The Black Hills Land Claim::

Treaty Councils and the International Arena

Today, two separate treaty councils in Sioux Country are concerned with the Black Hills land claim: the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council and the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council. Though once demarcated along the traditional/progressive divide - the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council composed of traditionals, and the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council an adjunct of tribal councils - the divide is not so apparent today as the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council has distanced itself from tribal government and are claiming a traditional allegiance. But other distinctions remain. The Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council concerns itself purely with the land claim and is pursuing the matter through the international system. Moreover, it situates the claim within a decidedly international context of worldwide indigenous struggles and employs a similar language. The Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, on the other hand, concerns itself with all national matters pertaining to 1851 and 1868 treaty boundaries - for example, the DM&E railroad, pollution and other environmental damages, the Missouri River water rights, and tribal land issues on the reservations. Both councils are composed mainly of elders. Indeed, elders on both Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge reservations are the most politically active and environmentally aware of all the people I met during fieldwork.

Out of the two councils, it is, perhaps, the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council that is the most politicised. First formed in 1894 to ensure the implementation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, for the last fifteen to twenty years, the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council have sent elders and other Lakota and Dakota representatives on behalf of the Great Sioux Nation to the United Nations to argue the land claim before such working bodies as the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. They have also been preparing documents for submission at the World Court in the Hague. Employing the strong language of colonialism, decolonization, sovereignty, human rights, indigenous rights, and identifying themselves and their case with all other indigenous populations fighting for land and independence around the world, their goal is that the Great Sioux Nation is recognised as a sovereign nation on sovereign land:

"It is not our intention to take any course of violence but rather to employ the tools of diplomacy. It is our intention to proceed in every way by legal procedure in the name of justice, in the name of the memories of our Chiefs and Headmen who strived hard to make this a good place to live, and in the name of a future for our children, their children, and their children's children"

The Lakota concept of Seven Generations is an important one employed by all those campaigning for Lakota land rights and environmental justice. It is not a concept expressing a specific age group, but one that encompasses all generations and the specific need to act on behalf of future generations. As a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe chairman said, "Quite simply, the Seventh Generation is all of us. It is a way of life. It is a way of thinking" (Rapid City Journal, 1996). He went on:

"Seven generations ago our ancestors had a strong belief in the future of the Lakota Nation. They knew that they could not just live for their day. They knew that their actions and decisions had to be strong enough to last for seven generations; so that the people of the Lakota Nation would live long after they were gone."

For members of the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council, the land claim is a matter of human rights. Basically, this means complete sovereignty in government, culture, language, religion and territory. It describes the US as an imperialistic power that has sought to undermine, diminish and abolish not only the Lakota land base but Lakota rights to all kinds of self-sufficiency and self-determination. It accuses the federal government of "chemical warfare, disease and poverty". It accuses tribal government as being a tool of the federal government and thus not concerned with the affairs and rights of the traditional, typically full-blood, people who, it is claimed, are being cheated time and time again. The only government it acknowledges are the traditional political groupings or governments of tiyospaye.

In 1998, an Oglala elder told the UN's Commission on Human Rights why the Lakota had the right to be considered under international law. He argued that the Lakota Nation was a distinct one. He explained the original territory of the Lakota people ("[O]ur territory stretches across the high Plains of western North America encompassing parts of the states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Minnesota and Colorado"); he stated that the Lakota Nation has its own territory and its own distinct culture, including language; that the Lakota treated with the US government as a sovereign nation in all treaty negotiations; and that, as such, the Lakota joined all other indigenous nations of the world in seeking protection and reclamation of their human, cultural, spiritual and territorial rights. In short: self-determination (UN Intervention of Black Feather, 26 March 1998).

In his address, he urged the UN to pass its Draft Declaration of the Rights of the World's Indigenous People:

"The passage of this document would be a first step in curing the ongoing abuse of indigenous rights. In the world today, it is the indigenous peoples who are still excluded from self-determination on our own lands, in violation of our treaties and decolonialization of our territory under the United Nations' founding principles. […] We want peace in our land through an end to the oppression and colonialization that enslaves us. We are here to urge you, along with us, to rededicate yourselves to this goal for the sake of a dying world. The threat to human rights, self-determination and sovereignty over our unique cultures cannot be tolerated at any level. No nation-state, despite its superior economic or military power, can be permitted to control the lives of the world's people. […] Historically, tactics of divide, starve and conquer have been used against our people […]. In 1890, at Wounded Knee on our territory, the 7th Cavalry massacred our people - amongst them the elderly, women and children, in an attempt to disarm our own nation and out of revenge for our own defense of our sovereignty at the Little Big Horn, when we defeated General George Armstrong Custer. […] We are sure the world wants peace. Adopting the Draft Declaration and defending the sovereignty of all nations would be a significant step in this direction. […] [T]he United States needs to be disarmed from colonizing our territory so that we Lakota/Dakota people may take our place at this table for the benefit of just and lasting international peace for all the Earth's people."

At the same meeting, a Dakota elder situated the claim within the context of Natural Law. Drawing on the Sioux belief that Wakantanka gave each racial group it's own particular territory and culture, he talked of the struggle the Sioux people have gone through, living under the confinement of a culture that is not theirs; a 'domination' that has stunted the Sioux's own abilities to develop:

"In our homeland, the colonizer has been severely limiting our right to development. Before the colonizer came to our homeland, we did not have to refer to ourselves as 'indigenous'. We are and were Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, the Allies, living on the land for which we are responsible. We live by the Natural Law given to us by the Creator with instructions for the care of our people, our land, our culture and our natural world. From this Natural Law comes a way of life so beautiful it requires very little improvement. It is this Law that guides us in determining our systems for health care, shelter, economic and social programs and the institutions by which we are governed and live. When the colonizers came into our territories, we gladly shared our way of life with them. A cornerstone of our Natural Law is generosity and caring for those weaker than you. […] Soon we learned though that the colonizers came with the intention of taking our land and the natural wealth found on, above and under our territory. They take from us our medicinal plants, the gold and minerals inside the ground, and the water flowing over our territory. Our land was taken without our consent and treaties were signed and immediately broken when the conditions did not satisfy the colonizer's greed. Every inch of territory upon which the colonizer lives has been taken at gunpoint (Intervention of Grey Owl, 26 March 1998)."

At a treaty meeting on the Cheyenne River Reservation, a Lakota man explained Natural Law as follows: "We had and still have a way of life so beautiful that we never needed drugs or alcohol because we had the connection to our land. Our Creator gave us this land to use and to take care of and he gave us ways to live with it. This is what we call the Natural Law". Other participants agreed with him that the way forward for the Lakota people was to return to Natural Law and traditional government. The tribal government, as 'wards' of the federal government, have no power to further the Black Hills land claim and no grounds for standing up for treaty rights.

In his Intervention at the UN, the Dakota elder went on to criticize the "political slavery" under which the Sioux have been subjected, as wards of the government, for the last 100 years. He lamented the culture of dependency that had been created under such conditions, whereby a once independent and self-sufficient nation can no longer provide for its own political and economic needs. He declared the concept of 'dependent domestic nation' a federal invention to justify the theft of Sioux, and other Indian, land. "What [the US] doesn't understand is that our territory is our way of life" (Intervention of Grey Owl, 26 March 1998) - but maybe the federal government understood this all too clearly when it forced all Indian nations onto worthless pockets of land and officially banned both Indian religions and Indian languages in a misguided attempt at assimilation and then termination.

The creation of the 'culture of dependency' was also criticized by another elder at a meeting of the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council on Pine Ridge Reservation in 1998. The Oglala man, who, as a teenager, had sat in on the earliest Treaty Council meetings in the early part of the twentieth century, stated:

"When the children in our camps were hungry, our grandfathers lost patience and treaty after treaty was made to bring peace and preserve our way of life. The Pipe was used to ensure the sanctity of the agreement but unfortunately, the Long Knives [US government] never intended to keep their word. They began to make excuses and say that we were dependent nations, we were incompetent to control land, we had to obligate ourselves to them. Because of this attitude our ancestors knew that they had been wronged and that the reasons for which they had laid down their arms were being violated. To this day, we are not recognised for who we are and this mutual understanding is a necessity for true balance and peace between our nations. But with the Long Knives, we are constantly in the position to defend ourselves."

The disgust over dependency was repeated over and over at treaty gatherings. One man at Cheyenne River said:

"I know we must cast off this cloak of dependency imposed upon us. We can do this because we are a rich nation with many resources that they owe us for taking. We can cast off these politicians. The people are sick and tired and frustrated with a system of dependency that has no avenue of escape. That's why we have such a high suicide rate with our young people."

Return of the Black Hills and the rest of the 1868 territory will guarantee the Sioux freedom from dependency, and a return to the self-sufficiency of old. But they are clear that though the land was stolen from them, the Sioux Nation are not a conquered nation: "We were never conquered. We never will be conquered. If we were conquered, we would not be able to talk our language, live our values and our culture" (an elder in 1998). And though the land being claimed was once in possession of the Sioux, it wasn't owned by them: "The Creator gave it to us to use. When we die, we die to the land. We are the soil. […] The land is vested with the roots of our native people. European roots are vested in Europe - not here".

Anger still surrounds treaty issues. At one Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council meeting, an Oglala man called the reservation a "POW camp", much to the muttered agreement of other audience members, including the Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, Arvol Looking Horse, who called reservations "concentration camps". One young Oglala activist told me: "All Indian nations are under attack: politics, economics, the spiritual status is being attacked. […] We're not Americans, we're Lakota!. […] We're a Lakota Nation. […] We're not conquered - I refuse to believe that!".

At a treaty meeting on Rosebud Reservation in 1998, an man shared how knowledge of the treaty and land claim is learned from the older and passed down to the younger generations:

"We must learn our traditions and our law from our grandfathers and elderlies. The political law on the reservation teaches us nothing. I sit down here with the elderly on the Rosebud and I learn about my treaty ways. Chief Thin Elk explained many things to me about treaties and now I sit down with the young people to explain it to them. […] [T]o sit with us and talk with us all together, this is the Lakota way."

In such a way, information on the Black Hills land claim and the language of its delivery is expressed by the old and the young. Unity of the original Great Sioux Nation is integral to the treaty council's success, elders claim. As such, the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council is composed of all of the original 1868 Treaty Sioux reservations. The same is true for the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council. In fact, several of the elders who are members of the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council are also members of the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council. This is a recent phenomenon and such unity on all levels is seen to be a positive step. As this man said at the Cheyenne River Reservation gathering of the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council: "This is treaty territory. There is one Lakota Nation treaty territory and therefore one purpose, one voice. We must find our unity in this. By keeping us apart, separate, [the US] can conquer us".

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