"Going Extinct Is Genocide": Lakota Elders Tour to Raise Awareness About Struggle
Monday, 22 April 2013 10:18By Victoria Law, Truthout | Op-Ed
Lakota elders, activists and non-indigenous supporters march through New York's Times Square to United Nations, April 9, 2013. (Photo: Victoria Law)
On Tuesday, April 9, Lakota elders, activists and nonindigenous supporters marched through the streets of Manhattan to the United Nations, where they attempted to present a petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Entitled the Official Lakota Oyate Complaint of Genocide Based on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the petition listed the numerous injustices faced by the Lakota people. (Oyate is a Sioux word for "people" or "nation.")
At the UN, security officers informed them that they would not be able to enter the building and present the complaint to the Secretary General. Instead, the security officers offered to take it to Ban's office, but refused to give the Lakota documentation verifying that their complaint had been received.
Outside the UN, Charmaine White Face, a Lakota grandmother and great-grandmother, addressed the 60 people who had marched with her. "We come here as a nation. If they won't let us take our message to them, how disrespectful is that to a nation?"
The action is part of the 13-city Truth Tour by Lakota elders and activists to draw attention to the situation of the Lakota, mobilize solidarity networks to benefit Lakota elders, and renew the Lakotas' traditional matriarchal leadership on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation and across the Lakota nation. Between April 1 and 16, they traveled to Minneapolis, Chicago and other points east and west.
With Colonization Came the End to the Matriarchal Leadership
Canupa Gluha Mani, founder of the Strong Heart Warriors Society, speakers before marching to the United Nations, April 9, 2013. (Photo: Victoria Law)"The matriarchal system changed when the colonizers arrived in 1492," Canupa Gluha Mani, a Lakota activist and founder of the Strong Heart Warriors Society, told Truthout.
History backs up his assertion: As the United States encroached upon indigenous territory, treaties were negotiated between the United States government and the indigenous nations. After going through hundreds of documents, historians M. Annette Jaimes and Theresa Halsey asserted, "In not one of the more than 370 ratified and perhaps 300 unratified treaties negotiated by the United States with indigenous nations was the federal government willing to allow participation by native women. In none of the several thousand non-treaty agreements ... were federal representatives prepared to discuss anything at all with women. In no instance was the United States open to recognizing a female as representing her people's interests when it came to administering the reservations onto which American Indians were ultimately forced; always, men were required to do what was necessary to secure delivery of rations, argue for water rights, and all the rest." (from "American Indian Women: At the Center of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America," in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1992, 322.)
White Face, a Lakota elder and great-grandmother of nine, noted that under the matriarchal system, "The ones who made the decisions for the community were the grandmothers. There were societies of grandmothers. Colonizing has forced people to forget these ways. There are still some of us who were taught the old way. I learned from my grandmother. Other people didn't have that opportunity."
More than 6,753 Lakota children have not had the opportunity to learn from their grandmothers and other elders. Among the list of injustices on the Official Lakota Oyate Complaint is the placement of Lakota children with non-Lakota foster parents. In addition, the incarceration rate for Native children is 40 percent higher than that of their white counterparts.
And there is the matter of language. "In one lifetime, the number of Lakota speakers has dropped 75 percent," states the Complaint. "There have been no new Lakota speakers in three generations. There are 6,000 to 8,000 Lakota language speakers left."
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