YET ANOTHER CONFRONTATION WITH NATIVE AMERICANS…
(…and their rights to control what happens on their lands)

On the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota there is an ongoing confrontation happening there between Native Americans of the Lakota (Sioux) tribe, and heavy weight high-powered energy conglomerate interests, major financial institutions providing the multi-billion funding needed by those interests, and more than likely, very high level political connections besides, to build something called the Dakota Pipeline project.

The reason such a confrontation is happening about it is because this multi-billion pipeline project is being routed right across part of that reservation. How such a routing of it across reservation land was allowed in the first place is a question that no one seems able or willing to answer. Given the high-powered interests involved that shouldn’t be surprising. It wouldn’t be the first time when such special interests arrogantly disregarded Native American interests, if these interfered with or otherwise obstructed their project plans.

Which brings us to raise the following critical questions about this particular situation:      

1) Since anything involving Indian lands comes under the purview and overriding jurisdiction of the Department of Interior, to what extent was that department involved with the routing approval for this pipeline project?                                                                                                            

2) To what extent was the Standing Rock Tribal Council also involved with the routing approval for this pipeline project?                                                                                                                                                          

3) What “considerations” were possibly involved with obtaining that routing approval? And to whom were these given (a not unheard of possibility)?

We would also ask why those ugly confrontational scenes, where apparently questionably qualified canine handlers working for the pipeline interests were allowed to act against tribal protesters and their supporters from other tribes, occurred with little or no measures taken by Tribal Police to prevent them? Further, why were none of those pipeline employees arrested both for trespass on tribal land, and their violence against tribal citizens protesting their presence?

We would also question the right of those conducting aerial surveillance over the Standing Rock Red Warrior camp of thousands protesting against this project…to do so. Tribal lands are the basis for what remains of tribal sovereignty, and any air space below 5000 feet above these can conceivably be considered as part of such sovereignty. Thus such surveillance over flights, without prior written permission of the Tribal Council concerned, can reasonably be considered a violation of tribal sovereignty. So who should they sue?

It should also be noted here that no American government has ever abided by any agreements or treaties made with various tribal groups, especially whenever tribal interests obstructed non-tribal interests. One need only study – Kappler’s Laws and Treaties – a five volume encyclopedic work which covers every agreement or treaty ever made from Colonial times to the late 1920’s, to see that there has been a consistent pattern of deception and dishonesty by the government when it came to such matters. It happened with the Iroquois of New England, the Seminoles of Florida, with the Cherokees of Georgia, and all the tribes from the southern plains to the Canadian border, not to mention Western and Northwestern tribes such as the Modoc and the Nez Perces, nor should we forget the Navajos and the Apaches. Simply put whenever existing agreements or treaties with any tribes obstructed American interests, one way or the other, these were abrogated or set aside…to accommodate such interests.                                        

When tribal protests turned to armed resistance against such actions…open warfare was the result. These were the so-called Indian Wars which ravaged the heartlands of America for the better part of fifty years…from the end of the Civil War right up to the start of the 20^th Century…until sheer numerical superiority put an end to them.

Among the fiercest and strongest to resist such encroachments were the Teton Sioux, or Lakota. The situation at Standing Rock today is just a latter-day expression of that. The historical context behind it reaches back to the first Laramie Treaty of 1858, which established the Great Sioux Reserve. A vast territory composed of most of today’s states of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, including parts of Iowa and Nebraska. After the Civil War ended and the great westward expansion to California, Oregon, and other parts of the West began, minor confrontations grew into major ones. Immigrant wagon trains, railroads, etc., all cut across and disrupted the seasonal north-south movements of these Lakota tribes following the bison herds…the key to their survival as a people.

The so-called Fetterman Massacre, the Rosebud battle, Little Big Horn, etc. finally brought things to a climactic end. The territorial provisions of the original 1858 treaty were abrogated (more or less at the point of a gun) in the 1870’s as retaliation for Little Big Horn, creating the Sioux reservations existing today…Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Crow Creek, Standing Rock, etc. The greatest loss to the Sioux Nation from that of course was that of the Black Hills, illegitimately expropriated at the time, and for which it took years of litigation to obtain any kind of compensation for that loss (due to over thirty years of government obstruction and delay to avoid doing so).

In modern times we have seen armed confrontations such as the siege of Wounded Knee. Each time the cause of such confrontations was because Federal authorities failed to uphold tribal interests against encroachment by non-tribal interests. This latest Standing Rock situation is simply more of the same in a long, long line of government misbehavior.

 Ironically it is extremely revealing that while Americans make extreme efforts to reform and reconcile past and current misdeeds against their African and Hispanic American citizens, they hardly ever mention or provide the same levels of “mea culpa” toward their Native American ones. Apparently…Red Lives…matter less than for either of those “communities”.

What most Americans also don’t realize is that the Lakota (Sioux) Nation was the only tribal group which was strong enough to defeat the US Army in the field (twice), and as a result forced the US Government to grant its tribal members…dual-citizenship…by treaty, long before such a status was ever recognized or allowed for anyone else.

Such is the dismal record of the “good faith and integrity” our American government has shown when dealing with its Native American citizens. Instead perhaps this bit from the lyrics of the chorus of a 1970’s protest song (a parody of Tom Dooley) is more appropriate for such a record:

“Hang down your head, pale-faced man,
hang down your head in shame,
lying is your bag, man,
 cheating is your game!”

CENTURION