Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
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SOUTH DAKOTA - "I had to leave the room," says Clayton Quiver, one of the Lakota camped at the Oceti Sakowin [Seven Council Fires] spiritual camp on LaFramboise Island to protest treaty violations by the United States. "I just couldn't stand to stay in there and watch my brothers begging the wasicu [white man] for money."

For camp organizers and supporters attending the second Partnership Meeting to Implement Title VI (held June 9-10 in Pierre, SD), funding squabbles between the state, Army Corps of Engineers, and two Lakota tribal governments represented a much longer history of broken promises and divide and conquer tactics.

In the early 19th century, when the US government first began seizing land from the Lakota / Dakota / Nakota peoples of the Northern Plains, they used the tried-and-true strategy of "divide and conquer." Wielding promises of guns, molasses, whiskey and other "white man goods," US treaty commissioners would persuade the chiefs of a few small bands to accede to their demands. Appointing one of these minor leaders the "Great Chief of the Sioux Nation," commissioners obtained their signatures on agreements that gave away huge tracts of land.

In the 1860s, however, Oglala Lakota war leaders Mahpiua Luta (Red Cloud) and Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse) inflicted upon the US its first major "Indian war" defeat. The treaty that was signed as a result, the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868, guaranteed 18 million acres of land west of the Missouri River to the Lakota nation "in perpetuity."

Now, over a hundred years later, South Dakota governor Bill Janklow is trying to complete the destruction of Lakota Ft. Laramie Treaty rights. The methods he's using are familiar. Promised the return of on-reservation riverfront lands annexed in 1944 by the Army Corps of Engineers, and federal funding for protection of cultural sites along the Missouri River, two tribal chairmen have agreed to legislation (the Mitigation Act) transferring the remaining Corps land, some 92,000 acres, to the state of South Dakota.

The Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, traditional representative of the entire Lakota people in dealing with treaty issues, is opposed to the transfer but has until recently been excluded from negotiations. Five out of seven Lakota tribes have also passed resolutions condemning any transfer of 1868 Treaty land to the state. The Army Corps is proceeding with the transfer in spite of this opposition.

And now even the two collaborating tribes, Cheyenne River and Lower Brule, are discovering that they may have been duped. On Thursday morning, June 10, CPT observers and Oceti Sakowin camp warriors watched as the Corps told frustrated tribal representatives that funding authorized by Congress for implementation of the Mitigation Act will go first towards costs involved with the transfer of land to South Dakota. Promised funding for protection of Native American cultural and grave sites may not be available for seven years or more.

For traditional Lakota people struggling to protect their rights and their land, very little has changed since the days of Crazy Horse.

Information provided by: Kathy Kern, Rochester, NY of CPTnet
Kathy.Kern.guest.48855@MennoLink.org

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