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FOXNews.com - Lakota Indians Withdraw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
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warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties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
