This is an appeal to raise awareness and funding for the Lakota (Sioux) American Indians living on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota USA. Pine Ridge and Rosebud were originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Today, the descendants of families who defended their land at Little Big Horn in 1876 and those who survived the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 are living with the legacy of the atrocities. They endure hardship, neglect and extreme poverty in third world conditions on reservation land.

This once vast area which included the Black Hills has been broken up and consistently raped for gold and minerals since the Treaty violation in 1876. Pine Ridge and Rosebud are now reduced to the most barren areas of South Dakota. But even this land, once regarded as ‘worthless’ by the US government, is now being plundered. For uranium. Abandoned uranium mines cause appalling health problems to Lakota families with high rates of cancer, miscarriages and birth defects. Defenders of the Black Hills is a US registered charity whose actions are to ‘restore and protect the environment of the Black Hills and the surrounding Treaty Area to the best of their ability’. Please make donations to them online via their website.

US government policy holds the Lakota in submission. Land that has not been seized is held 'in trust' and can never be used as collateral to create infrastructure, finance industry or forge an economy. There are never any prospects for employment apart from the few jobs available in the corrupt US controlled administrative sector. Many traditional Lakota families live in old battered trailers or dilapidated wooden cabins without proper sanitation and exposure to asbestos and black mould. Lakota Aid is a UK registered charity seeking donors who will send money directly to traditional Lakota people living on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. Please contact them via their website for further information.

The Lakota struggle is neglected by the media, and ignored by the
US government. My name is Dave Terrey, a drummer and I've created ‘drummersuk’ to support this struggle. Read my blogs and check my links. If you make donations please quote drummersuk as your source.

Dave - dave.terrey@homechoice.co.uk

Un-natural disaster appeal

The picture you see here is not from a Tsunami or Hurricane disaster that will gain global media awareness and have massive financial aid structures put in place to eventually rebuild, refurbish and return to normal.

THIS IS ‘NORMAL’ to the Lakota!

This is the home of a Lakota woman living on the Pine Ridge reservation, showing every-day living conditions. Her trailer will not be replaced, rebuilt or refurbished because the need for financial aid will not be recognised.

Many residents are living in these conditions and need urgent financial support. The weather in this area is prone to extremes. Along with hurricanes – that are not recorded and won't make the press – the summer burning heat buckles the metal of these trailers and the winter brings freezing winds that howl through the gaping holes. This home was literally ‘picked up’ by a hurricane and dumped back down again.

Continual neglect from US governments over many years has resulted in an unstable foundation for the Lakota people, as you can see here, but also socially and economically. The link 'Lost in the wilderness' is a picture gallery that illustrates the poverty and neglect on the reservation.

Photo courtesy of Lakota Aid

Propane gas appeal

The Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations have to rely on propane gas for their heating and cooking. There is no mains gas supply to the reservations and electricity is expensive. Many Lakota cannot meet the cost required to sustain regular supplies of propane. Some do not even have a propane tank, like the one in the picture being installed, and are using small portable heaters which are unsafe and insufficient.

Propane gas is needed all year round. Winters in South Dakota can bring temperatures as low as minus 20-40 degrees below freezing, so propane fuel is the difference between life and death!

Families can be cut off in extreme weather conditions and freeze to death if they do not have propane for heating. Some trailer homes are vastly overcrowded and Elders will sleep outside in an old battered old car they may own, simply to allow women and children to be indoors.

Photo courtesy of Lakota Aid

Healthcare and the elderly

Diabetes is an acute problem and a real killer. It needn’t be with proper medical care. Because the Lakota people live in such a remote and barren part of US, and very little is done to help them with healthcare, the dialysis patients have to rely on transportation to take them the vast distance to the hospital at Pine Ridge for their treatment, many having to go 2-3 times a week. If they cannot organise transport they simply miss out on their dialysis, get sicker and sicker and eventually die in a very miserable way!!

The elderly also need properly equipped care homes to support them in old age, and more hospital or clinic facilities built and staffed by American Indian people. The unemployment rate is extremely high on the reservations. Ninety percent of the help needed there is to fund people to be trained in skilled areas such as healthcare, carpentry, electricians, plumbers etc, the list is endless.

You can help by either contacting Lakota Aid to donate to individual Lakota residents or to Defenders of the Black Hills with larger donations.

Photo courtesy of Lakota Aid

Uranium contamination

The disastrous effects of uranium mining in South Dakota are now apparent at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Contamination to crops, rivers and water systems caused by toxic poisons, radioactive dust and other hazardous waste needs to be brought to public notice and addressed.

Charmaine White Face Coordinator of ‘The Defenders of the Black Hills’ is continually campaigning for change and is a key figure in the human rights struggle for her people. The article below recognises her achievements concerning the uranium issues. Please check the ‘Defenders’ website for information about uranium contamination. The picture shows contamination to a river running through the Reservation.

Photo courtesy of Lakota Aid


Taken from The Defenders of the Black Hills website

CHARMAINE WHITE FACE TO RECEIVE NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE RESISTANCE AWARD

1 Aug. MUNICH–The Nuclear-Free Future Awards honours individuals, organisations and communities for their outstanding commitment towards creating a world freed from the threat of nuclear weapons and atomic energy. This year, the Award jury members – who include Johan Galtung (Norway), Val Kilmer (New Mexico), Chris Peters (California), Kirkpatrick Sale (Massachusetts), Galsan Tschinag (Ulan Bator), and Christine von Weizsäcker (Germany) – have selected Charmaine White Face to receive, endowed with a money purse of $10,000, the Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Resistance.

Educated as a biologist, Charmaine White Face is the moving spirit behind the Defenders of the Black Hills, an organization that monitors abandoned uranium mines on sacred Lakota Lands and seeks the remediation of hazardous waste ponds that contaminate the region with high levels of radium 226, arsenic, lead and iron. A central part of Ms White Face’s message is that not just the Lakota, but all of us are threatened: aquifers cover massive areas of the continent, rivers empty into one another, radioactive dust is carried by the wind, and toxic poisons in the soil nourish grass and feed crops that eventually work their way into the mainstream food chain.

100 years to rise again

Since the violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty the Lakota have fought in vain for the US government to uphold its agreements. They are also fighting extreme health and social problems. Generation after generation clung together in despair as families were left to starve by the authorities but ‘fed’ alcohol by traders in the first half of the 20th century. Today alcohol abuse is a big problem for the Lakota because of that.

It took 100 years from 1868 for them to become strong and confident enough to rise again.

In 1968 Dennis Banks an Ojibwa would have an idea to monitor police activity in Minneapolis where a lot of abuse to the Lakota people was taking place. In light of two incidents, the shameful degrading assault on Raymond Yellow Thunder leading to his death and the murder of Wesley Bad Heart Bear, Banks would consolidate the American Indian Movement and head three major campaigns for his people in ’72 and ‘73.

Picture left 1873
Dull Knife (seated) and Little Wolf were invited to Washington with other Lakota leaders to discuss treaty rights, for the ‘Sioux Agency’ now the Pine Ridge Reservation. This picture was taken at the White House in 1873 where talks took place. The Dull Knife family encampment was massacred by US cavalry troops in 1877. Many managed to escape to the mountains including Dull Knife and Little Wolf.

The Dull Knife family history from past to present day is told in the excellent book ‘The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge’, available on Amazon. Read my review.


Picture right 1973
Dennis Banks (right) founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and AIM key leader Russell Means initiated the Trail of Broken Treaties in 1972 to hold talks with Washington administrators concerning policies in the treaty. Although prior arrangements had been made, their arrival was met with complete contempt by US government officials. With total frustration over the filthy and inadequate accommodation allocated to them AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington. The picture shows Banks and Means triumphant after all charges were dropped concerning the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand Off.

Their stories are told in two brilliant autobiographies. ‘Ojibwa Warrior – Dennis Banks and the rise of the American Indian Movement’ and ‘Where White Men Fear To Tread – Russell Means with Marvin J Wolf, both available on Amazon. Read my review.

Related news highlights

UN declaration on rights is gaining momentum

NEW YORK - At the recent United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, North American representative Tonya Gonnella Frichner called on American Indians to begin using the landmark declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples in their everyday interactions.

''We have an obligation to read the declaration,'' she said on the last day of the two-week forum. ''We can begin to use it in our communities right now.''

The declaration, which affirms that ''indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples,'' was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly after a 30-year effort last September. Concern ran high among the more than 3,700 registered participants about how to keep momentum after the successful vote and how to implement the declaration more fully. But Frichner, who has been involved in the U.N. for the same long years it took to pass the declaration, is encouraged.

''The declaration has hit a government nerve here at the U.N.,'' said Frichner, an Onondaga lawyer and New York City-based indigenous rights activist.

In the eight months since the declaration was approved, the Supreme Court of Belize has referred to it in its decisions and Bolivia has included it in its constitution. The states of Arizona and Maine have passed measures of support for the declaration, as has the city of Phoenix. The Canadian Parliament also voted its support for the declaration, though Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to sign it. Still, this movement, along with Australia's recent apology to its Aboriginal people, gives Frichner hope.

Read more about this declaraton in Indian Country Today.