And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 01:19:27 -0500 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: LaFRAMBOISE ISLAND, S.D. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" American Indians protest to stop transfer of property along Missouri River By SCOTT CANON - The Kansas City Star Date: 05/20/99 22:15 LaFRAMBOISE ISLAND, S.D. -- Standing near a horseshoe pit amid a mismatched collection of plastic tarps and canvas tepees, Danny Merrival talked with fifth- and sixth-graders about politicians and spirits. He spoke of treaties and history and Congress and tribes. He talked of the sacred fire burning at this protesters' camp, of the cleansing powers of a sweat lodge and of how the earth was their mother. The schoolchildren, on a field trip from the Standing Rock Sioux tribal reservation, kicked absent-mindedly at the dirt and fiddled with their yo-yos while Merrival tied the political to the spiritual. This land belongs to the Lakota people, Merrival told them, and no United States Congress or South Dakota governor can make it otherwise. That's why he and about two dozen others have occupied La Framboise Island, their tepees clearly visible from Pierre. They hope to stop a deal that hands over hundreds of miles of riverfront property to the state and two tribes. "We're making our last stand," Merrival insisted. Less than a mile away in the state capitol, Gov. William Janklow fumed over this latest showdown between South Dakota and its American Indian tribes. Can't they, he wondered aloud, see a good deal when it's handed to them? To his thinking, a recent bargain struck in Congress that wrestles 133,000 acres along the Missouri away from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is all win-win. "The one resource we have in the central part of the state is water," Janklow said. "Now, finally, we can develop it." As they have for generations, the tribes and the state of South Dakota stand at odds over who controls the land they share. On one side of the fight are Janklow, U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle and the Lower Brule and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes. Bonded in their dislike of federal control of the riverfront, they savor the pending land transfer like the recovery of a stolen legacy. The protesters, who include members of several tribes, want just as badly for the Corps to surrender the land. But they suggest the deal -- in their minds the work an unholy alliance between Janklow, Congress and the two tribes -- wrongs them by handing over part of the land to the state. As so many times before, the disagreement springs from dueling ideas about treaties dating to the early 19th century. The core of this particular dispute began in the mid-1940s when Congress decided to reduce Missouri River flooding in states such as Kansas and Missouri by damming up the waterway in the Dakotas. That submerged vast areas in reservoirs, stealing away much of the best farm soil in South Dakota. Some of that land was on Indian reservations and some was under the control of the state and private landowners. "The people who benefited are the people down below in the flood plain," said one tribal leader. "We got paid peanuts." That takeaway covered not just the new lakes -- really more like broadened stretches of the river -- but also more than 152,000 acres of riverfront property in South Dakota. People in the state have griped about the Corps ever since. The state's white ruling majority -- the nine Sioux tribes in South Dakota account for about 8 percent of the state population -- has gradually developed a tourism industry dependent on hunters and fishermen. But the Corps, an institution geared for flood control and power production, has disappointed the locals by failing to cater to the tourist trade. That means, for instance, that boat ramps become buried in silt for months because federal regulations don't allow the Corps to easily contract with a local farmer to plow them clear. "We want to do it ourselves," said John Cooper, head of the South Dakota Fish & Game Department. Likewise, tribes want more control of the riverfront to protect various cultural assets. As the dams widened the river, for instance, they moved its shores and erosion closer to the ancient villages and burial grounds of the Mandan tribe on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation. "Protecting that is very important to us," said Mike Jandreau, who has been tribal chairman of the Lower Brule for 20 of the last 27 years. Federal ownership also spurred more state-tribe brawls over things like who licenses nonIndian hunters and fishermen on Corps land within an Indian reservation. In June 1996, Daschle convened a meeting of state officials and leaders from the Yankton, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes, who all had uncontested borders along the Missouri. "It was the beginning of a coalition to pull the land away from the Corps," said one congressional source. "That much, everyone could agree on." Over the next few years, that alliance shrunk and solidified until the state and the Cheyenne River and Lower Brule tribes rallied behind a measure muscled through Congress by Daschle last year. The legislation establishes a trust fund -- $165 million to be divvied among the state and tribes on a dollars-to-acres formula -- to pay for things such as preserving wildlife habitats and the various cultural assets on the land. It also arranged for the Corps to relinquish about 91,000 acres to state control, some 33,000 acres to the Cheyenne River tribe and nearly 9,000 acres to the Lower Brule. Because the Standing Rock, Crow Creek and Yankton tribes opposed the deal, the Corps remains the owner of roughly 20,000 acres of riverfront along their reservations. Those tribes chose not to join in the legislation partly because, they said, it was brokered by the state. Some think the land destined for state control should instead go to the greater Sioux nation. The state doesn't belong in the negotiations, said David Archambault, a member of the Standing Rock tribal council. "Why is the state doing this? They're just trying to use us," he said. Those tribes also worry that the land transfer might not preserve their Missouri River water rights and leaves unclear their ability to control hunting and fishing. Even though language in the legislation promises no changes to water rights or reservation boundaries, the skepticism remains. "We've been bringing up the treaties for 100 years now and we've had very little luck," said Stephen Cournoyer Jr., chairman of the Yankton Sioux Tribe. The opposition includes other South Dakota tribes who don't even border the river. They cite to a treaty penned in 1851 that promised the Sioux nation reign over all land in South Dakota west of the east bank of the Missouri River. "We have that right," said Mel Lone Hill of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. "And they didn't even consult us on this." But a series of subsequent treaties and laws passed by Congress have shrunken that Indian territory, Janklow argues. "The federal government doesn't keep its word with us, either," the governor said. "At some point, life goes on. You've got to make the best of what's available to you now." Yet it is Janklow's get-over-it attitude toward treaty violations that discourages some tribes from joining the land transfer. Indeed, at the camp where the field trip students were schooled by protesters, Janklow is viewed as the chief villain. "He doesn't care about tribal people or tribal ways," Angelo Horse said. "Whatever he does, it makes you want to go the other way." Seven at the start The occupation began in late March, after protesters came to the capital demanding the land transfer -- which still requires a federal appropriation to pay for land surveys -- be halted. At first, there were just seven men at the camp. Now, with the weather warming, the numbers range from 20 to 40. The protesters cook in a picnic shelter and buy groceries with money donated mostly by their tribes. Rather than pick a fight, the Corps issued a permit for the protesters to occupy the island -- a wooded spit of land connected to the state capital by a paved causeway. "But we don't recognize their permit," Tom Cheyenne said. "We don't need their permission to stay on our land." They gather firewood from a nearby campground, draw water from spigots and shower at the homes of supporters in Pierre. Many sport T-shirts boasting allegiance to the American Indian Movement, a group best known from the bloody siege of Wounded Knee in 1973. They have left behind, for now, schooling or the scarce jobs available on and around South Dakota's impoverished Indian reservations. Evenings pass with songs chanted in the Lakota tongue to a drum beat and in conversation in English on lawn chairs circled around the campfire. The campers believe an 1868 treaty requires that any hand-off of land requires the signatures of three-fourths of all Sioux men. They concede, too, that such a pact is not imminent and that Congress is unlikely to grant riverfront property to tribes like the Oglala Sioux whose reservations don't touch the river. Will they stay through summer, through fall, for years? "We will not budge," said Robert Quiver, who heads to the Pierre Public Library most days to spread the protesters' message on the Internet. "We are here for as long as it takes." To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] All content © 1999 The Kansas City Star <<<< To remove your name from this list send a message to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with the message "unsubscribe triballaw" >>>> Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
