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By Bornali Halder
© 2002 by Bornali Halder
Url: http://www.lakotaarchives.com/lakpresentpr.html
At the dawn of the 20th century, the Lakota's 1868 treaty territory had been reduced to only 10% of its original area. All remaining territory was placed under federal ownership and the US government asserted a trust responsibility over Sioux property. By the late nineteenth century, Pine Ridge Reservation was the second largest Indian reservation in the US.
An American physician, James R. Walker, arrived at the reservation at a time when Lakota culture and religion were being suppressed and the government was determined to pursue its policy of assimilation. Traditional religious practices were banned and the speaking of the three dialects of the Sioux language - Lakota, Dakota and Nakota - was discouraged.
Lakota children were being sent to federal-run boarding schools, day schools and mission schools, where the intention was to 'civilise' them into being 'good' Christian individuals who would eventually be able to assimilate into mainstream American society. Boys in the mission schools were taught carpentry, blacksmithing, baking, shoemaking, cattle ranching, farming and dairying. Girls were instructed in cooking, hand and machine sewing, weaving, spinning and embroidery.
On the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota in 1998, during a period of anthropological fieldwork, one woman in her forties told me:
"My grandmother went to Carlisle [Boarding School]. They literally took kids away from their parents and drove them off to school whether they liked it or not. There was a lot of parents who would hide their kids, down in a creek. Like my grandma, she took her youngest daughter and ran down in the creek with her, and wouldn't let them take her. […] On the reservations a lot of parents didn't have a choice - they had to send their kids to boarding schools [because the nearest school would be so far away]."
At school, children were forced to cut their hair and dress in stiff uniforms. Often they were beaten if caught speaking their language. This situation continued until the 1970s. Today only a third of Pine Ridge Reservation residents can speak Lakota, although with the institution of Lakota language teaching in tribal schools since the 1980s, this percentage is gradually increasing.
The effects of enforced assimilation in schools had serious psychological effects. An Oglala man in his fifties, from the Pine Ridge Reservation, told me about his experiences of being repeatedly whipped on the hand by a ruler whenever he tried to speak Lakota at school. He said:
"What the government did was they taught us cultural self-hate. I got to a point where I hated being myself. I hated being an Indian. I hated my language. But then I couldn't do anything about it cause I had to be meek."
Like so many others, this man turned to alcohol for solace, but, unlike so many others, put himself through treatment and got himself clean. A major part of his treatment was a self-induced re-immersion into Lakota culture. This process began in 1970:
"So in 1970, my grandmother said, 'Start preparing yourself for the Sundance, the four-day ordeal.' She said, 'That means one year you have to stay physically and mentally clean.' And it was pretty hard. I'd try and then fall off the wagon, go get drunk."
He died in 1999, but before he did he was completely clean, spoke Lakota better than he did English, and had spent most of his sober adult life fighting the government in court for the return of the Black Hills.
Though the Lakota religion was banned, it never disappeared. It simply simmered beneath the surface, went underground. The annual Sundances carried on year after year in the small communities, away from prying ears and eyes. The elders, the grandparents, ensured that the old ways never disappeared. They kept the language, the stories, the rituals alive in the remote districts. Today, books have become another source through which people can re-learn the culture. Books by the Lakota men Black Elk, Lame Deer and Standing Bear are regularly read. And the Walker texts have made their way into the classrooms of many reservation schools.
Physician James R. Walker took on the role of anthropologist on Pine Ridge, at the turn of the century. He made a systematic study of traditional Sioux beliefs and customs and most importantly, he wrote them all down in the original Lakota language. The holy men who were Walker's informants saw in Walker a chance for Lakota traditions to be recorded for future generations - a way for Lakota knowledge and practices to endure. I will draw on some of his work in other articles on LakotaArchives.com.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Lakota sovereignty was delivered a further blow when Indians everywhere were forced to become American citizens. Traditional governments were completely dismantled and quasi-sovereign, pseudo-federal tribal governments were established on virtually every reservation in the United States. By the 1950s, Congress was seriously considering the total legal termination of the Lakota Nation.
But the Lakota Sioux have never been renowned for defeatism. From the very beginning of this century, this warrior nation held fast. Elders conducted regular meetings concerning the treaty abrogations and the loss of the sacred Black Hills. Even today, it seems that not a single month goes by on the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock and Rosebud Lakota reservations when there is not some kind of treaty meeting being held and run by elders.
The Black Hills land claim effectively began in the 1920s, when the Lakota filed their first suit against the United States for the illegal annexation of the Hills. They sued the US for having taken the Black Hills without just compensation, and in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The US Court of Claims dismissed the case on the basis that the Black Hills annexation had not violated the Fifth Amendment; that the taking was not unconstitutional because the US had been exercising its plenary power; and that the 1877 Act had provided sufficient compensation to the Lakota in the form of 900,000 acres of grazing lands and 43 million dollars worth of rations. The claims court decision was refused review by the Supreme Court in 1943. Determined to get justice, the Lakota refiled their case in 1950, but the case was dismissed again, in 1954. A subsequent appeal by the Lakota was dismissed.
Undeterred, a second appeal was entered by the Lakota. This time, in 1958, the Court of Claims ordered a reopening of the case on the grounds that the Lakota had previously received inadequate counsel.
In 1974, the court entered its preliminary opinion: in 1877, it said, Congress had been exercising its "power of eminent domain" to take the Black Hills from the Lakota, and although it had been thus justified in its actions, it was obligated to pay the Lakota "just compensation" for their loss. The Commission arrived at an award of 17.1 million dollars, without interest, for the entire Black Hills, and for gold extracted by trespassing miners prior to the annexation.
Both the Lakota and the federal government objected to the compensation package, though for different reasons. In 1975, the Supreme Court once again refused to consider a Lakota appeal to this. Invoking Article 12 of the 1868 Treaty, that had stipulated the requirement of a three-quarter male adult consent before any land is taken, the Lakota then conducted their own grass-roots referendum. The result was a resounding rejection of the relinquishment of title to the Black Hills. Soon after, Congress passed a bill enabling the Court of Claims to review the compensation package.
The Court revised the proposed award to 17.1 million dollars, with a 5 percent simple interest calculated annually since 1877. This brought the total compensation package to 122.5 million dollars. This award was upheld in 1980, by a Supreme Court that rejected the argument that Congress had been acting in good faith and with good intentions in passing the 1877 Act of Appropriation. The Court found that rations had been used to coerce the Lakota in to giving up their land. It recognised that the taking had deprived the Lakota of all means of livelihood, and that it had violated the 1868 Treaty. The Court stated that the US must at last and finally be obligated to make a just compensation to the Lakota. The verdict was scathing in its assessment of US action.
In the late 70s, another poll was conducted among reservations, which showed that people still refused to accept the new compensation package in lieu of the Black Hills. The Lakota were back in court in 1980, when the Oglala Sioux Tribe entered a claim seeking recovery of land plus 11 billion dollars in damages. They argued that the taking of the Hills had been unconstitutional because the United States' exercise of eminent domain had been utilised for private rather than public purposes. The court dismissed the case. The award of monetary compensation for the Black Hills was finalised, and further recourse to US courts was extinguished. At the final court case in 1982, the Supreme Court admitted that the annexation of the Black Hills had been a "national disgrace", and that, quote, "a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history".
In recent years, several members of Congress have sponsored bills on behalf of the Lakota and the land claim. This time, only federal lands - some 80 percent of the Black Hills - have been sought. All bills have failed to pass.
To date, the Lakota feel that, until the issue is resolved, federal lands in the Black Hills should remain in federal trust, under the US Forest Service. It is estimated that all award monies owed to but untouched by the Lakota have risen in value to around 400 million dollars.
The Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council was first formed in 1894 to ensure the implementation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. For the last fifteen to twenty years, the Council has sent elders and other representatives 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 International Court of Justice, in The Hague.
Employing the language of colonialism, decolonization, sovereignty, human rights and indigenous rights, and identifying themselves and their case with other indigenous populations fighting for land and independence around the world, the goal of the Council is that the Lakota Nation be recognised as a sovereign nation on sovereign land. Sovereign territory centres on the Black Hills.
An Intervention of a Dakota elder at the UN last year gives an idea as to the concerns of and language used by Lakota treaty councils today:
"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).
When Lakota and other members of the recently formed American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee cemetery on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973, international attention gathered upon the Black Hills land claim and on the economic and political situation of the Lakota Sioux. AIM charged both federal and tribal governments with political corruption and murder. Dennis Banks and the Oglala Russell Means became overnight heroes for many.
Though not all Pine Ridge residents supported the actions of AIM during the Wounded Knee siege, 1973 has since come to be seen as a symbolic turning point for the Sioux Nation. Bolstered in part by the national drive for civil liberties, Lakota people began performing their ceremonies in public, and many became more outspoken in their demands for Indian justice. Sparks of activism and cultural revival set the prairie alight.
Towards the end of the 1970s, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed under the Carter administration and since the 1970s, federal Indian policy has shifted towards greater tribal autonomy and self-determination. On Pine Ridge, the economic situation has not crested the wave of cultural revival. As of 1990, rates of unemployment were 80% and the poorest county in the United States is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Alcohol and drug levels remain high, and Standing Rock Reservation on the North and South Dakota border has recently endured a spate of teenage suicides. The statistics are grim and very real, but they also disguise the flow of hope and cultural pride that has been slowly coursing through Lakota veins.
© 2002 by Bornali HalderReturn to Beginning of Article: Text-Only | Graphics-Intensive