Brandon Ecoffey
The Black Hills Claim: Our most important cause
By Brandon Ecoffeey Over the course of the last four years, the Oglala Sioux Tribe along with other members of the Oceti Sakowin have focused the majority of their energy on topics that have included the Cobell settlement, ICWA, the Wounded Knee sale, stopping the Keystone pipeline, shutting down White Clay, legalizing alcohol on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, gaming, prairie dog control, honoring Hugo Chavez, and the usual run of the mill intertribal and intercommunity petty politics that seem to consume a huge majority of the council’s time. The necessity of the energy spent on many of these issues by tribal governments has been both irresponsible and counterproductive for as a result they have paid no attention to our most important cause: the Black Hills Land Claim. Of course ICWA is a worthy cause and stopping the Keystone pipeline may be, as Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle described it, “the battle of our lifetime.” Anyone who has endured excessive thirst knows that “you cannot drink oil,” just ask a Sundancer. For so long we have simply sat on our position that we will not accept the money. Refusing the money is the right decision. Unfortunately for us however is many of our political leaders have simply become content with not approaching the Black Hills land issue beyond this assertion. Diplomatic creativity is the essence of successful international relations and on this issue we been about as creative and innovative as the Oakland Raiders in free agency. In 2009, President Obama in a press release from his campaign stated the following:
“Barack Obama is a strong believer in tribal sovereignty. He does not believe courts or the federal government should force Sioux tribes to take settlement money for the Black Hills. He believes the tribes are best suited to decide how to handle the monetary award themselves. Obama would not be opposed to bringing together all the different parties through government-to-government negotiations to explore innovative solutions to this long-standing issue.”We have sat on this open invitation from President Obama for far too long. During the Theresa Two Bulls administration steps were taken to bring all the necessary parties together to discuss a new approach, however efforts have stalled and we now find ourselves in the 11th hour. Let us not forget President Obama owes nothing to the non-Native voting population of western South Dakota. Throughout Obama’s time in office non-Native voters in SD have opposed every policy platform he has proposed and South Dakota lawmakers, Thune and Noem, are essentially the reincarnation of Baby Bush and Sarah Palin. He also owes them nothing. Currently, Obama is in his second and last term in office with nothing to lose and a waning legacy that is currently marked with failed policy proposals and unwanted embarrassing public revelations of invasive domestic spying programs that reek of a security-state driven by a fear of itself and a fear of its own people. Drawing from my own experiences in life, once one hits bottom you are no longer burdened by expectations and you are given true freedom. President Obama’s presidency has reached this point; we must prompt him to exercise this freedom. It is time for the Oglala Nation to wake up and demand our leadership clear their plate of the political infighting and arbitrary issues that many of which have simple answers. The media ride that we have been on in regards to Wounded Knee is fun but very well could have been solved months ago. The answer to Wounded Knee is incredibly simple: accept the money from the multiple donors who have lots of it, buy the land, and move forward. To quote my favorite sports columnist, Colin Cowherd, “take the emotion and personal feelings out of it.” Base your decisions on empirical data and common sense. If it isn’t our money being spent on the land then why wait? If it is true that the tribe has several financial backers, as they have stated, then the time wasted playing hardball in the press is but another example of our wasted energy expenditures. America is in love with the romanticized image of the Indian. For the majority of America, Wounded Knee is the site that exemplifies and encases both their love of who we were and a reminder of the unacknowledged guilt that many Americans carry within their being for what took place over the course of our shared history. Funding for a museum, once the land is acquired, will flow in from around the world. To do this however the land must be acquired first. The alcohol issue and Whiteclay is even simpler: let the people vote. On Aug 13, they will. If alcohol is legalized, Whiteclay goes away. It is simple economics. If alcohol is not legalized by the people, the status quo remains the same. Why waste any more time debating these issues when, for the first time since the pre-treaty era, we have access to a sitting President who has promised that he is willing to work with tribes in finding a resolution to our rights to the Black Hills? There are many young people across this country like me who feel this President has let us down so far. President John F. Kennedy said that politics is the art of compromise. For my generation of minorities we feel Obama has compromised far too much. His pledge to make America greener has been stopped by the oil and coal lobby. Mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders are still in place and the prison industry that opposes their dissolution continues to lock us up at an astounding pace. All the while, our most sacred sites in the Black Hills are plundered by miners, bikers, and prospectors. Many opportunities have slipped through our hands on multiple fronts, but this one cannot pass without, at the very least, an effort to stop dealing with minor issues and focus on the most important one. Brandon Ecoffey is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is a lifelong resident of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Brandon earned his education at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH where he majored in Government and Native American Studies. He is currently the managing editor of Native Sun News and a contributor to LastRealIndians.com and can be reached at staffwriter2@nsweekly.com Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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