Lakota Occupy Island.

LaFramboise Island, South Dakota 

On an island in the middle of the Missouri River, Lakota protesters have dug in to prevent what they regard as the latest theft of their ancestral land.

"We have to take a stand," says Dan Merrival from the Pine Ridge reservation. "Our ancestors shed their blood for this land."

The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 recognized Lakota ownership of the Missouri River and millions of acres to the west. Less than a decade later, the U.S. government violated the treaty and took most of that land, forcing the Lakota onto. reservations. Five of these reservations lie along the river.

In the 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers took the best of this riverside reservation land to build five massive dams. "They built the dams just above the white towns," says Wounded Knee tribal councilman Emmett Kelly. "They flooded the Indian towns and grave sites with reservoirs."

In 1996, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, invited Republican Governor William Janklow and several tribal chairmen to Washington to negotiate the transfer of excess land taken by the Army Corps of Engineers to the state and the tribes. The resulting Wildlife Restoration Act would return some of the land to the Lakota people. But developed recreation sites inside the reservations would belong to the state. Five of seven Lakota Sioux tribes rejected the land transfer. They say all the land should be returned to the tribes alone, according to the Treaty of Fort Laramie.

Even after the five tribes voted against it, Daschle included the land transfer in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1999, which passed by unanimous vote. Daschle asked the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the land transfer, and Janklow proclaimed that he isn't bound by the 1868 treaty since he didn't sign it.

Following a March 22 demonstration against the land transfer at the state capitol, Lakota spiritual leaders erected a tipi and built a ceremony fire on LaFramboise Island. The Lakota protesters call their camp Oceti Sakowin (the seven council fires, after the seven tribes that signed the 1868 treaty). The spiritual leaders have been joined by a dozen others in tipis representing five Lakota tribes and by human rights observers from Christian Peacemaker Teams--a combined effort of Mennonite, Quaker, and United Brethren churches.

Backed by resolutions from several tribal councils and the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, protesters demanded Congressional hearings and a full Environmental Impact Statement.

The protests have had an effect. Daschle attached an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act, which passed the Senate on April 19. The amendment would extend tribal jurisdiction over hunting and fishing to the water's edge but leaves jurisdiction over the river with the state. A Daschle spokesperson also said there will be an Environmental Impact Statement on lands transferred to the state, and that Daschle is considering holding hearings in South Dakota. These concessions fall short of the encampment's demands.

Return of treaty lands to the Great Sioux Nation is the ultimate goal of the protesters. Lakota spiritual leader Rick Two Dogs emphasizes the spiritual nature of the camp. "We don't have a word for `political' in the Lakota language," he says. "Everything we do is with prayer."

For more information, contact Eileen Iron Cloud, Box 68, Porcupine, SD 57772.