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Obama Sells Out The Sioux
from headline story, December 19, 2009, by NDN News
Crow Creek: Stolen Lands, Wind Farms and Taking a Stand for the People
The Crow Creek Reservation is located in South Dakota and was established in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
<…>a land Area of 125,591 acres… Crow Creek Sioux Reservation encompasses Buffalo County and portions of Hyde and Brule Counties. Crow Creek Sioux Tribe is consistently documented as one of the poorest Reservations in the Nation, with 78% of their members living below the poverty line.
On December 3, 2009 the Internal Revenue Service unlawfully auctioned off 7112 acres located on Crow Creek Sioux Tribal land. The land is owned by Crow Creek Tribal Farms, Inc. a Tribal corporation and distinct legal entity from the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.
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The land sold at auction to a non Indian, on December 3rd for $2.6 million dollars. A recent appraisal was completed for the property, at an estimated $4.6 million dollars. Chairman Brandon Sazue was present to witness the land being unlawfully sold at auction.
The Tribe has 180 days from the date of seizure to buy their land back, with an additional penalty of 20% interest.
Ironically, the Crow Creek Tribe has been forced to purchase their treaty land back on two separate occasions, both due to illegal land grabs.
The land grab is merely the latest swindle as historic abuses are repeated by none other than the Real Estate Shyster-in-Chief himself, President Obama, this time selling out *two* nations. His hypocritical Christmastime gift of dirty profit for a so-called clean energy cartel began last winter when Touchstone Energy's local subsidiary, Central Electric, shut off the lights— and the heaters, water pumps, medical devices, refrigerators etc.— on tribe members who paradoxically are paying America's third-highest electricity rates, while struggling against an unemployment rate of 85%, as well as the very same harsh weather conditions that earn their land the official third-highest rank in wind energy potential!
Obama and his adoring media toadies don't want you to know many Sioux have owed no more than $20, $50, even $100 still being a relatively paltry sum on their current bill when their electrical lifeline was cut off. Obama remains silent while the Touchstone Energy company adds insult to injury by extorting arm-and-a-leg reconnection fees far in excess of the original bill for actual consumption.
The background details clearly show the shut-offs violate federal and state regulations that provide minimal health and utility safeguards for the rest of us. Ah, but the energy corporation has claimed a spurious exemption on jurisdictional grounds that Crow Creek customers were living, so to speak, on foreign soil not under any such South Dakotan and U.S. laws. Never mind the same Sioux land, which company and government officials alike have deemed sovereign whenever the rule suited their convenience, is now being passed along like booty from IRS to corporate hands. Never mind that if the Sioux and their land do indeed hold the special status of a sovereign Native American nation, then they should be exempted from the Internal Revenue Service's employment tax rules just as the Bureau of Indian Affairs had advised the tribe months ago.
Would a wind power project bring jobs to Crow Creek and possibly transform the area? The real questions though are more complex: who will be the employer, the real owner of the land? Will the ones who proclaim their rights also claim responsibilities for every environmental and economic consequence, and who among them will take the profits if not the risks?
Redress of Grievances
- For what it's worth, sign the On-Line Petition (details below) and share the link to it as well as to this "Obama Sells Out The Sioux" post here at Miscellani.
- Give some much needed and appreciated help to the Crow Creek people in whatever practical ways you can.
- Also feel free to add your own points to my quicklist:
* Demand resignation of IRS Commissioner,
Douglas Shulman.* Demand resignation of Shulman's boss -
Treasury Secy. & Tax Cheat, Tim Geithner.* Demand resignation of their boss -
Barack Obama.
- Nor should we shy away from prosecuting them, along with the chief executives of Touchstone Energy and its local affiliate.
- At the very least, they should be held accountable for innocent people dying and suffering in Crow Creek because the Touchstone Energy company was allowed to shut off electricity in the middle of brutal winter storms. After all, this story is about much more than just a quick `n´ dirty land auction! Who else but these men, easily identified by name and position, are in fact responsible— are indeed deserving of *blame*— for the serious, heinous crimes committed before, during and after the auction?
The crimes are old and familiar... repeating American history lessons of outright genocide, constant evictions, deprivation of basic resources, diverting and acquisitioning native lands to grab their ore, water, energy sources etc., false imprisonment, tearing children from parents and tribe to destroy the language and weaken the culture... a steady drip by drip, continuing to the present day with us blogging here while President Nero O'Zero burns a few more millions just to play a game of bad golf in Hawaii.
Today the Crow Creek Reservation is bereft of its tribe who made it their home. The people know they belong to the land as much as the land belongs to them.
More Info
- Call to Action: *Crow Creek Land Is Not for Sale* by Nico - Twin Cities Indymedia - December 12, 2009. Includes video, news links, reprint of Waziyatawin's post, and info on how to offer support and donations.
- Dammed Indians Revisited: The Continuing History of the Pick-Sloan Project and the Missouri River Sioux by Michael L. Lawson - South Dakota State Historical Society Press - February 2010. «The 1944 Pick-Sloan Plan created a wealth of economic opportunities for the states lying along the Missouri River. But the project also flooded more than two hundred thousand acres of bottomlands that helped to sustain the Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Indians) and forced the relocation of whole communities. Dammed Indians Revisited examines how the work of the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation affected the communities along the river, demonstrating the unequal relationship between the tribes and the federal government. Lawson has unearthed new information, revising his original work to bring the story up to date. While the flooding occurred more than sixty years ago, the impact of the plan and its ramifications for continuing tribal-federal relations remain relevant in the twenty-first century.»
- First Voices Indigenous Radio December 17, 2009. Audio of recent interview of Brandon Sazue, Chairman of Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and Moses Brings Plenty—Strong Heart Society.
- Fundraiser for Crow Creek Reservation: Energy company cut power, IRS took land by Jodi Rave - December 11, 2009. «The rub here is that the tribe is situated right next to the Big Bend Hydroelectric Dam. The Corps of Engineers claimed tens of thousands of acres of Indian land in the 1950s to build a series of dams along the Missouri. No coincidence that all the condemned land was on Indian reservations.»
- Herseth Sandlin questions tribal land auction Associated Press - December 11, 2009. «U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is questioning the Internal Revenue Service's move to auction tribal land on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. The South Dakota Democrat says she is worried about the precedent it sets.»
- On-Line Petition, "Crow Creek Sioux Land is NOT For Sale" addressed to Bureau of Indian Affairs, President Barack H. Obama, SD Governor Rounds, SD Senator Tim Johnson, SD Senator John Thune, and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.
reprint of Vernon Ashley's letter to President Barack H. Obama
The Honorable Barack Obama President, United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20240RE: Crow Creek Sioux Reservation
Dear Mr. President:
As the oldest member of said Tribe, I've been urged to contact you with regard to a vital matter that faces the future of its Tribal members. Historically, the said Tribe did not accept the Wheeler Howard Act of 1934, so they are a Treaty Tribe; and in this light Presidents in history with their authority performed an important role in Indian Affairs/welfare; that authority or power is vested in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
The Tribal Members who reside in the Crow Creek District of the reservation are descendents of the Band of Dakota who faced despotic acts of the U.S. Government in 1863, impounded in 1862 in Fort Snelling in Minnesota then the U.S. Army transported them by barges to the Crow Creek location in 1863. This writer is a descendent of that group. They became accustomed to living along the Missouri River for decades, but the despotic act was the Picks/Sloan Act to harness the Missouri River by creating large earthen dams which inundated choice lands along the River displacing a large number of families who lived in the flood zone. The Congressional Acts for settlement to the Tribe stated these losses would be replaced, but they were never fully carried out. The Crow Creek Reservation was affected by the Fort Randall and Big Bend Dams. The Book "Dammed Indians" describes the efforts of the affected Tribes to struggle for just settlement. The lands lost were Trust Lands, the U.S. Government being protector, but they were taken by the project by authority of eminent domain and condemned.
Mr. President, these despotic acts continue in this present day. The Internal Revenue Service is taking 7100 acres out of the heart of the reservation in payment for funds due the Internal Revenue Service. This tract of land is a choice location for harnessing the wind, and it would be a boom to the Crow Creek Tribal members. Tribal members pay a premium price for power used. This project would create jobs for Tribal members where the unemployment rate is at 90%. The Tribe needs your attention because the Public Auction Sale is scheduled for December 3, 2009. It appears that the Internal Revenue Service is determined to destroy the Crow Creek Reservation.
The writer of this request is a World War II veteran, and throughout his life has worked in the interest of the welfare of Indian people of South Dakota; worked for three Governors, so in his waning years concentrates on his home reservation. Mr. President, this urgent request is asking you to intervene for the poorest reservation in the nation. Thank you for any assistance you can render for said Tribe.Sincerely,
Vernon Ashley
articles indicated for further reading:
· Invisible Women, Good Indians, Taxpayers Like You: An Olympic Triple Screw
· and The War President drones on
· The White House Memo of Mistaken Identity
· Winning The Peace: The Obamazation of Our Nation
· Casting Out Our Lesser Evil
HA HA HA! Oh man. . . . seizing Native American lands . . . that’s, like, comic-book-villain evil. Doesn’t the plot of the movie Dodgeball hinge on something similar? Too bad the Crow Creek Sioux can’t enter a dodgeball tournament during which hijinx and fun ensue and everything turns out right in the end. They just lose.
Is it wrong that I laugh? Sorry, if I didn’t I would cry.
Nah, the name Nero O’Zero fits him perfectly
— he doesn’t have color or character enough for a comic book!
Obama, Geithner’s IRS
and the Touchstone cartel are just sticking to the regular evil plan.
This is beyond disgusting! The land belongs to them and, why is it, if they are a sovereign nation by treaty, what gives the IRS any rights whatsoever to this land? To do this is the same as if they just marched into Mexico and started selling off land! That’s nuts! Whatever it takes to get this issue settled to the betterment of the People of the Land is what should be done and nothing less.
Lonni, I’m with you all the way:
Where would you like to begin?
The court date is in March… but meanwhile, Brandon Sazue and the Crow Creek Sioux people need help. They need supplies, they need money, they need you and me to spread the word about this crime!
Use e-mail, Twitter, FB, whatever you have to share links to this story. Get the word out and don’t give up.
Brandon Sazue hasn’t given up. He’s there in what some are calling the chief’s last stand.
We have to stand with him!
Its a terrible travesty that Obama has not seen fit to treat these people with respect and dignity. I cannot say I am suprised however.
I read a lot last year from Native Americans against Obama and sadly it seems many of their predictions have been proved to be true.
It’s good that you are bringing this out into the open, Victoria. I intend to sign the petition you linked to above and urge others to do the same.