Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
December 20, 2007, AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA
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withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said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.
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