And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: X-Originating-IP: [207.179.161.53] From: "Robert Quiver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To:<snipped> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 16:51:09 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Award Winning Journalist and Publisher Worth Weller, North Manchester, IN extensive article on time with CPT in Pierre, South Dakota and perspective on the Seven Council Fires Camp http://www.communinet.org/News_Journal/lakota.html [excerpt] Exactly 2,989 miles due north of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, a drama unfolds in Pierre, South Dakota, striking a startling mirror image of the conflict in Chiapas. There, throughout the cold spring and long hot summer of 1999, a collision of cultures has surfaced as if the fabric of time and space had been cataclysmically wrenched. A cultural warp, if you will. As with the Maya of Chiapas, the South Dakota conflict is rooted in racism, violence and exploitation at the hands of European settlers against an indigenous population. Only the names have changed. This modern clash along the banks of the mighty Missouri River as it snakes its way across the sparsely populated grasslands of the upper Midwest is crystallized in the encampment of the Oceti Sakowin. Established on LaFramboise Island within sight of the state capital, the encampment was originally the work of seven Lakota Sioux from South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is this beautiful but arid reservation - home to the nation's poorest county until federal aid recently bumped it to fourth poorest - that is the site of the 7th Calvary's notorious Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 and a similarly brutal episode on the same spot at the hands of the FBI with illegal tactical advice from the 82nd Airborne 83 years later. The seven warriors entered the two-mile long island ? administered as a hiking and bicycling park by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Missouri River's massive Oahe dam flood-control project - to purify the land and light a sacred, ever-burning flame known as the First Fire of the Oceti Sakowin. Their presence became a permanent (and illegal, in the eyes of the Corps) encampment. They were immediately joined by friends of the Sioux - including Christian Peacemaking Teams - from across the United States and Canada, as a reminder that the aboriginal treaty rights of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council) nations have not been extinguished by the mere passage of time. The FBI - still licking its wounds from the 1973 armed confrontation with the American Indiana Movement (AIM) at Wounded Knee that led to a firestorm of national publicity, the indictments of 500 traditional people and the deaths of two agents in nearby Oglala two years later - is monitoring the encampment. So are the U. S. Justice Department and a host of local and state law enforcement agencies. <<end excerpt Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
