various resources, excerpts and media

CULTURAL SURVIVAL

U.N. DRAFT DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (Updated 2004)

KEY INDIAN LAWS AND CASES

excerpt from BEHIND THE TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES by Vine Deloria, Jr. 

excerpted from "Bringing the Law Home," Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America, by Ward Churchill, Common Courage Press, 1994.

p. 14-15

...Article II of the U.N.'s 1948 Convention on Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide (UN GOAR Res. 260A (III) 9 December 1948; effective 21 January 1951) specifies five categories of activity to be genocidal when directed against an identified "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group," and therefore criminal under international law. Only one of these involves outright killing,

a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculate to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Under Article III, the Convention makes the following acts punishable under the law;

a) Genocide;
b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
d) Attempt to commit genocide;
e) Complicity in genocide.

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excerpt, Means, Russell. "115 Years of the BIA, 50 Years of IRA. WHAT HAVE WE LOST?" The TREATY platform and REVOLT proposals. circa 1980.

Since REVOLT views US colonialism as the basis for the sorts of problems being experienced at Pine Ridge and across the rest of the Lakota Nation -- for (underline all) the reasons state above, and many more -- it views a comprehensive anti-colonialist program as the only reasonable position to take. What follows is an overview of the ways and means by which REVOLT intends to begin turning its program into reality, its positions into a policy of sovereign self-sufficiency for the Oglala Lakota Nation. It should be understood that an overview is not a comprehensive plan. There is not space within which we could spell out the whole plan behind a program as complex as this. Instead, our intentions are to give people a clear idea of the direction we are heading, and some of the major methods we will use to accomplish our goals.

GOVERNMENT: Upon election, REVOLT will immediately alter the structure of the Oglala Lakota government in the following ways. First, legislative power -- the power to determine policy for the Lakota people -- will be returned to the Council of Elders, traditional chiefs and other traditional Lakota governmental bodies. Second, the elected governing body -- the tribal chair and council -- will serve primarily as a buffer between the traditionals and the federal bureaucracy. It will also have the role and responsibility of executing policy decisions made by the traditionals. REVOLT will thus immediately become merely the executive branch of government, a branch which -- in contrast to the mutation evident in the US government, a branch which -- is rightly subordinate to the traditional, legislative branch. On a longer-term basis, even this function of the tribal chair/council should be viewed as temporary and transitional, as the ultimate intention of REVOLT is to dissolve this IRA form as rapidly as the traditional Lakota government mechanisms can be fully reconstituted.

COMMUNITIES: As one means of accomplishing this, the REVOLT administration will work under direction of the traditionals to establish functioning community governments in every community on the reservation within the first 6 months to 1 year. Further, the REVOLT administration will work under direction of both the traditionals and the newly constituted local governments during the second year to establish functioning regional governments representing several communities simultaneously on whatever basis the people decide. In this way, the overall traditional Lakota governmental form, multi-faceted and multi-leveled, can be rebuilt to its full natural extent in the most rapid possible fashion.

Ahmad, Eqbal, various writings and efforts on liberations (q.v. Said, Edward and book of interviews by David Barsamian)

Chomsky, Noam, Year 501

Churchill, Ward, various books including Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America; A Little Matter of Genocide; Struggle for the Land, etc.

Churchill, Ward and Jim Vanderwall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret War Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

Debo, Angie, A History of Indians of the United States

Deloria Jr., Vine,  various books and writings including Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence; Custer Died For Your Sins; and more

Jaimes, Annette, ed., The State of Native America: Colonialism, Genocide, and Resistance

LaDuke, Winona, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, and various speeches many recorded and published by David Barsamian's Alternative Radio

Mathiessen, Peter, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Said, Edward, various writings on liberation

Sale, Kirkpatrick, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy

Stannard, David, American Holocaust

Weyler, Rex, Blood of the land: The Government and Corporate War Against the American Indian Movement

Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States 1492-Present

The recommendation of these books is not intended to diminish or deny the importance of our oral tradition as Indian peoples. In fact, it is intended to supplement the knowledge that should be gained from the knowledge and wisdom of our elders through their stories and accounts.
We should also know and understand the struggles of other peoples and nations who have fought, or continue to fight, for their liberation. Others have been oppressed, and have been forced to develop effective strategies for their freedom. From Asia and Africa to Palestine and Ireland other struggles give us lessons and reasons to continue our belief that we, too, can endure and succeed in our struggle to be free.

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United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples - http://www.unhchr.ch/indigenous/main.html

Colorado American Indian Movement, writings and essays and more resources, links

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