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The following is an article originally published at:
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.10.LakotaFreedom.htm
Descendants of
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
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world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn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.
The above article is take from:
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.10.LakotaFreedom.htm
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