-Caveat Lector-
Sioux fight Feds, this time over hemp
Non-potent version could be a cash crop, tribe argues
Federal agents cut down hemp stalks in Alex White Plume's field in
Manderson, S.D. Though agents stormed his property in 2000, last
July's visit from the Drug Enforcement Agency was arranged in
advance.
By Jon Bonné
MSNBC
Sept. 7 — As Alex White Plume tells it, the raid began with the
rising sun and the whir of helicopter blades. Agents from the Drug
Enforcement Administration spread out across his property on
South
Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, nestled by the Black Hills
the Sioux consider sacred, looking for drugs. "One of them came
running towards me, and he pointed his gun and told me to halt,"
White Plume says. "In my mind, I was going to jail."
HE WASN'T headed for jail, and has not been charged with a
crime, but the raid last year was heartbreaking to him. It ended
what had otherwise been a charmed attempt to grow a crop that
would help White Plume, an Oglala Sioux, and his family supplant
their meager income from raising horses, herding buffalo and
offering pony rides.
Of course, White Plume was growing hemp — the durable
weed known in some forms as marijuana. All marijuana is hemp;
not all hemp is marijuana, at least not in the psychotropic sense.
So-called industrial hemp, which lacks pot's chemical potency, has
been used for centuries in everything from clothing to lip balm.
Marijuana usually has at least 5 percent or more of the
hallucinogen tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but industrial hemp
contains less than 1 percent — far from enough to give even a mild
high. And while marijuana remains illegal in most countries, the
industrial hemp movement has gained momentum in recent years,
especially in North America, though it's unclear how large a market
exists for hemp products.
SUPPORT FROM STATES
Canada has begun licensing industrial hemp. State
legislatures in 19 states, including agricultural centers like North
Dakota and Minnesota, have compiled legislation backing industrial
hemp. Hawaii now allows private hemp research, and former
tobacco farmers in Kentucky successfully pushed the legislature
and governor to pass a bill last March creating an Industrial Hemp
Commission to regulate research.
Despite pressure from states, the federal government makes
little distinction between industrial hemp and the potent variety.
According to DEA officials, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970
bars not only marijuana but also THC — so that all hemp, even
varieties with only faint traces of the chemical, is considered
illegal.
Federal authorities would not discuss the seizure on White
Plume's land. ("I can't make any comment," says Michelle Tapken,
the U.S. Attorney for South Dakota.) Nor would the DEA discuss
new regulations it says are in the works.
But when the DEA did another seizure this past July, it
negotiated with White Plume in advance and came without guns
pointed.
FIGHT FOR SOVEREIGNTY
The seizures at Pine Ridge were largely business as usual,
except for one thing: The DEA flexed its muscle on a tribal
reservation. For White Plume and others in the Oglala tribe,
growing these plants has become a basic issue of tribal rights.
Theis tribe, they argue, has a history with hemp and a right to
uphold their traditions.
"There's a word for the plant in the tribal language, which
means it's got a history here that precedes contact with the
Europeans," says Tom Ballanco, White Plume's attorney.
Indeed, White Plume says there is a single word — wahupta
— for both hemp and marijuana. But he says he's not interested in
growing the potent variety. Instead, he hopes to turn hemp into a
cash crop, selling both the finished products and seeds to others
eager to harvest a plant revered in past times for its versatility
and its ability to endure harsh climates and gritty soil.
It was hemp's economic potential that drew White Plume's
attention. He was impressed by the range of hemp products,
usually imported from nations such as Canada and Germany, but
the high prices of hemp items stunned him.
"Most of it is import-export taxes, which drives the market up
high," White Plume says. "People in the country could pay less for
a good article, and we could make some money."
Hemp's economic potential is unclear, but its uses are manifold.
.
FOOD
The seeds are used to make animal feed and are edible by humans
in much the same way as sunflower seeds. They have been made
into snacks, cookies, porridge and trail mix. They can be ground
into flour and have been used as a grain to make beer.
.
OIL
The plant's seed is about 30 percent oil, which can be used for
cooking, lubrication and medicinal purposes. In Russia, it also was
used as a butter.
.
BODY CARE
The presence of fatty acids in the oil make hemp a useful material
for health and beauty products. It has been made into soaps,
lotions, creams, shampoo, lip balms and more. At least one major
retailer, the Body Shop, sells specialty hemp items as one of its
product lines.
.
HOUSEHOLD USES
The oil can be used to produce varnishes, resins, paints,
detergents and polishes. The fiber can be made into twine.
.
CLOTH
The fiber of the hemp plant can be woven, similar to flax, into
cloth. It currently is used to produce everything from shirts to
quilts. For centuries, hemp was used as a durable fiber for ships'
sails. The United States could match its total import of linen fiber,
yarn and fabric by planting 40 percent of the acreage used for
tobacco fields in hemp, according to USDA estimates.
.
PAPER
Much like wood pulp, hemp can be made into a range of paper
products and packaging materials.
.
SYNTHETICS
The cellulose in the plant can be transformed into plastic
compounds, caulking and building materials.
.
FUEL
Through various chemical processes, parts of the plant can be
transformed into a charcoal-like substance or refined to produce a
gasoline-like fuel. Like most biomass, it also can be transformed
into ethanol and similar fuels. Hemp advocates have used hemp-
fueled vehicles to prove its viability as a fuel source.
.
Source: USDA, NAIHC, Hemp Industries Association
STRUGGLE AGAINST POVERTY
Pine Ridge could use the help. It is often described as one of
the poorest places in the nation. The town of Manderson, White
Plume's home, had a per capita income of just one-quarter of the
U.S. average, according to the latest available census figures.
Even the agricultural income of Shannon County, where
Manderson is located, is dwarfed by most other counties in the
state.
Tribal leaders acknowledge hemp could prove a valuable cash
crop. They even claim to have grown it during World War II,
ironically enough, as part of the federal government's "Hemp for
Victory" program.
The tribal council passed a 1998 resolution allowing
industrial hemp as a viable crop on the reservation. Those who
want to farm it must register with the tribal government and test
their crop to ensure that it contains less than 1 percent THC.
And the tribal government eagerly supports residents like
White Plume who seek to capitalize on one of the few cheap,
plentiful crops that grows readily in the area's hardscrabble ground.
"It grows wild here ... it's growing tall out there right
now," says John Yellow Bird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux
tribe. "This is the government's protection of corporations such as
the clothing industry, the paper industry."
TRIBES AND TREATIES
White Plume — either intentionally or inadvertently — has
wandered into a legal thicket.
Alex White Plume watches as this year's hemp crop is planted in
April. Though he and his family have cultivated it, the plant also
grows wild on the Pine Ridge reservation.
Tribal reservations don't function under the same laws as
the rest of the nation; though the federal government reserves the
right to enforce laws against major crimes from murder to drug
trafficking, tribes largely retain authority to govern themselves.
Just how law enforcement is divided between the federal and tribal
government depends on the treaty between that tribe and the
United States.
For White Plume's people, it was the Fort Laramie treaty of
1868. Like many treaties of the time, the Fort Laramie document
actually encouraged the Oglala to take up farming as a way to end
their nomadic travels across the plains. It gave each family the
right to take up to 320 acres for farming, and promised free seeds
and supplies.
Now that they've found a crop with potential to sustain them,
the tribe argues, the government is hedging on the deal.
"That is the very kind of thing that the treaty was designed
to encourage," says Frank Pommersheim, an expert on tribal law at
the University of South Dakota. "Here they are being thwarted
trying to engage in the very sort of act the federal government was
trying to encourage at that time."
Treaties aren't set in stone — and the government already
breached the Fort Laramie treaty so prospectors could search for
gold in the stark Black Hills — but unless Congress passes a
specific bill to change the way the treaty is applied, tribes usually
set their local regulations. They were, for example, allowed to run
gambling operations almost unchecked until Congress set strict
limits in 1988.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court has ruled that the
illegality of some drugs — peyote, in a noted 1990 case — trumps
Indian rights to sovereignty and religious freedom.
TAKING A STAND
While growing marijuana at White Pine would likely be illegal,
the unclear interpretation of drug laws as they apply to hemp —
and the treaty's promotion of agriculture as a tribal way of life —
offer White Plume and other tribal members good standing in court.
Because the tribe has endorsed hemp as a legitimate crop,
federal authorities would have to clearly prove that the tribe's
right to self-rule isn't as important as the drug laws' application
to non-potent hemp.
"You have this conflict between what the native people say the
treaty means and what the United States would say the treaty
means," says Robert Porter, director of the Tribal Law and
Government Center at the University of Kansas and the Seneca
Nation's first attorney general. "It sounds like a classic setup for
litigation."
White Plume is wary of going to federal court to fight a case
about tribal lands. But seeing this as an issue of sovereignty — and
in their minds, as another effort by the government to break its
pledges — the tribe is preparing a suit of its own. Federal agencies
may be following the letter of the law, but the Oglala consider this
a personal assault by a government they feel has a history of
betrayal.
"Even if they do win, what do they win that they beat down a
tribe again?" asks Ballanco.
--
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