Lakota Annexing Themselves from the U.S.
A couple years back I sponsored a Winter Relief Project for the Pine Ridge Reservation. Our community was generous beyond my wildest dreams as I shipped 5000lbs. of clothes, blankets, fabric and sewing machines, as well as $1200 for propane to South Dakota. The corruption, malnutrition and disease that continues in their community is incomprehensible. Sometimes it astounds me that so many Americans give their philanthropic energy to offshore peoples. Could it be it's just too hard to look in their own backyard?
Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
(Link to full story)
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.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 licenses, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.
Here are the current standard of living statistics for just the Pine Ridge Reservation.
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Comments (5)
This could be the start of something big. I wonder how big it will get?
Comment #1 Posted by: phalarope | December 20, 2007 09:55 PM
please listen to Joni Mitchell "Lakota" from "Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm" (1988):
Lakota
words by Joni Mitchell
music by Larry Klein and Joni Mitchell
I am Lakota!
Lakota!
Looking at money man--
Diggin' the deadly quotas--
Out of balance--
Out of hand
We want the land!
Lay down the reeking ore!
Don't you hear the shrieking in the trees?
Everywhere you touch the earth--she's sore
Every time you skin her all things weep
Your money mocks us--
Restitution--what good can it do?--
Kennelled in metered boxes
Red dogs in debt to you
I am Lakota!
Lakota!
Fighting among ourselves
All we can say with one whole heart
Is we won't sell--
No we'll never sell
We want the land!
The lonely coyote calls
In the woodlands--footprints of the deer
In the barrooms--poor drunk bastard falls
In the courtrooms--deaf ears--sixty years
You think we're sleeping--but
Quietly like rattlesnakes and stars
We have seen the trampled rainbows
In the smoke of cars
I am Lakota
Brave
Sun pity me
I am Lakota
Broken
Moon pity me
I am Lakota
Grave
Shadows stretching
Lakota
Oh pity me
I am Lakota
Weak
Grass pity me
I am Lakota
Faithful
Rocks pity me
I am Lakota
Meek
Standing water
Lakota
Oh pity me
I am Lakota!
Lakota!
Standing on sacred land
We never sold these Black Hills
To the missile-heads--
To the power plants
We want the land!
The bullet and the fence--broke Lakota
The black coats and the booze--broke Lakota
Courts that circumvent--choke Lakota
Nothing left to lose
Tell me grandfather
You spoke the fur and feather tongues--
Do you hear the whimpering waters
When the tractors come?
Repeat Chorus
Sun pity me
Mother earth
Mother
Moon pity me
Father sky
Father
Shadows
Stretching on the forest floor
Mother earth
Oh pity me
Father sky
Father
Grass pity me
Mother earth
Mother
Rocks pity me
Father sky
Father
Water
Standing in a wakan manner
Mother earth
Oh pity me"
While you're at it, listen to the rest of the CD, all of it, then listen to everything Joni has ever recorded, look at all her paintings, send her some love and healing so she can stop her damn cigarette addiction (if she hasn't already) so she can be with us much longer singing and painting and dancing and loving.
And possibly the greatest Xmas lyric ever (saddest as well):
...
Its coming on christmas
Theyre cutting down trees
Theyre putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on...
from "River" on "Blue" (1971)
(spent several hours on a psychedelic trip crying uncontrolably to this recording.
Comment #2 Posted by: El Anonimo | December 20, 2007 10:29 PM
The linked story is on New Zealand Yahoo.
No U.S. Mainstream press on this?
Comment #3 Posted by: Anonymous | December 20, 2007 10:41 PM
No U.S. Mainstream press on this?
Here:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1125180469
Comment #4 Posted by: Anonymous | December 20, 2007 10:46 PM
crow has brought the message to the tribe ...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Lakota+Declare+Independence
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Lakota+Declare+Independence+Maori
Comment #5 Posted by: Millennium | December 21, 2007 06:52 PM