December 21, 2007

• Imagine, Part 2

  Wouldn't it be remarkable if the Lakota actually got away with this, without being savaged once again by arrogant, benighted, bestial white men? Among other things, they could finally grow industrial hemp legally.

  http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA

  Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

  1 day ago

  WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors
  Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United
  States, leaders said Wednesday.

  "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 told a handful of reporters and a
  delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down
  neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

  A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on
  Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed
  with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150
  years old.

  They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan
  embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in
  the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

  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 US
  citizenship, Means said.

  The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on
  worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

  The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture,
  our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom
  movement says.

  Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

  "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six
  of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the
  land, he said.

  "It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and
  put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980.
  We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

  The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a
  declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the
  United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

  Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to
  combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row,"
  Means said.

  One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a
  non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite
  opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

  "We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They
  continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped
  organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in
  1977, told the news conference.

  The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes
  such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

  Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the
  Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44
  years -- in the world.

  Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States;
  infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is
  rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

  "Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said
  Young.

  "We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue
  the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the
  battle would not be won in her lifetime.

  • 4:54 pm
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