And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Rally to be held to protest deaths of two
Lakota near Pine Ridge
BY CARSON WALKER The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/stories/neb/sto1
American Indian activists Russell Means, Dennis Banks and
Clyde Bellecourt plan to attend a rally Saturday at Pine Ridge, S.D., to
protest the deaths of two Lakota men, according to the rally organizer.
The bodies of Wilson Black Elk Jr., 40, and Ronald Hard Heart, 39, were
found June 8 in a culvert about 1 1/2 miles south of Pine Ridge near the
Nebraska border. They were reportedly last seen June 6.
Autopsies were performed last week in Rapid City, S.D., FBI Supervisory
Special Agent Mark Vukelich told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald this week.
"This is being treated as a homicide," he said, declining to release
details. "We're in major-league investigation mode on this. Our concern is,
as we interview people, we're not getting fed back information people got
from other sources or from the press.
"We're looking at all the possibilities and covering leads as they come up.
We're trying to keep an open mind to all possibilities." Vukelich said all
eight agents in the Rapid City office are working on the investigation.
Despite that, Tom Poor Bear, Black Elk's older half-brother and Hard
Heart's cousin, is organizing a rally Saturday to call attention to
numerous unsolved deaths on the reservation.
Poor Bear, 43, said Tuesday in a telephone interview that he has spoken
with Means, Banks and Bellecourt, and all three plan take part. The
activists were not immediately available to confirm their plans.
The rally is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday near the Pine Ridge
post office, Poor Bear said. Rally participants will march south, stopping
for prayers where the bodies were discovered, then continuing into
Whiteclay, Neb.
"I need to find justice for the murders of these two Lakota men. It is a
rally for justice. Me personally, I don't want it to be stuck in the back
of a file cabinet with "case closed' on it," said Poor Bear, sergeant of
arms for the Oglala Lakota Tribal Council.
"I was in Wounded Knee with Banks and Means. After we found out my brother
and cousin were brutally murdered, I had no alternative but to call on the
American Indian Movement." For years, Indian deaths along the Nebraska
border have gone unsolved, he said. Poor Bear helped identify Black Elk's
body, which he said appeared to have been severely beaten.
"I could go on about the people that were murdered around Sheridan County
(in Nebraska) and nobody has been arrested. I think we need to start
finding justice for our Indian people," Poor Bear said.
Because alcohol is not sold on the Pine Ridge Reservation, people usually
go across the border to nearby Whiteclay, he said.
The problem lies there, Poor Bear said.
"Our money made them rich, but yet we are treated with a lot of prejudice.
They respect our money, but they don't respect our Lakota," he said.
Sheridan County Sheriff Terry Robbins said his department has had no
reported cases of Indians being mistreated by store owners, Sheridan County
residents or even law enforcement agents.
"They're rumors, as far as I'm concerned," Robbins said Tuesday.
He also denies Poor Bear's suggestion that Indians are killed in Nebraska
and their bodies taken back to the reservation in South Dakota, which is
under federal jurisdiction.
"I don't know how many unsolved murders they have on the reservation,"
Robbins said. "We don't have any in Sheridan County, unsolved deaths, you
might say."
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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