Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status
Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S. West
Lakota Satisfies Treaty Council Mandate of 33 Years, Drafted by 97 Indigenous Nations
Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law
Washington D.C. – Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.
“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”
“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”
The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.
“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.
Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.
Young added, “The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people”.
Following Monday’s withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.
Lakota’s efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are “very, very interested in the Lakota case” while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with “respect and solidarity.”
“Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations,” explained Garry Rowland. “As a nation, we have equal status within the national community.”
Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. “Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty,” said Means. “Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people.”
The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average . 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.
“After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative,” emphasized Duane Martin Sr. “The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.”
We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at;
http://www.lakotafreedom.com.
from portlandimc;
author: "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."
Thu, 20 Dec 2007
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 neighbourhood 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 renounced 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.
'...Once proud tribes becoming mere facsimiles of white people...'
"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 organise 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.
AFP
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/742440.htm
Ok, ya'll have a great time now you hear. I suggest a wall be built around the nation and total economic sanctions be implemented immediately. Cut all power and stop any shipment of American goods. They are native, let them make what they need natively.
First the ranchers the miners and the other corporate rapists would have to move off of native reservations. Like Pine Ridge.
No apartheid border walls will be built around the Lakota Nation. We'll leave that sort of segregationist nonsense to the Israeli government. In addition, removal of cattle fences and restoration of bison migratory range should take place ASAP throughout the Great Plains region. Consider this a bison free space within and around the Lakota Nation..
The current population of Yellowstone bison scheduled for execution by Montana cattle ranchers and their hired federal government assassins could instead be transported alive and well to the new Lakota Nation. There's already a group working on this, the ITBC attempts to restore the migratory bison throughout their ancestral territory, including of course the Lakota Nation..
ITBC statement;
"The American buffalo, also known as bison, has always held great meaning for American Indian people. To Indian people, buffalo represent their spirit and remind them of how their lives were once lived, free and in harmony with nature. In the 1800's, the white-man recognized the reliance Indian tribes had on the buffalo. Thus began the systematic destruction of the buffalo to try to subjugate the western tribal nations. The slaughter of over 60 million buffalo left only a few hundred buffalo remaining.
Without the buffalo, the independent life of the Indian people could no longer be maintained. The Indian spirit, along with that of the buffalo, suffered an enormous loss. At that time, tribes began to sign treaties with the U.S. Government in an attempt to protect the land and the buffalo for their future generations. The destruction of buffalo herds and the associated devastation to the tribes disrupted the self-sufficient lifestyle of Indian people more than all other federal policies to date.
To reestablish healthy buffalo populations on tribal lands is to reestablish hope for Indian people. Members of the InterTribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC) understand that reintroduction of the buffalo to tribal lands will help heal the spirit of both the Indian people and the buffalo."
found @;
http://www.itbcbison.com/about.php To compare the Lakota's attempts at regaining their independence from colonialism to the Zionist state of Israel is invalid for several reasons. For one there is a significant time difference between 70 AD (Roman empire invasion of Jerusalem) and the resulting exodus of Israelis to other lands abroad while the recent invasions of Lakota lands by Euro-american settlers at the orders of the U.S. government occurred post Columbus (1492)..
In addition, the Palestinians whom are currently occupied by Israel military forces are equally as indigenous as the displaced Israelis, and are not themselves responsible for orders of invasion coming from Rome circa 70 AD..
In many cases the cattle ranchers and large corporate agribusiness plantations that currently occupy the Lakota lands are directly involved with U.S. government attempts at land heists and broken treaties with the Lakota. To expect people to survive as natives pre-colonialism did without their source (bison) of food, shelter and clothing is unreasonable. The massive slaughter of the bison by U.S. government forces and the Euro-american settler state are directly correlated with attempts at genocide against the Lakota people..
Furthermore these attacks calling for killing anyone who wishes independence from the U.S. imperialist state will not be accepted. Hereafter this author will support any and all secessionist movements throughout the land known as North America..
We are no longer beholden to the U.S. imperialist's current manifestation of the GW Bush regime. GW Bush will no longer be recognized as commander in cheif by Cascadians. Recommend removal of U.S. military bases from the Cascadia region (WA, OR, CA) ASAP. These military bases will be removed involuntarily if you do not act soon. Think that this is a joke! We in Cascadia are eager to be next in line to secede from U.S. empire. This includes but is not limited to;
Lakota Nation (Great Plains)
Cascadia (Pacific NW)
Newe Sogobia (NV, Great Basin)
Nuevo Aztlan (SW region)
Vermont Independence (NE region)
Secessionists are striving for local control of our bioregion, and removal of intrusive corporations who heist our resources for their profits.The sun will indeed set upon the U.S. imperialists as we know it..
And the despicable practice of tree chaining ( dragging a chain across two dozers to pull down trees for grazing cattle on native lands ) to eliminate the food source many tribes use for sustainable harvests. So ranchers can squat their cows, feeding on the now available grasslands.
And who owns all the pine forests in Arizona? Not the native indians, that's for sure. Arizona, where the state colludes with ranchers to use public funds to engineer public highways in order to accommodate these mega land holders.
Nice system, if you own the instruments of the state.
Has anyone noticed the obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD these neo-nazi anti-zionists have?
Like sticking their censoring *** onto each and every dissenting comment so as to mislead the uninformed readers to the conclusion that the Jewish victims in occupied Land of Israel are being massacred by so-called legitimate squattors?
Just like the God Glory and Gold invaders that came in tall ships to ethnically cleanse the land for seizure. Except the Palis aspire to massacre their victims till the last person.