There’s a meme floating around out there that it wasn’t the Lakota who withdrew from treaties with the US, just Russell Means. While I am and long have been a fan of the folks at Wampum, distant cousins and all that, I am a bit disappointed in their take on this.

As spyder, a Lakota, explains in comments: The Treaty Council membership (the group declaring sovereign independence) is comprised of leaders from each of the seven Lakota tribes: Oglala, Sicangu, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Izpaco, Sihasapa (Blackfeet), Ooinunpa. These are religious and medicine leaders of smaller groups on each of the reservations who have over many years tried to maintain cultural, linguistic, religious, and Lakota continuity in the face of assimilation and corrupt trust management.

The seven tribes also are represented by US government sponsored tribal government, elected from enrolled lists (and this now includes many non-Lakota who own land on the reservations purchased from US government trust deals–the Lakota, nor any tribe in the US, actually own their land, it is held in trust with the BIA and Congress having all say).

These local governments answer to the Federal BIA governance and receive funds (or supposed to) and commodities. Tribal government official receive great benefits and dole them out in a spoils system that would make Bushco proud.

Among the Lakota the schism between the two groups has ridden a rollercoaster from extreme violence to shared interests and values over the last hundred years. The shirt wearers (four chiefs of the Lakota nation) and their councils do not adhere to the tenants of the US structure governance and have finally said enough. View it like a rainbow, with all sorts of people in the middle between the polarizing views of those that hold fast to their US government sponsored corruptions and benefits, and those that who outright reject anything other than total Lakota sovereignty over their own lands under their own religious, cultural, and language values. Most non-Lakota activists who work to support Lakota social and environmental justice issues (mostly at Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River) are necessarily supportive of the US side of the equation to get anything done. It is all very very tragic and sad. It is also something happening all around you on the remaining reservations in the Northwest.