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Fate of Lakotahs Highlights America's Failed Native American Policies
By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 2 of 6 page(s)
-- Allotment Acts - various "act(s) to provide for the allotment of land in severalty to Indians on the various reservations and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States over the Indians, and for other purposes;" for example, the 1887 Dawes Act that distributed mostly unwanted and unviable land in Oklahoma; it was done by dividing reservations into privately-owned parcels to destroy Native cultures, impose western values, and achieve forced assimilation;
-- the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 to force citizenship on all Native Americans; the words of one spoke for many: "United States citizenship was just another way of absorbing us and destroying our customs and government; how could these Europeans come over and tell us we were citizens in our country; we had our citizenship;" it's "in our nations;" forcing their citizenship on us "was a violation of our sovereignty;"
-- the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (aka the Wheeler-Howard Act or the Indian New Deal); it reversed Dawes provisions and created what Native Americans call the first Apartheid Act that still applies; the 1964 Bantu Development Act copied this law and institutionalized black and white separation in South Africa; the same practice exists now in Occupied Palestine, in US inner cities, and wherever else white supremicists want unwanted people kept out of their restricted spaces;
-- forced relocations continued during the 1950s and 1960s;
-- Supreme Court rulings against Native American religious practices; in City of Boerne v. Flores (June 1997), the Court ruled against the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act that prohibited the government from "substantially burdening" a believer's religious practices; the Court held that this act attempted to overturn its own First Amendment interpretation; in Employment Division v. Smith (April 1990), the Court ruled that Oregon could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even for a religious ritual; in other words, this and similar practices aren't protected under the First Amendment freedom of religion provision; and
-- Native Americans on reservations aren't entitled to the same constitutional rights (like free speech, religion, assembly, and due process, etc.) as other Americans even though they're legal citizens; non-Indian people when on reservations (so-called "tribal trust status lands") also relinquish these rights while there; in addition, "tribal sovereignty" benefits leaders alone, not their people, and tribal chiefs get their authority from the Interior Secretary and US-run Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
"Tribal sovereignty" is a profound misnomer. It belies any sense that Indians on reservations are self-governing. They are not. There are no checks and balances, no separation of powers, no constitutional protections, and the US government owns the lands as federal territories - under "plenary power" in trust status. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that Indian tribal chiefs and councils (not US law) have full authority over their people, and these "governments" are empowered by Washington.
Indian tribes are beholden to the government for help and need permission for most everything they do. Their people on reservations remain warehoused, abused and forgotten. The notion of "sovereignty" is another indignity, a charade, and silent outrage against our proud original inhabitants. Out of sight and mind in tribal "homelands," no different than South Africa's former bantustans and equally oppressive.
The Republic of Lakotah Today - A Broken People the Result of Broken Promises and Broken Laws
To this day, Native Americans and the Lakotah people are victims of what Ward Churchill calls "A Little Matter of Genocide" that he explained in his book by that title. It's from American Indian Movement founder, Russell Means, who spoke of "a little matter of genocide right here at home" by which he meant a process still ongoing.
In 1944, jurist Raphael Lemkin first defined the term to mean:
"the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" that corresponds to other terms like "tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc." Genocide "does not necessarily mean the....destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings....It is intended....to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of national groups" with intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them. "Genocidal plans involve the disintegration....of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion....economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and" human lives.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted December 1948 and took effect in January 1951) defines genocide in legal terms as follows:
"any (acts like those Lemkin cited) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnical, racial or religious group (by) killing (its) members; causing (them) serious bodily or mental harm; (or) deliberately inflicting (on them) conditions" that may destroy them in whole or in part.
Destroying peoples' cultures, preventing them from practicing their religion, speaking their language, and/or passing on their traditions to new generations are acts of genocide.
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