Folks, the Lakota People within the Sioux Nation have disacknowledged all treaties with the United States government and are seceding and proclaiming themselves an independent nation.

As well, some are declaring the northern Great Plains a place for wild bison without cattle and their accompanying fences and are talking about bringing Yellowstone's besieged wild bison herds to this region for good. This is not a rumor; Putin has even chimed in on the side of the Lakota! This is one of those stories I am asking you, personally, the reader, to pass on as far and wide as possible. Let this story not die!

This is what I have so far. I have pasted pieces of emails for the sake of speed:

ONE PERSON WRITES:

This story VANISHED from the net almost as fast as it arrived.

It says that the Lakota Souix, one band of the Great Sioux Nation, has WITHDRAWN from all treaties with the US Government and is seeking recognition as an INDEPENDENT NATION!

I have included part of their message from the official Lakota web site. It states the obvious.

Other reasons given are the theft of the Black Hills, a conclusion that was arrived by the US Supreme Court. Included in this is a call to return over a billion dollars in gold taken from the Black Hills, which was determined to be owned by the Lakota.

From their web site:

*We are the freedom loving Lakota* from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law.

For far too long our people have suffered at the hands of the colonial apartheid system imposed on the Lakota Sioux. Our treaties with the United States government are nothing more than worthless words on worthless paper -repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our abilityto maintain our way of life.

*The devastation this has wrought is clear: *

· Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.

· The Lakota infant mortality rate is 5x the U.S. Average.

· The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.

· 97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.

· Unemployment rates on our reservations are approximately 85%.

· Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.

· Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction

*LAKOTA**
**Lakota Freedom Delegation
Mitaku Oyasin: We Are All Related*

http://www.lakotafreedom.com/about.html

ANOTHER RESEARCHER WRITES:

I wanted to introduce to all of you the story about the Lakota Nation breaking all treaties with the United States and declaring its independence. I am proud to know that a native tribe has taken such a stand.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1220-02.htm
http://www.russellmeans.com/
http://www.lakotafreedom.com

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

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.

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.

AFP

Sitting Bull's tribe declares independence

Dakota Indians announce secession from United States

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