No Lakota Customs Agents on the Missouri Yet

Russell Means and his merry band of secessionists had me looking forward to getting a new stamp on my passport on my next trip out to Harney Peak. Means submitted treaty withdrawal documents to the State Department in December and declared an independent country for the Lakota people. The "Republic of Lakotah" now has its own website, displaying a map of the nascent nation-statebounded roughly by the Missouri, Yellowstone, and North Platte Rivers.

Alas, a website and some favorable write-ups in the foreign press may be all they have. We have no reports of Lakota customs posts erected at Al's Oasis or Mandan yet. More importantly, elected tribal leaders say Means has no authority to speak or act for them:

Rodney Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said Russell's group was not authorized to speak on the tribe's behalf: ''They're individuals acting on their own. They did not come to the Rosebud Sioux tribal council or our government in any way to get our support and we do not support what they've done....

''Russell made some good points. All of the treaties have not been lived up to by the federal government, but the treaties are the basis for our relationship with the federal government and also the basis for the trust relationship to our lands. We're trying to recover the lands that were wrongfully taken from us, so we are going by the treaties. We need to uphold them.

''We do not support what Means and his group are doing and they don't have any support from any tribal government I know of. They don't speak for us.''

[Gale Courey Toensing, "Withdrawal from U.S. Treaties Enjoys Little Support from Tribal Leaders," Indian Country Today, 2008.01.04]

Wily old Russell actually agrees:

"I maintained from the get-go I do not represent, nor do the free-thinking, free-seeking Lakota want to have anything to do with, the 'hang around the fort' Indians, those collaborators with the government who perpetuate our poverty, misery and our sickness - in other words, our genocide. They are part and parcel of that genocide. I couldn't care less what the bought-and-paid-for, 'hang around the fort' Indians represent or what they say. End of conversation,'' Means said [Courey Toensing].

When I was in eighth grade, I thought South Dakota ought to secede from the U.S. That desire came mostly from an instinctual urge for great drama in public affairs, and perhaps the thought that it would be easier for me to run for President of an independent South Dakota than the whole darn U.S.A. Means may be thinking along those same lines.

Perhaps Means could find some useful allies among the white population. West River South Dakotans often feel like they get bossed around by the big money, big business interests from Sioux Falls and other less manly, hatless types from East River. West River legislator Gordon Pederson once told the New York Times, "People around here will tell you they got it all wrong when they divided the Dakotas. It should have been West Dakota and East Dakota" [Dirk Johnson, "Gold Divides Dakotans as River Did," New York Times, 1988.10.08]. West River folks are much more hawkish in the fight against government intervention; joining with their Lakota neighbors in thumbing their nose at the federal government might be right in character.

Picture it: Russell Means and Bill Napoli, side by side at the barricades, fighting for a new nation. It could work... and at the very least, it would get Bill Napoli out of our state legislature once and for all.