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SELO BLACK CROW: I live here 47 years. Three out of 47 I spent in the paratroopers. 17 to my 19 years old, I was in a paratroopers. And I didn't have a chance to really see what 17, 18, 19-year-olds should see. Mostly I see war in combat. And it seemed like the whole world is war at that moment when I was in combat.

And when I came home in 1953, I come right back to this place. Nine mile east of Wanblee. My mother, father owned this land. It's 800 acres. And I realized that it is not for sale because my grandfather didn't sell it, and my mother didn't sell it, so why should I sell it?

And I come to realize this is sovereign land. So how I began to think on this was go on a vision quest. Seek how to unite the people. Seek how to do things of long ago, 100 years. So they gave me a sacred vision called Sun Dance.

So I went and meet all the medicine men of my people and explained my vision and my dream. And I also introduced myself. And I am only Selo Black Crow in 52 state. I come into the world for purposes, to heal people, to solve problems, and I too have problems myself. But I try to help my people by uniting them with Sun Dance every year.

First year of Sun Dance, the FBIs came. They said if I go through with this pagan religion, they will put me away. I told them, come back the last day. If I die, you'll be happy. But if I live, take me to the slammer. But they did not come back for me the fourth day, the last day of the Sun Dance. So the Sun Dance is still here today.

One pipe, one prayer, and one mind. So what little time I have, which is a very short time, I hope once again to bring back all seven sacred rituals. One of the rituals we have, which is the seventh ritual, is the 1868 Fort Laramy Treaty. This is one of the treaties that United States cannot digest it. So we hope to help them digest it and honor it.

I used to talk to the trees that you see here, tell them what I wish. And in public open statement, I used to say future is my nightmare. Past is my future. If you go into competitive world, Cook County Jail in Chicago, or if you go to Portland, Oregon, you will understand what the future hold for all people.

I will be protesting until United States honor its treaties. And we, the treaty people, and the traditional leaders, headmen and chiefs, want the United States to know that we have lots of time. But they don't have time. What little hope not only Indian but White people have is to recognize the sacredness of this treaty and help us make United States understand that this is a valid treaty.

DOROTHY BRINGS HIM BACK: My name is Dorothy Brings Him Back. I live in Oglala. State doesn't respect the tribal government or the people. That's why they're trying to take over our land. Especially when Janklow got in his-- I don't think he thinks of us as people. The traditional people are meeting, but I never did go to their meetings because I don't have no way of getting over there.

So I told my oldest daughter that I had some land in Wanblee, someplace. I said, I think we lost our land. So she said, why? Because the state took over on that land. She said, did you sell that land? So I said, no, we didn't but, they'll probably take it away from us because we can't pay taxes.

She said, gee, that's bad. She said, didn't the people do anything about it? She said. So I said, yeah, they tried to, but it's too late. That's already taken. She was kind of feeling bad. She said you should have sold it before they took over, but I would have fought. We tried to talk to people that local control would be better. We went talking to people, asking them to vote for the local control. Learning survival to us got the people. With our own land, we're nothing.

ELIJAH WHIRLDWIND HORSE: My name is Elijah Whirlwind Horse, Oglala Sioux tribal chairman. I was extremely upset with the way the people in Kadoka, namely Representative Hogan and his son, the lawyer, Phil Hogan. And that group, special interest group used the tribe against themselves to get the foothold into the reservation.

PHILIP HOGAN: My name is Philip Hogan. I'm the Jackson County State's attorney. Jackson County, as it presently exists, extends several miles north of the White River, which is not now Indian country and has not been Indian country for many, many years. This has always been, or at least for the last 50 years, Jackson County.

To the south of the White River, which is now Jackson County, is the area that used to be called Washabaugh County. That lies totally within the external boundaries of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. And in 1976, voters in what was Washabaugh County and what is now the northern part of Jackson County petitioned the county commissioners to hold an election, to have the question considered of whether or not those two counties, one of them being an unorganized county in Indian country, Washabaugh County, and the organized county of Jackson County should be merged into one county.

And after being presented with those petitions, the county commissioners put on the general election ballot in 1976. This question, which was considered by Indian and non-Indian voters in Washabaugh County and the voters in Jackson County, and they voted to approve that proposition. Two years later in 1978, after that proposition had been approved, the voters from both areas elected a new set of officers to serve what would now be Greater Jackson County.

If people consciously made the decision that they were not going to register to vote, if they consciously decided, since I've not affected by county government or can't vote for those people, I'm not going to register to vote, and then they stayed away from the polls when this merger question came up, if it could be demonstrated that there were a lot of people that did that, then you might be able to look at the result and say maybe this was not a true reflection of the feeling of those people there.

I have never seen a resolution of the tribes taking a position on the merger issue. They have subsequently gone into the United States federal district court attempting to enjoin the merger, so I assume their position is adverse to the merger.

My view of Indian rights are that the jurisdiction and sovereignty are derived from the treaties, the agreements that were made, and how they've since been amended or interpreted. I don't know that I would call it an erosion because I think that has a negative context. I think there have been changes, and I think that the Indian people have gained certain things, and in turn, they have given up other things.

For example, by being within the state of South Dakota, they have gained the opportunity to participate in that government. They can run for or be elected to the office of governor. As our governments have evolved, changes have come about, and this is one of the changes that was necessary when a new people came and conquered another people, and they're now living together. You know, I think we've got to expect some change, and that change is taking place not overnight.

SPEAKER: Mr. Chairman--

SPEAKER: I second a tabling motion.

SPEAKER: No. This governing body is scheduled to be a tabling consent.

SPEAKER: The Jackson County people living around Kadoka are very anti-Indian, very prejudiced and biased. For years, they have been trying to put state jurisdiction on the reservations and primarily the Pine Ridge Reservation back in the early '60s.

And since then, they've had several different groups under different names with the same purpose of state jurisdiction. The attempt to take over the reservation by state legislation. I fought it. It was not fought very hard. And then they had a referendum which they combined Jackson County and Washabaugh County, and there are more people in Jackson County. So even if every Indian had turned out to vote, they still would have defeated. So it was set up. And I still contend that it was a crooked thing.

We still have that in court. And we're in a position, if we don't get ourselves involved with state government, they pull these crooked deals off. And if we get involved with them, if we don't get involved, either way, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. That's about where we stand with the state.

So I don't know what they have in store for us. But in the long run, it's going to be the control of our land. They're not interested in Indians at all. They're interested in our land base. Once they get that, then we can be on welfare the rest of our life or be thrown in prison or do whatever the fate has for us of mineral rights, water rights, air quality, water quality.

All that was stolen from by the state because the federal government never enforced the treaty they're trying to throw us into the melting pot every time we turn around. They don't even look at our problems that we have. You can see that nationwide the trend is to get the Indians into the mainstream of society, so they don't have that responsibility. They're trying to get out of these treaties the cheap way.

If the tribes had control of the western half of South Dakota, eventually we'd be part of the mainstream and not dependent upon the government. It's going to take a different attitude at, say, the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Level Forrest Gerard. He has to come out with better policies.

They did define self-determination for me, Forrest Gerard did. And in heated argument, he said, now just be wait. Before you start going this far, he said let me define self-determination for you. And so I said, OK, because we were talking about the dream of the Indian to become self-sufficient, to call our own shots. And he said self-determination is merely the prerogative of the tribe that the tribe has to contract certain federal programs. Well, that blows self-determination all to hell. So that's what's behind this whole fight. And we tend to carry it further. We are going to, hopefully, ask for Forrest Gerard's removal from that office.

FORREST GIRARD: Well, he's certainly free to place any interpretation he wants on our discussions and its broadest terms. I feel that the tribes have always had self-determination, certainly before the creation of the federal government, which modified it.

Self-determination means to me that the Indian tribes through their governments have a stronger voice in determining their own destiny and future. Now in our field, in Federal Indian Relations however, this creates some interesting dynamics because at the same time, the United States government serves as a trustee over the Indian lands and natural resources. And self-determination does not mean that the tribe has carte blanche. The trustee often must make a determination a decision, so to speak, on what is best for the tribe now and in the future.

So there are some conflicts between self-determination and the trust responsibility. But I think it's also fair to say that the tribes have a greater voice today. Now if he wants to interpret that as a diminishment of self-determination, there's nothing I can do to change the Chairman's mind.

We've always been victims of vacillating federal policies. The Indian tribes and their friends had to direct their full attention during the '50s to turn around the so-called termination policy in which the federal relations of tribes was actually terminated. There were some enacted by Congress.

We got a more favorable policy in the Kennedy-Johnson years looking back to self-development, self-determination. I think that the vacillation in policies has been one of our major problems and never really achieving the kind of breakthrough in funding that would enable those tribes with resources to really move forward.

SPEAKER: Forrest Girard, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs

SPEAKER: The Indians are becoming more and more united because we are defining the fight.

SPEAKER: (SINGING) No matter how we treat it, it's because we never were defeated. And this just proves to the world they're just bad losers. That's what we have learned with treaty rights. That's why they come after us with all of their might. Oh, why can't they be honest and polite and admit they owe us back then, which would certainly be nice.

SPEAKER : Even as the Lakota Nation struggles to retain its land and the sovereignty of a nation, the state's assimilation policies have accelerated to crisis proportion. At Pine Ridge the state of South Dakota has removed 22 times as many Indian children from their families as Whites. In one month, for example, the state placed 126 Oglala children in White homes.

Last May, the Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act to diminish the break up of Native families. The act requires that tribal courts and not state courts decide whether a child should be removed from his or her parents. To stop what Lakota leaders call racist policy, state officials must cease asserting their authority over native children.

SPEAKER : I think that's going to create more problems than it's going to solve. I think that the people that are going to be losers in many cases are the Indian children. The resources that might be available to the child are going to be limited. And of course, you're going to find some instances where because of the red tape that's now involved, nothing is going to be done, and an Indian child is going to be the loser.

DELORES WHITEHEAD: Delores Whitehead, juvenile judge. Personally, I think that Indian Child Welfare Act was one of the best things that happened to the Indian tribes because we were losing a lot of our children. And the state just assumed that the tribe just couldn't handle their own children. At least that's the way they came through to us.

So we had a meeting with the BIA and a state people, welfare department, and our lawyer. And I got pretty-- there were several tribal judges. But I think it got pretty heated there because I think I went round and round with the state welfare attorney. Because I contended that the state had come up with those procedures for foster families from Middle Class America. The middle class of White America, not to the Indians.

And I stated that he asked me what I considered a good home for a child. And so I said, being an Indian and handling Indian children, I would rather put an Indian child in a log cabin with an outhouse because he would be happier there then to put him in a home, a middle class American home, with a two-car garage and every modern facility because that child, that is not his culture, and that's not what he's used to. He would be happier out here, although maybe he may not have all those benefits that a middle class material home would have.

They argued back and forth, and they said that we weren't being cooperative. And what they were really trying to do is they called all the tribal judges up there, and they all say, look, you have to do it like this because this is the procedure. So you're gonna do it like this. And I think the one comment he made was, well-- when the argument got real heated, well, then he said, well, we can always cut off your funding.

So I turned around, and I said go right ahead because you're not going to hold that over our heads. I said because that funding, I said, is part federal money, and how can you stand there and say that it doesn't come out of your pocket? And like I said, it got real heated.

So then the BIA representative jumped up, and he said, we have a contract with them. We can't cut them off. And I said, you get a certain amount of money for everything, whether it's education or anything. I said, and you just can't use that over anybody's head. And I said, no way. I don't know. I can't speak for these other judges sitting here from other reservations, I said. But nobody's going to hold any money over-- I'm not going to sell my tribe down the river just because somebody's going to cut their funding off.

We relinquish parental rights. So we didn't have the facilities. We didn't have what child welfare law. But these children would be adopted outside the reservation, and I think that we thought that our tribe was going to just dwindle away, which it was doing fast enough anyway.

SPEAKER: The Lakota Nation is intimately connected with the land. While treaty rights would protect that land, the erosions continue. In 1972, the Federal Department of Energy called the Black Hills a national sacrifice area for uranium exploration. And seven years later, the Court of Claims awarded the Lakota Nation $105 million to relinquish all claim to the Black Hills.

Lakota traditional government organized a Coalition of Treaty Rights Advocates, the Lakota Treaty Council, the American Indian Movement, and the Black Hills Sioux Nation Council. The coalition protests what they call The Taking since a nation must have a land base.

But the Black Hills problem is not the only interference with nation rebuilding. As tribal government works to repurchase land, White ranchers who live on what was once tribal land organize the Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities to assert what they call their rights of United States citizenship.

And treaty rights advocates claim that the attempt to assert their human rights makes them a target for FBI harassment. Jimmy Redwillow, Lakota headman, describes nation rebuilding as a constant series of fronts to maintain political, cultural, and spiritual integrity.

SPEAKER: When one person talks about defending Indian rights, when you talk of individual on the reservation defending his Indian rights, you look in different areas that he can do that, his capabilities are. And one of the things that I always think about is that it seems like the Indians never have one specific front to fight in. There's always a chance that you'll get attacked from the rear.

That's why a lot of Indians always talk about, well, if you're going to do this, be sure and cover your flank. We are the persons inside the wagon train nowadays, and the whites are on the outside using different types of organizations to attack us. So we not only have to cover our flank as well as the front, but we have to have different people covering all areas.

And whether it's a person that concerned with day to day living and getting his next welfare check from the state or the government, and whether the government uses those types of social service agencies to keep the people down, or whether it's so many outright confronting different federal agencies and protesting, the state has different mechanisms or different areas to combat the Indian people in those areas.

But outside of that, it's this whole day to day awareness. It's keeping an awareness. If these confrontations in the past, when you had the direct threat of your life day to day by all these different federal agencies, the threat of taking your life every day kept you on your toes naturally.

But right now, we're in a different period of time that is still happening. That is still happening. Let me emphasize. That is still happening. But to keep an awareness of the state intrusion into tribal rights is something that has to be done day after day.

Each day, there's some type of intrusion into tribal rights. Locally, it's having the state come in and try to enforce rule. I think that at some point in time, that we are going to have to be out on those roads and maybe establishing some type of tariff, or we're going to have to start nationalizing. This is the area that we're evolving towards. Currently I think the whole front comes out of the 1868 treaty.

VERNON LONG: My name is Vernon Long. I'm a traditional-- and I'm a full-blooded Oglala Sioux. My ancestors are Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud. And the Sioux are the sole inheritant of the 1868 treaty. Therefore today, this meeting is meaningful to us, that we want our land and the title. And Black Hills is not for sale.

SPEAKER: One of the reasons why I'm going over there is because my whole family is over there, and I have to go and help my mom. They go because they would like the treaties honored. They'll mean happiness. I think that's the main thing. They're all there for us because they want the Black Hills back.

JOHN KING: My name is John King. I'm a board member of the Black Hills Sioux Nation Council. Throughout the history, again, I'm going to refer back to a question that you had that Congress has a right to do anything. In 1889, they carved out our reservations, and they told us where the reservations are.

Seems like Supreme Court comes along and defines what the intent of Congress is. And every time Supreme Court defines what the intent of Congress is, we lose jurisdiction. The history of it is just in general, in short, in 1903, a guy by the name of James McLaughlin came to the Rosebud Reservation and wanted Gregory County because he told us-- he told my ancestors that there was going to be a train coming through there. The tracks are going to be built, and that there's going to be schools for the Indian people. And that they will learn the White man way, and they'll give them horses, and buggies, and plows, and chickens, and pigs, and that they will learn how to live among White people, and that they will go to the same schools they did. A big promise.

And when he got done, the Indian people said, no, we don't want none of that stuff. So he said this. I come here to represent the United States government. I come here to ask you if you will take 250 an acre. And if you don't want to take 250 an acre, I'll go home, and we'll pass a law and take it for nothing.

And that's what I'm afraid of. I'm worried about the future. And pretty soon, we're going to be like a CAP program, you know, like any minority group applying for a CAP, a federal assistance in a big city. We're going to become that. We're just going to become citizens of this country and be called a minority group. And they're going to finally extinguish the idea of nation, the idea of sovereignty and jurisdiction.

MARION SCHULTZ: Marion Schultz, Batesland, South Dakota. I don't view it as a sovereign government. I It's a privileged organization I guess you might say. I mean, because you happen to have people or ancestry of Indian blood, you're a member of that organization. And it's sort of an exclusive club.

Maybe that's kind of the wrong way to put it, I don't know. But I don't view it as a sovereign nation government. I think originally I don't think any of the Indian people way back years gone by looked at it as a sovereign nation government until, say, prior to Wounded Knee type of thing. They looked at it as their tribal government, but I don't believe they looked at it as a sovereign nation type of government.

A lot of this land that we bought, and I should say dad bought most of it, within the exterior boundaries of Pine Ridge. This land was bought from other non-Indians, but I suppose somewhere along the line, it came, they purchased it from on these land sales.

But when you buy land of that nature, you think you've got a clear title to it, was sanctioned by the federal government. You were given a clear title to it. You bought and paid for it, and you worked mighty hard in some years to make the necessary payments. So you think that you've got a claim to that land.

But then all of a sudden, here comes someone that says, you know, that maybe you don't have. Maybe we're going to tell you what you can do with it and what you can't. All of these things all of a sudden came cropping up, and you think that there's something that's got to be got to be done about it, and no one seemed to be doing anything.

So a group of us got together and said, OK, if that's the situation, we want to be able to help one another. So we formed an organization, which was called the Tri-County Protective Association, which was simply a group of guys that got together and said, if you got a problem, you call me, and I'll help you, and vice versa. And it's been accused of course of being vigilant and all that, which it wasn't. It was just strictly a mutual defense type of thing.

And then from that then, from that local organization grew a state organization all dealing with the same basic problems, which was the civil liberties for South Dakota citizens. And then from that then we met with a group from Montana that were having similar problems. And we then at that point in time decided to form a bigger organization from that. Then came the interstate Congress, which was a coalition of state organizations dealing primarily with the same problems all over the country.

And we felt that through the formation of this organization, that we could go in to Washington and other places and tell people that there's another side to this story, that they have all the rights of citizenship, voting, the whole gamut of things, plus a few that I don't have. And that's primarily what interstate is all about. Trying to get across to the people that there's another side to this thing. It's not all what the national press has put out and some writers.

The poor Indian concept, the poor abused, privileged individual isn't necessarily the way it actually is. Maybe they call that putting the White man's values to it. But when you're getting into an area like that where you're talking Constitution versus treaty, you're talking some legal points that I'm not capable of actually getting into that's a real legal question in there when you're talking whether or not the treaty is legal I know they had a big trial or a hearing on that in Lincoln here three years ago whether or not the treaty was valid.

And I think what came out of it was a big sum of nothing as far as I'm concerned. Of course, I think the way I look at it, the United States Congress has got the right to make and break a treaty anytime they want to. So what's a treaty? It's only as good as the government behind it.

CELINE NOT HELP HIM: My name is Celine Not Help Him. I live in Oglala housing. They knock on our doors. And pretty soon, my daughter said, don't answer the door. It's the FBIs again. And they treat us like we're criminals. Or I don't know. I don't like the way they treat us, she said. We don't open the door, and here they peek in through the window.

And that FBI name is Ben Kegel. And I guess he looked through the window to the basement. He said, why are you having a whole bunch of bed down there, extra beds? And he said, there's not very many of you, but how come there's a whole bunch of beds down there? Well, our kids come back from Idaho. They were on placement.

And every summer, they come back in last part of May or first part of June. And they left. They go back last part of August. We try to explain to them, but he said we're keeping some of the fugitive, he said. And I don't know what the fugitive is. That really surprised me.

We don't know what these FBIs are up to. We told them what we know, but they don't believe us. My son was sitting outside. And they ask him if there's a real old car parked outside. And he said-- he asked my son, one of these FBI said, is that your car? And he said, yeah, that's my car. And he said, if you tell us all you know, we'll get you a brand new car, and you don't want to live around here. He said, we'll get you a place to stay. And if you don't want to talk here, we'll pick a place, and then you can go over there, and we'll meet you there, and we'll talk.

But my son said, I can't trade a car with my own brother's blood, he said. And I said, I don't want to talk. And I don't have to talk if I don't want to. And I'd rather struggle with my people. It would tell the story, or if my son tell some story about somebody, I know there's going to be another bloodshed. We don't want that.

I don't know. People nervous. They close the door and stay inside because that's the only shelter they have. Nothing else or nobody else, no place else to go. But then I think they understand, but then if the White FBI comes, after what happened to Anna Mae and Joe Stuntz, well, that really changed our kids. I mean, maybe they're scared, or either they don't like them, or I don't know. It's really strange.

Anna Mae. Anna Mae got killed. I know she got killed by FBI. And Joe Stuntz was killed by-- It start from FBI. We don't know who killed him. Do you want to make them talk? Ever since those two FBIs got killed on this reservation. Anna Mae, I know they're after. She told me they're after. They're after me, she said. But I can't cooperate with them.

Kids. They're getting so the kids know what the FBI is here for or-- when they came, they know why they're here. And some of the kids now, FBI has been coming around and not scare people and scare the children. Now they getting so they can't get along with their teacher at the school. It's a White people, White teacher. This White teacher is having a hard time. He wants to teach the kids, and he's nice to them, but what the FBI is doing, they think all the White peoples are like that. So I don't know. I wish there could be another way to work this out.

SPEAKER: I'll ask the hearing to come to order. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth to the best of your knowledge and belief?

WILLIAM WEBSTER: I do.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

WILLIAM WEBSTER: William H. Webster, Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation since February 23, 1978. I'm not aware that agents have been any more-- any less respectful of people's civil rights. In some areas, we have two or more agents traveling together. In most parts of the Indian country, as I'm told, usually it's enough for one agent to travel with a BIA member for company or an Indian police officer.

It's going to vary from situation to situation. There's residual resentment and hostility from still there, I'm confident, from the Wounded Knee days. A tendency to read from motives into conduct and so on. But the absence of any serious complaints about conduct leads me to believe that it's there at a low threshold. Wouldn't take much to create it again, but we're not battling. They're there as peacekeepers, and I hope we're never there again as peacekeepers.

SPEAKER: You mentioned the American Indian Movement a moment ago. In a hearing in March, several members of the American Indian Movement testified actually right where you are right now. And it was the impression from their testimony that they felt that their organization was viewed with great suspicion particularly by the FBI.

And that where anyone on the reservation was identified with the American Indian Movement, that the FBI tended to overreact in pursuing a search and seizure, for example, or looking for a fugitive. Have you had over the past six months or one year formalized complaints of that nature?

WILLIAM WEBSTER: No. I don't think that I have. I could check and correct the record if I have had--

SPEAKER: Appreciate that.

WILLIAM WEBSTER: As far as search and seizure, we've got to follow court procedures for search and seizure. As far as domestic intelligence investigations, we follow attorney general guidelines with respect to those. And as far as individuals are concerned, we do not investigate individuals or organizations unless they are planning or there is evidence that they're planning or in fact engaging in acts of force or violence directed against the United States, or one of the instrumentalities of the United States, or against civil rights. So we adhere strictly to those.

If I were a special agent with the events so recent on hand, I think I would tend to be a little more on the alert if I were dealing with somebody who was advertising his association with AIM because of the past events, but that would not permit me or authorize me to deal with them in terms of their rights in any different way.

There's a significant change in policy with respect to characterizing organizations as subversive or non-subversive. We just don't do that anymore. It's an objective fact test now. Are they planning or engaging in acts of force or violence? And I'd prefer not to comment on the purposes or goals of AIM. I'm not sure that much aware of them.

RUSSELL MEANS: I'm Russell Means, Oglala Lakota. I joined the American Indian Movement in 1969. And we knew what we were fighting for while. We superficially knew what we were fighting for. We were fighting for our rights as fourth class citizens in this country. Our human rights.

But we didn't know who we were, where we came from or why. So we sat down the American Indian Movement, and we said, how do we find out who we are, why we are? And of course, the answer was go home and get with the old people. And that's what the American Indian Movement did.

And that's the basic reason, the initial reason why I returned home, is to find out who I was as an Indian and why. Because up until the advent of the American Indian Movement, we were not allowed to know those things, you see. And even today, they select elite, few Vichy Indians that rule the reservation. I actually believe Indians did not begin in this hemisphere until 1934 in the Indian Reorganization Act. That's why I returned home.

We determined where the war was being fought, and it was being fought right here. And when I returned, I decided to stay because for an Indian to remain an Indian in the urban setting is like swimming upstream in rapids. White society is just overwhelming. And consequently, when we returned to fight, the young people just gravitated to the American Indian Movement along with the old people.

80% of the Indian population on the concentration camps referred to as reservations still retain the value system of our ancestors and the philosophy of life. And that's what the struggle is all about, second to our land rights. And Indians can't buy sell, rent, or lease land on the reservation without the express consent of the Secretary of Interior, our god. We can't spend a dollar or devise a program without that consent from the Secretary.

We cannot initiate any action whatsoever or pass any resolution that would have a force in effect without the express consent of the Secretary of Interior. The United States government is afraid. It has a guilt complex. They're afraid for anyone in this country with a different lifestyle, with a different philosophy, and a different culture to exist.

You either become a part of the government road towards selfishness and greed, therefore capitalism, or you put, in our case, out of sight, out of mind, or you're relegated to the ghettos. In the Indian's case, we're out of sight, out of mind, and then quashed very selectively and arbitrarily.

We suffered and continually suffer under the onslaught of the federal government through the FBI trumped up charges, and through the state courts in South Dakota, and put us in prison. There's been assassinations, just outright assassinations, and assassination attempts. The leadership of the American Indian Movement in South Dakota has been in the courts, state and federal, and in prison since Wounded Knee, '73.

One thing you have to do is acknowledge the wall. It's one thing I learned in prison. Acknowledge the wall. The system is designed to be exactly the way it is and any colonial power. And a colonial power is dissipated or done away with in one of two ways or a combination of both. And that's through international pressure, which results in negotiations and then freedom, or armed struggle, or a combination of both.

And it's just the first tenant of the struggle for freedom, is you have to have international support, or you're going to lose. Colonial power is just too great to take on by yourself. And we've been at the UN through the International Indian Treaty Council for almost five years now. That bureaucracy is even larger than the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which I didn't think was possible. But that is a slow process. The illegal taking was taken away from the traditional government of the Lakota Nation.

LARRY REDSHIRT: My name is Larry Redshirt. I'm a coordinator for the Lakota Treaty Council. Our argument lies with the United States government, not so much the citizens of the United States government. And that we have made an agreement with their government in 1868 and that this government has changed that treaty, and I've taken away the process of changing that treaty. They've taken away a lot of land illegally, land theft. The denial of our human rights, denial of self-determination.

Their government has a policy of genocide against our people, that the current policies of the United States government towards Indian people is one of assimilation, total assimilation, which in the end, through that policy, they hope to do away with reservations do away with all of our land base, and to eventually force us to become part of the mainstream of American life.

And that in this process, because of our resistance movement, we are being killed. The council that I work with, traditional council has been in existence for thousands and thousands of years prior to even 1868. And we are in a position that we've gained our sovereignty from the time of beginning, from the creator himself, from the people that we represent. We were not created by a congressional act.

We've already given up over seven state area from State of Kansas as far west to the Bighorn Mountains, as far west to the Mississippi River, all the way into Canada. We've given up a lot of land to be reduced to the size of, say western half of South Dakota and then our land being eroded away to finally to the reservations that we have left now. A very small land base.

We were approached by people of the Black Hills Alliance, wanting to align with us to stop this uranium. This is a very unique alliance because here, the non-Indian people with the Black Hills Alliance allying themselves with Lakota Treaty Council with our people, is that they are allying themselves with a nation, with a government for a common purpose. And that is to stop the uranium. Our goals go further than that. We want the hills back.

SPEAKER: Oglala Lakota: Rebuilding a Nation was written and produced by Anita Parlo. Special Thanks to Louie Bad Wound and Peggy Berryhill. Music vocals by Periwinkle. Lakota Drum recorded by Lee Garlington of Woman Sound. Engineering , Bob Nock and Jim Anderson. Executive producer, Frank Tavares. Funds for this program were provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is NPR, National Public Radio.