't interesting and all, but this almost seems like the Korczak Ziolkowski monument.
I know that lots of Native Americans feel great pride in this monument and that's a good thing. But if justice had been done from the beginning, they wouldn't need a disfigured mountain, spectacular though it may be. They would have the mountain and all the land surrounding this for hundreds of miles in its natural beauty.
Many Indians do not believe in this project. No surprise, most big projects have their supporters and their detractors. Here is an excerpt from an article which appeared in the newspaper, Indian Country Today

Crazy Horse Memorial: a bitter legacy for Lakota
by Tim Ogia
The traditional and spiritual people of the Lakota look upon the carving of the Crazy Horse Memorial as a desecration of their sacred lands. To them, it is like defiling Mecca, the Holy Land, or the Vatican. Such was not the case in 1948 when Henry Standing Bear believed all was lost. A new generation had yet to rise.

Crazy Horse, the magnificent warrior of the Lakota, was an Oglala like me. He never put his name on a treaty. He never sold out. He, it was said, never allowed his picture to be taken. He would never have allowed his face to be carved upon the side of a mountain in the beautiful hills he held sacred.

Charlotte Black Elk, the great-great-granddaughter of Black Elk (of the Black Elk Speaks fame) is bitterly against the carving. Oliver Red Cloud, the great-great-grandson of Chief Red Cloud, has spoken out strongly against the carving. He has said he truly believes it will not be completed because Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit) will never allow it to happen.

Lakota anthropologist Beatrice Medicine of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the tribe of Sitting Bull, is also vehemently opposed to the statue. She believes the mountain is more of a tribute to the sculptor than to the Indian. She calls the carving "a sacrilege that mars the beauty of the sacred Black Hills."

Avis Little Eagle, editor of Indian Country Today, denounced the carving as a "monument of exploitation." She wrote, "Many promises were made to the Lakota when Korczak began carving in 1948, but few of them have been kept."

The national media and even some publications that profess to be published for the benefit of the American Indian have climbed on the bandwagon to praise Ziolkowski's widow for her determined effort to continue the pursuit of her husband's dream. But nearly all of the traditional Lakota believe the promises made to them for a great Indian university and medical center will never be fulfilled. To Ziolkowski they were a dream, and to many Lakota they will always be just that, a dream.

We Lakota have heard white men make promises for 200 years, and we have also seen those promises turn into huge money-making projects. The white man made the money, and the Lakota were left with the promises. Such is the legacy of the Crazy Horse Memorial.

The Monument;or Mutilating Mountains

"Everything we see belongs to us."

'Dear John Wayne'

Louise Erdrich

Everybody in the USA has seen a picture of the presidents carved into Six Grandfathers ,as it was known to the Lakota, or Mt Rushmore, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. There is no denying that these are impressive sculptures on a truly grand scale. And seeing these statues is bound to evoke powerful feelings, akin to a religious experience for many "true Americans". What was the motivation for this monumental sculpture? Patriotism? A desire to rub the Indian's face in our power?

Nah.

"--it would put South Dakota on the map."
" Many South Dakotans believed that a colossal sculpture would attract thousands of visitors with heavy wallets."
"Historian Doane Robinson conceived the idea for Mount Rushmore in 1923 to promote tourism in South Dakota." Wikipedia
That's right, friends, this "Monument to Liberty" was conceived as a tourist attraction. And like most 'patriot' tourist traps in this country hungry for connection to a mythical heroic past, hungry for 'feel good' emotions, it has been incredibly successful. People weep here. Right wingers have orgasms.
You may have noticed that the picture we took of the monument is only GW in profile. There was no way I would pay 20 or 30 bucks to hear all about what it took to deface Mt Eyesore.
Seriously, when you see the sculptures as you are driving, they are quite the work.
My problem is the same one the conservationists had in 1925 when the project was debated in congress, pretty much the same as the Lakota; why deface Maka Inca like this?
Remember, this was Lakota land, declared in a treaty(Laramie Treaty 1868) and found to have been wrongfully taken by a federal court. So we carve white guys in it? The Lakota had a particular horror of digging into Maka Inca, Mother Earth, so for a tourist attraction we bend the Lakota, Cheyenne and all other indigenous peoples who hold these hills sacred over a barrel and stick it up their wazoo?
It could have been worse. They could have carved Custer, Chivington, and Sheridan up there. But how about the faces they did put on the "Monument to Liberty" GW, TJ and AL are shoe-ins,right? Consider, GW and TJ were slave owners and we KNOW Jefferson raped at least one of his slaves. But Abe was the Great Emancipator, no?
Here is what Abe had to say about that:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388

Abe also said:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 1858), pp. 145-146.
Probably in tune with his times, but his purpose was to maintain the empire, not to preserve liberty.
TR, as the first conservationist, would likely be apalled at seeing the mountain defaced.
I recommend you read "Skins" by Adrian C. Louis
tomorrow- Crazy Horse monument