“Without any disrespect, the White Man makes all these laws and he breaks them as soon as he makes them,” said Fred Sitting Up, a full-blooded Oglala Lakota who sits on the original Ocha-te-sakowin, Seven Council Fires Treaty Council. “It’s a tough issue to talk about today. The first thing we’re going to say is that we don’t agree with it, and that we oppose any type of mining, fracking, or natural resource and mineral harvesting. And we don’t want pipelines here, either.”
“They want to destroy it,” Sitting Up complained to this writer during a telephone interview on Thursday, April 14. “It’s hard talking to a landlord who wants to wreck your house. This is the message we want to get to President Obama. He said he’d work with those of us who are involved with these treaties. He promised that he’d make things right but he never has.”
Meantime, the Big Oil and Gas corporations, along with mining companies — even those involved with mining radioactive elements like Uranium, are harvesting the earth of the Black Hills. “They are going right along” with things in a business-as-usual fashion, Sitting Up said sadly, with a wavering voice. And these large, powerful, bullying corporate monsters are doing so with seeming impunity, and even arrogance. They harvest oil, gas, all types of ores, even those breaking down into radioactive half-lives, and when these big companies have sapped the land of all its value, they leave a scarred and polluted landmass, Sitting Up told me.
“I’m trying to get all our people who know how to work with computers to send the President a message. We know his wife gets him to do things. I think if we could get her attention by sending her emails, social media messages, maybe even voice mails, perhaps (Michelle Obama) will have the President do something about this mess in the Black Hills. We want the President to talk to the real Lakota who don’t want to see the ruination of our Black Hills and other sacred lands up here. I think he’s been influenced too much by all these assimilated Indians ,” Sitting Up said to me.
“The time President Obama came here he went to North Dakota, and not to our area. And he didn’t talk to any real Lakota Indians. He talked to French Canadian Natives.
“He needs to listen to the real Lakota, not these Bureau of Indian Affairs artificial Indians. If you could put that in bold letters in your newspaper, that would be good. Believe me, since 2004, I’ve been trying to get the media to report on this mess. I’ve talked to the leaders of the Rapid City Journal and the Sioux Falls Argus, these are the biggest newspapers in South Dakota, but they didn’t do a thing about reporting on the rape of the Black Hills and our other sacred lands in South Dakota,” Sitting Up said.
A big problem in the politics of land management issues on the vast northern USA Lakota Nation is what Fred Sitting Up deems as `Non-Indians’ creating rules and regulations for the `Real Lakota’ people who don’t want to negotiate or bargain with corporations involved with natural resource harvesting. Some people who fall into the category of what Sitting Up calls “artificial Indians” even want to create their own Ocha-te-sakowin, Seven Council Fires Treaty Council immatations so they can beg and barter with “The White Man” for money and the rape of Lakota lands.
“A lot of people don’t understand this. Many want to create their own Seven Council Fires Treaty Council boards but they can’t. They don’t understand that you must be born into it. It’s a sacred thing that is inherited. It was handed down to me through my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and so forth,” he said.
When I asked another full-blooded Lakota — Stan Starcomesout — what was occurring with the oil, gas, and ore harvesting in the Black Hills, Starcomesout told me, “They’re doing it, but they’re tricky about it. They weasel their way around the laws. By the time they’re operating, it’s almost too late to do anything to stop them.”
“They are mostly governed by the state laws. We’re here on the reservation. When we try to oppose it or protest, they throw us in jail,” Starcomesout, who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and who follows and takes an active role in the political, social, and economic issues his tribe faces, told me over the telephone late last week.
“They’re protected by the state. Our biggest concern is that the water is being polluted by all this mining. We’re on the southern part of the Black Hills – those of us who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation — and we have a river that comes from that area, the Cheyenne River. The pollution goes into this river and flows into the Missouri River,” Starcomesout said.
“There are pipelines all over now and they spring leaks and get into the river. These corporations find loopholes,” he said.
“The biggest claim they have was in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court contested the Fort Laramie 1868 Treaty and they awarded the Sioux Nation $17.5 million for the illegal taking of the Black Hills. The money (has grown exponentially now) and is in the billions. We refuse to take it. We don’t want the money. We just want the Black Hills to remain pure,” Starcomesout told me over the phone in early April.
When this writer asked Starcomesout what was the worst type of natural resource harvesting — is it drilling, mining, fracking, or pipeline installation? - He answered, “It’s a combination of everything.
“The mining that goes on around here is for different types of minerals. When they mine they must use water in their processes and that water flows into the creeks and rivers which creates pollution.”
“They’re doing a lot of mining in Nebraska and all this is contaminating a river that flows into our reservation. They find loopholes in the law – continually – so they keep doing it,” he said.
“The Keystone XL Pipeline is still up in the air. They’ve been running some pipeline for Keystone here. There is a line that went through South Dakota and into part of Nebraska and into Iowa,” Starcomesout told me.
“There is a utilities commission — the South Dakota Utilities Commission, — and only three people sit on that board. They okayed the construction of a pipeline. This pipeline will go through South Dakota. There was no popular vote on this and I think for something as important as a large pipeline to go through South Dakota, this utilities commission should not have had a final say-so on this matter. There should have been a popular vote on the issue here. We heard on the news last night that there was pipeline in the northwestern part of South Dakota that sprung a leak and all the pollution that sprung from it created a real mess there,” he said.
“South Dakota is a Republican state,” Starcomesout informed me. “Since its inception, it’s always been Republican. The first governors even gave rifles to the ranchers and pioneers to kill the Indians here. That hatred hasn’t gone away for us. It’s still here.”
Only these days, the battles and overall war are not for land for white pioneers to settle on, or for prairie brush and weeds for cattle or horse grazing, but instead, it’s mostly about natural resource and mineral harvesting. “We’ve been talking to different groups but there is so much going on with pipelines being put in place all over. It seems like a it’s a losing battle for us,” Starcomesout said.
“In the southern part of the Black Hills there are big aquifers under the ground and if this groundwater becomes polluted it will be unfit to live here,” he said.
“We’re trying to elicit help from the white people who live in that area to fight all this mineral extraction,” Starcomesout explained to me.
“But these big corporations always try to find loopholes. We have protests but I don’t know if they’re all that effective sometimes. These protests are filled with shouting, and threats are always going on back and forth.”
“The workers don’t seem to know much about what they’re doing, so they call on someone who knows something. And these types throw around all these laws and regulations that give them what they claim is the right to be here. They call on the law and we have to leave. One thing we do is make sure that there is some type of media in attendance. They’ll air it or print what occurs during our protests and I feel that has a big effect,” Starcomesout told me on the phone.
An octogenarian who has spent his entire adult life involved with Lakota treaty laws, Francis He Crow, told me late last week, “These Black Hills – the fight for their invasion by the white man, it went into the Supreme Court – we don’t want any money. Our Black Hills are not for sale. That’s the way the 13 elders that proved themselves as treaty signers wanted it, and that is just how it will stay.”
“These corporations cannot claim to have anything with our treaty. Only Lakota can do this and this goes back to the original Seven Council Fires Treaty Council, which made a treaty with the U.S. government. My great-grandfather signed the treaty, Chief One Horn. He signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Another relative, Yellow Fish, was also involved with the treaty but I don’t think he was one of the signers. Another of my relatives, Chief Bigfoot, was killed at Wounded Knee (on Dec. 29, 1890),” He Crow told me.
“We have to take these people to court. They are all about the money and we don’t want that money. We don’t want to have anything to do with this. The government of the USA owes us a lot of money besides just what they mistakenly view as the sale of the Black Hills. We don’t accept any money for the Black Hills. Any organization that wants to get money must have evidence related to the treaty signers and must be full-blooded Lakota of patrilineal descent,” He Crow told me.
Francis He Crow said he doesn’t talk to anyone who wants to chisel into the land.
“We have seven laws that God gave us and other laws, too. The United States Law and Seven Council Fires treaty laws are not equal. We have our laws – today they are being challenged in the South Dakota state court system on how we lost the Black Hills. Who gave up the Black Hills? Chief Black Cloud and Spotted Tail, that;’s who, along with some other chiefs. They gave up the Black Hills by signature,” He Crow said.
“Back in 1868, Spotted Tail and Black Cloud sold the treaty rights to the Black Hills – in 1874, these chiefs sold the treaty rights for $50,000. Back then, it was all for reserve hunting rights in the Black Hills. In 1893 and 1894, the Black Hills Claim came into being, along with a treaty council, and they excluded the decisions made by Black Cloud, Spotted Tail and other chiefs. The treaty signed by them became null and void.”
The 86-year-old Francis He Crow, who now lives in an Oglala Sioux housing complex, has worked on Lakota treaty laws since the age of 22. He went on to explain to me that treaty negotiations, along with how the “White Man” went about making a mockery out of these treaties, became much worse in the 20th Century. An attorney involved with these treaty negotiations, in 1945, was even declared to be an alcoholic and thereby, Black Hills treaty laws and how they were interpreted and implemented became even more muddled and tainted.
“The public today is a big problem,” Francis He Crow told me “There are too many non-Indians involved. The people involved with treaty laws for the Lakota must be Indians who are fully knowledgeable about out treaties and how they will work for us,” he said.
He Crow told this writer that he learned all about treaty laws from his grandfathers. Now almost 86 years old, he lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation in an Oglala Sioux housing complex.
Meanwhile, Canupa Gluha Mani, leader of the Strongheart Warrior Society, an activist group based in South Dakota, said, “I have to be honest with you, when tribal governments and these urban Indians come in and take over the tribal governments, they don’t take into consideration the views and feelings of the Full Bloods.”
“The tribal council and these educated urban Indians are the reason why these extraction corporations are coming in,” Mani explained. “The White man is dead inside. One day he is going to try to control the rain. All they do is hurt women, children and poor people. The White Man is the devil,” Mani said.
James Magaska Swan, another Native activist who heads up the United Urban Warrior Society, based in Rapid City, S.D., told this writer in early April, ““You can’t sell sacred things. We don’t care if it’s for a zillion million dollars and all of us became millionaires.”
“Everyone says the tribes are so poor and they all can need this money. Actually, they claim all our people will become millionaires, but if you take all the legal fees, all the money government will get out of such a deal, even if every one of us got a big pay out, it would be much lower, probably in thousands.”
Swan added, “What I’m saying is once the land’s gone, the money will follow and what’s left? The government will abolish the native system. All the people who have allotments will lose them, and actually, all will be gone. When there’s nothing left, what else is there to lose?”
“The traditional Indian people and the spiritual leaders said no to the sale of the Black Hills. But there are scammers among us who are trying to go after this money. These people will take money from New Agers, corporations, and others who want to hedge in on the Black Hills. There are all sorts of people and interests who want to get money out of the Black Hills,” Swan said.
The major culprit in the rape of the Black Hills is not so much the White Man, Swan thinks, but what he calls, “Assimilated Indians, blanket NDNs, loaf-around-the-fort Indians and those who might be red on the outside but are actually white on the inside.
“Nowadays, there are brown-and-white men - red on outside but white on inside. When we use the word ‘White Man’ it’s more about attitude than the color of a person’s skin. And for us, it’s sort of an opportunistic type that we’re referring to here. They don’t practice traditional spirituality. They don’t live like Natives and have no interest in learning their tribe’s language,” he said.
“Assimilated Indians who are red on the outside and white on the inside are easily taken in by the popular culture, including the very bad aspects of that culture. Traditional Indians know how to do things the way they used to do these things a long time ago. In Rapid City, some Natives have that thug mentality of other cultures, like drinking, hanging out in bars, using drugs and living like Non-Natives live,” said Swan, who is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, a Lakota tribe.
“I’m not saying the way non-natives live is a wrong way to live, but traditional Indians just don’t live that way and never will. And the worst thing about it is that a lot of these people have taken over the politics of our tribes today and now they’re driven by money and all the materialism it brings this world has to offer them. That’s not the traditional Native way in which we live or how we do things,” Swan told me.
There is an old Cree saying that goes, “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can’t eat money.”
And another traditional Native proverb goes, “When the blood in your veins returns to the sea; and the earth in your bones returns to the ground; perhaps then you will realize that this earth does not belong to you. It is you who belongs to the land.”
So this brings us full circle. So when will what these Lakota leaders and activists see a treaty with what they all refer to as “The White Man” actually honored and adhered to? Well, by the sounds of things, they’d all chime in unison “NEVER!”