I want to tell you more about the significance of Pine Ridge reservation.
It is ground zero for American Indian issues. Below is a recent powerful presentation by renowned photographer Aaron Huey. After developing a close relationship with some families on Pine Ridge Mr. Huey obtained some astonishing images and they are featured in the video below. Mr. Huey also gives you an important historical time line of the Lakota and ends with a powerful conclusion.
I'm currently reading for review a new book on Wounded Knee that also gives a time line of political events leading up to the massacre at Wounded Knee which is located on Pine Ridge. The time line is lengthy and complicated.
Below is a concise time line that will help you easily understand these events.
My name is Aaron Huey, I am a photographer.
I am here today to show you my photographs of the Lakota.
I’m sure most of you have heard of the Lakota, or at least of the larger group of seven tribes known as the Sioux.
The Lakota were one of the many tribes that were moved off their land to prisoner of war camps now known as "reservations."
The Pine Ridge Reservation, the subject of today’s slideshow, is 75 miles south east of the Black Hills in South Dakota and is sometimes referred to as Prisoner of War Camp #334, it is where the Lakota now live.
If any of you have ever heard of AIM – the American Indian movement- or Leonard Peltier, or Russell Means, or the Wounded Knee takeover, you know that Pine Ridge is ground zero for native issues
I have been asked to talk about my relationship with the Lakota. That is a very difficult thing for me because, if you haven’t noticed from my skin color, I'm white. And that will always be a huge barrier on a Native Reservation. You will see a lot of people in my photographs today, I've become very close with them, they have welcomed me like family. They called me uncle and brother and they welcomed me back many times over in my five years of visits. But on Pine Ridge I will always be what is called Wasi'chu. Wasi'chu is a Lakota word that means "Non Indian" but another version of this word means "Takes the best part of the meat." And that is what I want to focus on today, "The one who takes the best part of the meat." It means Greedy.
So take a look around this auditorium today. We are at a private school in the American west. Sitting in Red velvet chairs. Pockets full of money. It is obvious looking at our lives, that we did indeed take the best part of the meat.
So lets look today at a set of photographs of a group of people who lost so we could gain. And know when you see these people’s faces that these are not just images of the Lakota, they stand for all indigenous people.
On this piece of paper is the history the way I learned it from my Lakota friends and family.
The following is a timeline of treaties made, treaties broken, and massacres disguised as battles.
I will begin in 1824
What is now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created within the WAR DEPARTMENT, setting an early tone of aggression in our dealings with Native Americans.
1851
The first Treaty of Fort Laramie was made, clearly marking the boundaries of the Lakota land.
According to the treaty, those lands are a sovereign nation.
If the boundaries of this treaty had held, and there is a legal basis that it should, then this map is what the US would look like.
Ten years later The Homestead Act, signed by President Lincoln, unleashed a flood of white settlers upon Indian lands.
1863
An uprising of Santee Sioux in Minnesota ends with the hanging of 38 Sioux men, >>the largest mass execution in US History.
The execution was ordered by president Lincoln 2 days after he signed the emancipation proclamation.
1866
The beginning of the transcontinental railroad. A new era.
We appropriated lands for trail and trains to shortcut through the heart of the Lakota Nation.
The treaties were out the window
In response 3 tribes lead by the Lakota Chief Red Cloud attacked and defeated the US Army many times over.
I repeat - the Lakota defeated the US Army.
1868
The second Fort Laramie Treaty clearly guarantees the sovereignty of the Great Sioux Nation and the Lakota ownership of the Sacred Black Hills.
The govt also promises land and hunting rights in the surrounding states
We promised that the Powder River Country would henceforth be closed to all whites.
The treaty seemed to be a complete victory for Red Cloud and the Sioux.
In fact, this is the only war in American history in which the government negotiated peace by conceding everything demanded by the enemy.
1869
The transcontinental railroad was completed; it began carrying, among other things, large numbers of hunters, who began wholesale killing of buffalo.
Eliminating the source of food, clothing, and shelter for the Sioux.
1871
The Indian Appropriations Act makes all Indians wards of the federal government.
In addition The military issued orders forbidding western Indians from leaving reservations.
All western Indians at that point in time, were now Prisoners of War.
Also in 1871 we end the time of treaty making. The problem with treaties is that they allow the tribes to exist as sovereign nations, and we cant have independent nations inside our own. We had plans.
1874
General George Custer announced the discovery of gold in Lakota territory, specifically the Black Hills.
the news of gold creates a massive influx of white settlers into the Lakota Nation.
Custer recommends that congress find a way to end the treaties with the Lakota
1875
The Lakota War began over the violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty.
1876
On June 25th, on its way to attack a Lakota village, Custer’s 7th Cavalry was crushed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
1877
The Great Lakota Warrior and chief named Crazy Horse surrendered at Fort Robinson. He was later killed while in custody.
1877 is also the year we found a way to get around the Fort Laramie Treaty.
A new agreement was presented to Sioux chiefs and their leading men under a campaign known as "Sell or Starve": no signature, no food for your tribe.
Only ten percent of the adult male population signed. The Fort Laramie Treaty called for 3/4 of the tribe to sign away land. That clause was ignored.
1887
The Dawes Act. Communal ownership of reservation lands ends. Reservations are cut up into 160-acre sections AND distributed to individual Indians with the surplus disposed of.
Tribes lost millions of acres. The American dream of individual land ownership was A very cleaver way to divide the reservation until nothing was left. The move destroyed the reservations, making it easy to further subdivide and sell with each passing generation.
Most of the "surplus" land, and many of the plots within Reservation boundaries, are now in the hands of white ranchers. The fat of the land once again goes to Washichu.
1890
A date I believe to be the most important in this slideshow. This is the year of the wounded knee massacre.
On Dec 29, U.S. troops surrounded a Sioux encampment at Wounded Knee Creek and massacred Chief Big Foot and 300 prisoners of war, using a new rapid fire weapon that fired exploding shells called a Hotchkiss gun.
For this so-called "battle," twenty Congressional Medals of Honor for Valor were given to the 7th Calvary.
To this day, this is the most Medals of Honor ever awarded for a single battle. More medals of honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than in any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
The Wounded Knee Massacre is considered the end of the Indian Wars.
Whenever I visit the site of the mass grave I see it not just as a grave for the Lakota or the Sioux, I see it as a grave for all indigenous people of North America.
The Lakota holy man Black Elk said,
"I did not know then how much was ended.
When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.
And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.
A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream."
With this event A new era in Native American history began. Everything can be measured by Before Wounded Knee and After, because it was in this moment, with fingers on the triggers of the Hotchkiss guns overlooking that camp, that the US government openly declared its position on Native rights. They were tired of treaties. They were tired of sacred hills and ghost dances and all other the other inconveniences of the Sioux. So they brought out their cannons.
You want to be an Indian now, they said. Finger on the trigger.
1900
The U.S. Indian population reached its low point: less than 250,000, compared to an estimated 8 million in 1492.
Fast forward to
1980
The longest running court case in U.S. history, the Sioux Nation v. the United States, was ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court determined that when the Sioux were resettled into reservations and 7 million acres of their land were opened up to prospectors and homesteaders, the terms of the second Fort Laramie Treaty had been violated.
The Court stated that the Black Hills were illegally taken, and that the initial offering price plus interest must be paid to the Sioux Nation.
As payment for the Black Hills, the court awarded $106 million to the Sioux Nation.
The Sioux refused the money with the rallying cry "THE BLACK HILLS ARE NOT FOR SALE"
2010
Statistics about the native population today, more than a century after the massacre at Wounded Knee, reveal the legacy of colonization, forced migration, and treaty violations.
Unemployment on the Pine Ridge Reservation fluctuates between 85-90%, the housing office is unable to afford to build new structures, and existing structures are falling apart.
Many are homeless, and those with homes are packed into rotting buildings with up to five families.
Thirty-nine percent of the homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation have no electricity.
At least 60% of the homes on the reservation are infested with black mold.
More than 80% of the population lives below the federal poverty line.
The tuberculosis rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is approximately eight times higher than the U.S. national average.
The infant mortality rate is the highest on this continent and is about 3 times higher than the U.S. national average.
Cervical cancer is five times higher than the U.S. national average.
The school drop out rate is over 70%.
Teacher turnover is eight times that of the U.S. national average.
Frequently, grandparents are raising their grandchildren because parents, due alcoholism, domestic violence, and general apathy, cannot raise them.
50 percent of the population over 40 suffers from diabetes
The life expectancy for men is, between 46 and 48 years old, roughly the same as Afghanistan and Somalia.
THE LAST CHAPTER IN ANY SUCCESSFUL GENOCIDE IS THE ONE IN WHICH THE OPPRESSOR REMOVES HIS HANDS AND SAYS "OH NO, LOOK WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO THEMSELVES, THEY ARE KILLING THEMSELVES" WHILE WE WATCH THEM DIE.
THIS IS HOW WE CAME TO OWN THESE UNITED STATES. THIS IS THE LEGACY OF MANIFEST DESTINY.
PRISONERS ARE STILL BORN INTO PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS, EVEN IF THE GUARDS ARE LONG GONE.
THESE ARE THE BONES LEFT BEHIND AFTER THE BEST MEAT HAS BEEN TAKEN.
A long time ago a series of events was set in motion by a people who look like me. By WASI’CHU eager to take the land and the water and the gold in the Hills.
Those events lead to a domino effect that has yet to end.
As removed as we, the dominant society, may feel from the responsibility of a massacre in 1890, or a series of broken treaties 150 years ago, I still have to ask you the question - how should we feel about the statistics of today?
What is the connection between these images of suffering and the history I just read to you?
How much of this history do you need to own?
Is any of this your responsibility today?
I have been told "there must be something we can do."
There must be a call to action.
For so long I have been content to stand on the sidelines as a witness, JUST TAKING PHOTOS, because the "solutions" seemed to be buried too far in the past, needing nothing short of a time machine to access them.
The suffering of Indigenous peoples is not a simple issue to "fix."
It is not something everyone can get behind in the way they can get behind helping Haiti or ending AIDS or fighting a famine.
The "fix" may be much more painful for the dominant society than say a $50 donation, or a church trip to paint some graffiti covered houses, or a suburban family donating a box of clothes they don’t want anymore.
So where does that leave us? Shrugging our shoulders in the dark?
The United States continues, on a daily basis to violate the terms of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties with the Lakota.
The call to action I offer today , My TED wish, is this:
Honor the treaties. GIVE BACK THE BLACK HILLS
Its not your business what they do with them.
Mr. Huey gave this presentation at the University of Denver on May 13, 2010.
Please send your comments and a link to this diary to the committee members below:
CODE: SENATE INDIAN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE – D.C. ONLY
Thank you Mr. Huey for contacting me with a link to your outstanding presentation. I hope many, many people see your TED Talk and contact the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
Your wish is my wish.
My second wish would be to join you on your next trip to Pine Ridge.
HIDING GENOCIDE: The National Museum of the American Indian
By Carter Camp
There is an enormous cultural rip-off being foisted upon our Nations by Washington D.C. I've warned of it before, but a small voice is easily drowned out when millions of dollars are being spent and the voice of the Great White Father anoints Indian leaders.
For a decade or more the Smithsonian fundraising machine has gone merrily along, draining much needed funds away from the Indian community and diverting America's attention away from the economic, cultural and legal devastation going on across our homelands. Many interest groups coveted the final two vacant spaces on the National Mall. Congress in its wisdom awarded one site to a very politically powerful (and deserving) Jewish applicant and another to the very politically powerful Smithsonian Institution, their 'keeper of the loot'.
Contrast the two new museums and you can see how they are used to support a conqueror's cleansed view of history: For the Jewish museum no thought at all was given to using it to show the world ancient Jewish culture and artifacts. They could have displayed scenes of ancient Jewish life: hunting, tanning hides and pastoral living. Like an Indian museum, it would have been beautiful and easy for people to enjoy.
It wasn't done that way for one reason...The Jewish people were in charge and they decided for themselves what aspect of their history to show the world. They decided with one voice to use the rare space as a shield to protect their people against a repeat of the Nazi holocaust. Jewish politicians funded and protected Jewish intellectuals, artists, historians, Rabbis, and survivors as they crafted a way to commemorate their dead and to use their past to protect their future. They refused to allow the dreams of others to distort the truth of their horror, and now their museum is a powerful testament to a Jewish dream, not a gentile revision of reality. Our space, and the world's window to our Nations, was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution to enshrine the lie of 'manifest destiny' and the historical inevitability of the American Holocaust.
America's museums have always been a prime purveyor of the big lies of American history, now the largest and worst is given an army of non-Indian historians, anthros, romance writers and a couple of Indian scouts, to define us to the world.
THEY decided with one voice NOT to use our rare and precious space as a shield of truth against the American Holocaust or to prevent the conclusion of its evil purpose against my people. We still die, our sacred sites are paved over, our dead dug up, our children stolen and mis-educated. Missionaries search the jungle for the last of us.
American's sensibilities are being spared at the cost of continuing depredations against Indian people. Americans will go to the Holocaust Museum and be told the horrible truths of what Hitler and the Nazi's did to the Jews. They will cry for the victims and mourn with the survivors, in the end they too will be determined to protect the Jewish people from a repeat of the Holocaust. All thinking people support this. They will also be comforted (and exempted) to know that America defeated the Nazi, stopped the killing, and helped Jews return to their homeland. Next, Americans can walk over to the museum of 'Indian' history.
They will be amazed and pleased at the beauty of our past. Scenes of tipis, tanning hides and pastoral living will hide the blood covering every-square-inch of America. Our blood. They will go home marveling at our ancient art and beauty and a little sad we had to pass into history.
They may even feel a twinge of guilt at the part their ancestors played in our demise. But they will go away without seeing or knowing the "time of horror" each and every Tribe went through upon contact with the European. They will go home without realizing how much of the slaughter was an officially inspired, government planned, and racist policy of genocide. They will not realize the depth of the crime committed so they will not understand the crimes being committed today or the need for reparations to heal the devastation. They will not understand that there were entire Societies for whom the "final solution" worked.
Entire Tribes, as whole and complete as the Jewish Tribes, were completely erased from Mother Earth. Their language will never be heard, their poetry, music, science and art is lost to the world because they met a people who believed in their own, god given, superiority and the inferiority of all else. (The base cause of all genocide.) They will go home without feeling the need to help Indian Nations secure their own homelands or becoming determined there never is another American Holocaust.
Worst of all, they will go home and not know that our people still suffer ongoing policies of genocide and attacks on our existence. Missionaries and Governments still work and plan to erase us from the face of our Mother Earth. Indian Country, from the Artic to Antarctica, is still awash in the blood of our People.
Should American Indians be suspicious about the placement and content of these two Museums? Jew and "Indian?" Did it take some C.I.A. psy-war expert to figure out how best to cover-up the murder of over 200 million people? Will this museum, with a mere nod to the 500-year holocaust, stand as the permanent enshrinement of the American lie and the final resting place of Indian history? I believe there should be a holocaust museum on Americas National Mall, in Americas Capitol city. But not one of the European disasters. It must be a Bright Red Museum of the American Holocaust! It must call the roll of entire Nations of beautiful people who succumbed to the genocidal onslaught.
"IT MUST BEGIN OUR TIME OF MOURNING BY ENDING OUR TIME OF FEAR" ...for all my relations.