Sioux Nation Treaty Council - est 1894

Report to the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples

RE: Submission to 77^th General Assembly Report

Submitted by the 1894 Sioux Nation Treaty Council

Located in the Middle of North America

This Report is submitted in response to the Special Rapporteur Cali Tzay’s Questionnaire, Protected Areas and Conservation.

1. Where protected areas are created on Indigenous Peoples’ lands, are Indigenous Peoples participating in the management of the protected areas and/or deriving benefits, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES)?

NO!

If not, what are the barriers to participation and free, prior and informed conseSavent?

The Oceti Sakowin Oyate (translation: Sioux Nation) and the United States (US) have, as sovereigns, signed several conventions, most notably the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. While this Treaty provides services such as health and education, it also explicitly recognizes Oceti Sakowin Oyate Treaty boundaries. For example, Article 2 specifically recognizes the Great Sioux Reservation, but more importantly, the United States agreed that, with limited exceptions, only Oceti Sakowin Oyate citizens possess the inherent right of absolute and undisturbed use and occupancy of the Treaty territory as follows:

The United States agrees that the following district of country, to wit, viz: commencing on the east bank of the Missouri river where the 46^th parallel of north latitude crosses the same, thence along low-water mark down said east bank to a point opposite where the northern line of the State of Nebraska strikes the river, thence west across said river, and along the northern line of Nebraska to the 104^th degree of longitude west from Greenwich, thence north on said meridian to a point where the 46^th parallel of north latitude intercepts the same, thence due east along said parallel to the place of beginning; and in addition thereto, all existing reservation of the east bank of said river,shall be, and the same is, set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians herein named ... and the United States solemnly agrees that no persons except such officers, agents, and employes [sic] of the Government as may be authorized to enter upon Indian reservations in discharge of duties enjoined by law, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article, or such territory as may be added to this reservation for the use of said Indians (Art. 2, 1858 Fort Laramie Treaty, 15 Stat. 635, 636).

The matter of areas outside the existing boundaries of the Treaty territory must not be forgotten, namely, the unceded lands described in Article 16. The US, again, recognized these lands as integral Treaty lands and agreed that non-Oceti Sakowin people are never to occupy these lands without our knowledge and consent:

The United States hereby agrees and stipulates that the country north of the North Platte river and east of the summits of the Big Horn mountains shall be held and considered to be unceded Indian territory, and also stipulates and agrees that no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same; without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through the same (Art. 16, 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, 15 Stat. 635, 636).

Therefore, non-Oceti Sakowin people who are in our Treaty territory and also in our unceded territory without our knowledge and consent are, in today’s vernacular, undocumented immigrants either trespassing, unlawfully occupying or residing illegally (squatting) within our Treaty lands. This includes all of western South Dakota and parts of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska (all now American states).

Finally, the Oceti Sakowin Oyate have never consented to the destruction of our entire Treaty territory. Again 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty’s Article 12 is explicit about obtaining our consent for any cession of our unceded territory.

No treaty for the cession of any portion or part of the reservation herein described which may be held in common shall be of any validity or force as against the said Indians, unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians, occupying or interested in the same (Art. 12, 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty,15 Stat. 635, 636).

Though the US can produce various agreements, laws, case laws, and policies that purport to show we have relinquished our titled Treaty territory, those same documents have never complied with either Article 12 or any other UN convention that addresses human rights violations or International treaty laws and conventions.

Indeed, the US obtained our post-1868 treaty lands through numerous human rights violations, such as the Sell or Starve Option known as the 1877 Black Hills Agreement; the 1889 Sioux Agreement (prelude to establishing both South and North Dakota illegally), and the 1887 Allotment Act (declaring non-allotted land as “surplus,” thus opened to white settlement). All of theseActs (and other subsequent Acts in both the 20^th and 21^st centuries) of the US have never met the minimum standard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to today. The US instead uses the Wheeler-Howard Act governments (puppet governments) which the US established to say they have consulted with the people.

Moreover, the US has officially declared to the international community that it has a trust responsibility to “its” Indigenous Peoples, as if they “own” us, but our history and experiences with our colonizers reveal that that “trust” has neither protected our treaty lands from foreign annexation and subsequent nationalization and populization under the US government, nor has this trust status protected us from US-sanctioned genocidal acts following the illegal confiscation of our homeland. Those genocidal acts include: forced education (boarding schools), forced US nationality (1924 Indian Citizenship Act), forced fee patents of allotted trust land (Blood Quanta Policy), forced termination (P.L. 83-280 and H.R. 108 in 1953), forced urbanization (Indian Relocation Act, 1956), ad infinitum.

In 1980, the US Supreme Court acknowledged that the human rights violated by the 1877 Sell or Starve law had breached the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. This acknowledgment is cited in Special Rapporteur Martinez’s UN Treaty Study in 1999, paragraph 276. (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1999/20 page 43, 44)

Because Treaty land is an Internationally recognized title, the Court determined that the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution applied, thus, treating the members of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate as United States citizens instead of citizens from a separate nation with an International Treaty. The US could neither justify nor determine any demonstrable public purpose for the taking of our Treaty lands. Rather than return or restore the stolen Treaty land to us, the Oceti Sakowin Oyate, the high court awarded monetary compensation instead—which is not want we wanted and refused to accept. Nor were the events that led up to the compensation award ever in compliance with Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.

An outcome of our refusal to accept the Supreme Court’s decision to award compensation, which today is estimated to be about $1 billion US Dollars, in 1987, a bill was introduced in the US Congress that would partially reaffirm the Great Sioux Nation’s Treaty boundaries “to convey federally held lands...to the Sioux Nation.” This conveyance of 1.3 million acres from the US represents about 18% of the 7.3 million acres taken in 1877 in the sacred Black Hills alone, not including the rest of the Treaty territory. Not surprisingly, no hearings on the bill were ever scheduled and it died in Congressional committee.

As this report shows, the US refuses to protect areas that involve treaty lands that are supposed to be protected under Article VI of the US Constitution not to mention under International Treaty law. As a result, the Black Hills and the surrounding area are being used and developed with no regard for the health and well-being of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate. In fact, more than 2,000 abandoned open-pit Uranium mines can be found in our 1868 Treaty territory since the 1960s including more than 10,000 uncapped, and unmarked Uranium exploratory wells, some large enough for a man’s circumference.

Consequently the water, air, and land are polluted with radioactive pollution, and the Oceti Sakowin Oyate have the highest cancer rates in North America. (Cancer Mortality Among American -Indians and Alaska Natives: Regional Differences, 1999-2003, Donald Haverkamp, MPH* David Espey, MD* Roberta Paisano, MHSA, February, 2008, P. 46) Indigenous peoples living within our Treaty territory also have extremely high rates of heart disease and diabetes which is also caused by radioactive pollution. However, in the past year, the largest Indian Health Service hospital in the region was contracted by the Indian Health Service to a data collection agency without health administration capabilities and without the free, prior, and informed consent of the Indigenous patients. (See US Supreme Court case No. 20-1487, Gilbert v Weahkee) These kinds of activities within our Treaty territory are genocidal for the Oceti Sakowin Oyate.

The 1894 Sioux Nation Treaty Council has been making the UN aware of this situation for the past forty (40) years.Recently, the 1894 SNTC publiclydeclared our support of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 48/7 and that we intend to fully participate in the UN Decolonization process now that it is open to Indigenous nations. Secondly, we declare our support of Special Rapporteur Miguel Alfonso Martinez’s 1999 UN Study on Treaties, Agreements, and Constructive Arrangements, and that we declare our opposition to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) study regarding treaties, agreements, and other constructive arrangements, including peace accords and reconciliation initiatives.

The UN and its organizations have an obligation as members of the human family of nations for the Human Rights of all peoples including Indigenous Nations and peoples, and to intervene on behalf of Indigenous Nations and Peoples with States that refuse to protect those Nations and Peoples who have treaty protected lands, not just those areas designated by UNESCO or REDD+. To fail to do so means certain genocide for some of the oldest nations and cultures in the world.

Respectfully submitted by:

Zumila Wobaga, Itancan

Charmaine White Face, Spokesperson