Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

[Free Radical]

Click here.

"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,"

"A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message... announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government...

"The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper,"...

"The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and [b]living there would be tax-free...[/b]"


Let's go fellas! :wacky:

[NonEntity]

Quote:The new country would issue its own passports and driving licenses...

Somehow this does not fill me with hope and glee and that other positive stuff.

- NonE

[Darren Dirt]

NonEntity Wrote:

Quote:The new country would issue its own passports and driving licenses...

...with absolutely no qualifications required, since this is a mere cover to silence any claims of illegitimacy by, and to reduce the likelihood of armed invasion by, our hostile former compatriots...



Notice the amazing amount of silence in the MSM...
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- - - - - - -

Hmmm... I clicked the "see all news articles" link, and there's a bunch of "local" coverage, very few "big media" outlets.

But even more concerning:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://rapidcityjournal.com/blogs/editor/?p=339">http://rapidcityjournal.com/blogs/editor/?p=339</a><!-- m -->

Quote:The debate was compelling in the afternoon meeting.

On the one hand, this was going to be one of the biggest ‘talkers’ of the day, and had already had 121 comments since being posted early afternoon. The LNI is in town. Russell Means is a prominent figure in the Native American community. The treaties and sovereignty are key issues in Indian Country.

On the other hand, there were no tribal presidents in the group which made the announcement, no one from the top ranks of any of the Lakota Sioux tribes. The timing with the LNI was curious. Russell Means has been known to stage public events to get his message out, and there are some Lakotas who don’t feel Means speaks for them.

A thought-provoking comment by Patrick Slimmon:

Quote:Added on December 21st, 2007 at 1:40 am
This is a very real story. Ignore it if you wish. However, serious consequences COULD arise from this action by the Lakota people beyohnd a spike in vitamin sales, though this is likely. As precedent for other sovereign disputes - Basques, Quebecers, Kurds - and for mere mental exercise for your readers, this story deserves to be told to its fullest.

Should your publication believe in the principal of an educated public, then running this as close to A1 as possible is your duty as providers of information, and informers of the public good.

Debates about the meaning and value of sovereignty can only benefit the American people in an age of vanishing borders, and the slow erosion of nationalist fervour.

My two cents…

On Wonkette, more comments but less thought-provoking :

[Darren Dirt]

PS: The Youtubosphere is heating up already, but here is the UNABRIDGED story from AFP, and since it's on Yahoo it will be gone within weeks, so quoted in full for education/critique purposes:

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Quote:Thursday December 20, 07:26 PM
Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

Enlarge image
 
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.

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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.

[learnin2]

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America"
The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper,"
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, "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.

Anyone else notice the glaring contradiction(s)?

[Free Radical]

learnin2 Wrote:"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America" You never were.
The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," They always were.
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, "This is according to the laws of the United States,...' Which also are "worthless words on worthless paper," yes?
specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land... Therefore the constitution > treaties.

Anyone else notice the glaring contradiction(s)?

[learnin2]

Free Radical Wrote:

learnin2 Wrote:"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America" You never were.
The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," They always were.
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, "This is according to the laws of the United States,...' Which also are "worthless words on worthless paper," yes?
specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land... Therefore the constitution > treaties.

Anyone else notice the glaring contradiction(s)?

Their succeeding  from the us and citizenship, while claiming the protection to do so, comes from the us constitution, which isn't worth the paper it's written on.

[Marc Stevens]

Free Radical Wrote:

learnin2 Wrote:"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America" You never were.
The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," They always were.
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, "This is according to the laws of the United States,...' Which also are "worthless words on worthless paper," yes?
specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land... Therefore the constitution > treaties.

Anyone else notice the glaring contradiction(s)?

Welcome back mate.

[NonEntity]

This is SO hard for a logical mind to wrap it's mind around.  (Please refer to my article "Do We Own Ourselves?")

If an individual "Indian" chooses to act as a sovereign person, he or she will be trampled by the "government" of the "united states."  Obviously such a person is insane.    And so the group of people known as "Indians" must gather together into a "nation" so as to be able to claim that "they" are free and not subject to the dictates of another group of people who claim to act in concert to enshrine and uphold individual liberty, the sovereignty of the individual.

And what if "they" succeed?  Can "they" retain the individual as uppermost sovereign without subsuming him or her into a "nation" which will guard this sovereignty?

It seems to me it has to be cultural.  "We" must believe in "I," else "I" will be less than "we."

I think the Somalis have this cultural meme.  It appears they do, mostly.  But just think how apparently convoluted this is, that we must agree to respect difference.  I would say that the Western mind may not be able to wrap itself around this seeming contradiction, that only a Zen mind might be able to come to terms with the apparent contradictions... but then the Eastern peoples seem equally insane in their hierarchical approach to society.  We have a long way to go yet.  I think that we have yet to form the words which will allow us to think the ideas needed to thrive in peace and harmony.

- NonE