The Long Hollow Housing Development on the Lake Traverse Reservation, home to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. Photo by USDA
Will Republican president-elect Donald Trump try to privatize Indian lands after he takes office next month? Writer Ruth Hopkins, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, explains why the idea is so dangerous:
Land and language is key to Tribal identity. Tribes without land are not federally recognized. If we are to assert treaty rights, we must hold the land. Our homelands are also where our ceremonies take place. Those in favor argue that federal regulations for Tribal lands are more burdensome than those applied to private property. This is true; however, privatizing our traditional homelands, especially to sell them to fossil fuel energy corporations as Trump desires, will destroy them forever. Once sold to non-Natives, ancestral lands will not pass down to the next seven generations of Tribal members and they are lost forever. Tribes would lose control over them. Sacred sites will be bulldozed. Waterways will be polluted. Landscapes will be stripped. Wildlife will leave, or get sick and die. Cancer rates and birth defects in surrounding Native lands will soar. We see all of these effects in lands that are fracked, mined, and drilled. Land privatization is a sovereignty killer, a colonial device used to severe the sacred relationship we have to the land. Greed will cause division within our ranks. We’re in for a fight, and losing is not an option.Read More:
Ruth Hopkins: Trump’s Termination Era 2.0 (Indian Country Today 12/13)
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