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Lakota Indians Withdraw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago

FOX

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

“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 said.

A del­e­ga­tion of Lako­ta lead­ers has deliv­ered a mes­sage to the State Depart­ment, and said they were uni­lat­er­al­ly with­draw­ing from treaties they signed with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.

The group also vis­it­ed the Boli­vian, Chilean, South African and Venezue­lan embassies, and would con­tin­ue on their diplo­mat­ic mis­sion and take it over­seas in the com­ing weeks and months.

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 U.S. cit­i­zen­ship, Mr Means said.

The treaties signed with the U.S. were mere­ly “worth­less words on worth­less paper,” the Lako­ta free­dom activists said.

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 U.S. “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 U.S. 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 per cent above the norm for the U.S.; infant mor­tal­i­ty is five times high­er than the U.S. aver­age; and unem­ploy­ment is rife, accord­ing to the Lako­ta free­dom move­men­t’s web­site.

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