THE Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US. "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 US, 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 US citizenship, Mr Means said.
The treaties signed with the US 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 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 per cent above the norm for the US; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.
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It interests me to read more about Lakotas (so long time and years...) And this year it was a big surprise, cause this year I met some Lakotas in Stuttgart at the North America Filmfestival "Indigenous Voices", all of them were film actors or film directors, also I met Michael Smith, Lakota, USA, Michael Smith was the founder of the American Film Institute and Festival in San Francisco. He was organizing about 29 years the most import Native Filmfestival in North America. Michael Smith is a Lakota and was growing up in Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. At the end of the years of 1960 he was one of the 90 activists, which occupied under der leader Richard Oaks the Prisoner Island Alcatraz.
Michael Smith was against the stereotype showing of the Hollywood-Indians / Natives. 1976 there met some Chiefs of different tribes / bands and were thinking about, what can they do against the onesided and rassisted versions of showing in the media the Natives. This was the founding reason / idea of the North America Filmfestival, which was founded in the same year in Seattle / WA. One year later they settle to San Francisco, there is their home place till today.
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I was talking at the Film Festival 2007 about 20 minutes in a Film Break time with the Art Director (Künstlerischer Leiter) of the Film Festival Gunter Lange. And Gunter Lange told me that I need to talk and ask Michael Smith cause the Idea and Vision of the Coast Salish of North Vancouver (he was standing at his side...), my friends cause the Killer Whale War Canoes. Gunter Lange and Michael Smith are friends and met often. Michael Smith was friend also from Chief Dan George. And Chief Dan George was the Uncle of my Coast Salish friend, who is living at the same place where Chief Dan George lived before a long time, very close to Deep Cove in this reserve.
Also I met at this Film Festival the canadian actor Tantoo Cardinal and were listening what she had to tell about the actually situation of the First Nations in Canada and about her life. Her mother died cause violence. We saw the film "Unnatural & Accidental" with Tantoo Cardinal, Vancouver 2006.
Here is an other film from Vancouver Island with Tantoo Cardinal
Luna: Spirit of the Whale Director: Don McBreaty 91 Minutes • USA • Feature
---> Belonging is more than finding a place . . . <---
Inspired by a true story, Luna: Spirit of the Whale is a CTV Original Movie about the distances we must travel to discover our identity and true place in life.
Mike Maquinna (Adam Beach, Flags of Our Fathers, Windtalkers) is the hereditary chief of an Aboriginal village on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. When he comes home to his estranged father's funeral to pay respects and hand over his birth right to a more suitable elder (Graham Greene, Dancing With Wolves), his convictions are tested when he faces the true spirit of his people - a stray killer whale from Puget Sound called Luna.
Mike's people, the Mowachaht-Muchalaht, believe that Luna is the embodied spirit of his father, the late chief. But Mike, a man separated from his culture, is disbelieving. Mirrored in Mike's confusion is Adam (Aaron Miko), a troubled Native teen struggling with his own identity; as well as a local fisheries officer (Erin Karpluk, Godiva's), who must question the science she has practiced.
Luna becomes the center of a spiritual and political controversy when a government official (Jason Priestley, Love and Death on Long Island, Beverly Hills 90210) announces plans to transport him over land to reunite the lost whale with his pod. When the resolute Mowachaht-Muchalaht people, including Mike's mother Gloria (Tantoo Cardinal, Unnatural and Accidental), fight to protect the young killer whale, Mike finds himself embroiled in a struggle that challenges his own spiritual beliefs - as well as his notion of home and belonging.
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I hope to meet them again in 2009 in Stuttgart....
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21.12.2007 17:20
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