Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

Breaking away from US although living within US?

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

2 days ago

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WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.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

MSM Exaggerates American Indians Claims of Seceding From USA

<SMALL>By Warner Todd Huston | December 21, 2007 - 15:29 ET </SMALL>

Sioux Indians "Withdraw From the USA"? Or not!

Here is the kind of story that really proves how little the MSM bothers to research things, how they often simply print glorified press releases without doing any real "journalism," and how the defective end product gets picked up and regurgitated like it is suddenly a "fact." In this one we have the story of "the Lakota Sioux Indians" announcing that "they" have withdrawn from agreed upon treaties with the US government and that they are now a sovereign nation, no longer to be called citizens of the USA. Problem is "the Lakota Sioux Indians" that have made this announcement are just an unaffiliated group of Indian activists the leader of whom does not represent the official Lakota tribe leadership! Yet here is the news media reporting this story as if all "the Lakota Sioux Indians" have banded together and quit the union.

Take this report from USA Today: Lakota withdraw from treaties, declare independence from U.S

Wow, it sounds momentous, alright. But, who says that "the Lakota Sioux Indians" have abandoned their treaties?

And who is the Russell Means? He is a long time Indian activist who does not officially represent any tribe, that's who. It takes the local press to make this clear. The Rapid City Journal of Rapid City, South Dakota informs us that, "Means' group is based in Porcupine on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation," and that "it is not an agency or branch of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Means ran unsuccessfully for president of the tribe in 2006."

Yet in report after report, this Means character is presented as if he is "the Lakota Sioux" when, in truth, all he really is is A Lakota Sioux -- not a representative of all of them. He does not represent American Indians except as a tangential, activist. He has no authority to make this "declaration of Independence" for the Lakota or any other American Indian tribe.

It turns out that these reports are nearly all just a rehash of Russell Means’ press releases and not based on any real reporting at all.

And here is the worst part. The bulk of the news outlets that have picked up this story are foreign press agencies like the Agence Presse France, The Telegraph, and Radio Netherlands, all of whom presented this as if it was somehow legal and binding instead of an activist's scheming.

So, since this story wasn't reported correctly, foreigners are imagining that all American Indians are trying to leave the USA and become a new nation. The truth is less shocking, that Russell Means does not represent "the Lakota Sioux Indians" at all.