Tag Archives: Lakota

Indigenous People Demand an End to Detention on Stolen Lands

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“As the original caretakers of these lands and territories, we have inherent authority over migration and demand an end to these barbaric acts.”

By Guillermo Torres, Published 7-26-2019 by YES! Magazine

U.S. Border Patrol agents conduct intake at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas. Photo: CBP/flickr

Not far from a detention center in McAllen, Texas, Indigenous people will gather on Saturday for a demonstration, joining their voices to the ongoing chorus of protests over the detention of asylum-seekers along the U.S. southern border.

Taking a Stand on Our Stolen Land is organized by the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and Native Voice Network on traditional Esto’k Gna territory. Continue reading →

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Corporations Have Legal Personhood, But Rivers Don’t? That Could Change

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Indian Country could finally see an end to nonconsented infrastructure projects if they follow New Zealand’s Maori in achieving legal protection for natural entities.

By Kayla DeVault. Published 9-12-2017 by YES! Magazine

The Whanganui River, New Zealand. Photo: Pinterest

 

In mid-March of this year, New Zealand officially recognized the Whanganui River as a living entity with rights. The river, which the Maori consider their ancestor, is now offered protection through the New Zealand legal system against any human or human-led project that threatens its well-being. It is a critical precedent for acknowledging the Rights of Nature in legal systems around the world.

The communities seeking protection for their natural entities through this approach are operating from a non-Western, often indigenous paradigm that holds a spiritual reverence to homelands and natural systems and an urgency to protect their natural resources. These values are not held in the laws of colonial governments like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or the United States. But that does not mean they cease to exist, and, in fact, we are seeing a revival. Continue reading →

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We love being Lakota

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“The Native and the Refugee” documentary project explores the similarities between the struggles and experiences of Native Americans and Palestinians.

By Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny. Published 4-12-2015 by ROAR Magazine

Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. Entrance gate to cemetery. Photo: Napa (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. Entrance gate to cemetery; the location of the Hotchkiss gun used during Wounded Knee Massacre and later a mass grave for the victims. Photo: Napa (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

In December 2014, we visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in what is now South Dakota. We chose to begin our project at the archetypal site of struggle for land, sovereignty and autonomy among natives in the United States. It was the Lakota people, including warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who put up some of the most historic fights against the US military forces in the nation’s expansion westward.

In the 1876-1877 Black Hills War, the US intervened militarily on behalf of settlers searching for gold in the Lakota’s most sacred site, now known as the Wind Cave National Park. It was in this context that the Battle of Little Bighorn took place, when the Lakota famously defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Battalion of the 7th Cavalry. Pine Ridge was later the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, in which that same 7th Cavalry killed hundreds of Lakota in its struggle to disarm and forcibly relocate them to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Continue reading →

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‘We love being Lakota’: native autonomy in Pine Ridge

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‘We love being Lakota’: native autonomy in Pine Ridge

By Peterson Rasamny. Published April 12, 2015 by ROAR Magazine.

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‘The Native and the Refugee’ documentary project explores the similarities between the struggles and experiences of Native Americans and Palestinians.

By Matt Peterson & Malek Rasamny, photo by Chris Huber for Rapid City Journal.

In December 2014, we visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in what is now South Dakota. We chose to begin our project at the archetypal site of struggle for land, sovereignty and autonomy among natives in the United States. It was the Lakota people, including warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who put up some of the most historic fights against the US military forces in the nation’s expansion westward.

Continue reading →

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