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CounterPunch
October
1, 2002
Tony Black Feather:
the Most Controversial Statement of Our Time?
by
BRENDA NORRELL
STRONGHOLD
TABLE, S.D. Lakota elder Tony
Black Feather told the United Nations that the American flag
represents a racist nation that violates natural and spiritual
laws, dishonors treaties and engages in a game plan of corporate
greed.
In his statement delivered to the United
Nations and distributed here on Stronghold Table, Black Feather
pressed for disarmament and peace as President Bush pressed for
war in Iraq.
Urging America to "come clean in
the eyes of the world," Black Feather said people often
ask him about the red, white and blue of the American flag
"I tell them that the aboriginal
Lakota people of this country look at this flag as a piece of
red, white and blue cloth that stands for the foreign racist
system that has oppressed Indigenous peoples for centuries.
"For traditional Lakota people,
that piece of red, white and blue cloth stands for a system and
a country that does not honor it's own word."
Black Feather, in his statement to the
Working Group on Indigenous Populations, said the flag represents
a nation of dishonor.
"If it stood for honor and truth,
it would remember our treaties and give them the appropriate
place under international law. But it doesn't. It dishonors its
own word and violates its treaties, that piece of red, white
and blue cloth."
On the Stronghold, Black Feather distributed
his written statement, which was delivered to the United Nations
in July, as he challenged the National Park Service in the Badlands.
Ignoring demands from the tribe, the Park Service plans to excavate
fossils in the burial grounds of the Ghost Dancers massacred
here after they survived the massacre of Wounded Knee.
"America is a world problem,"
Black Feather told National Park Service officials leading a
tour in the Badlands of the proposed excavation site on Oglala
Sioux tribal land.
Lakota gathered here say the bones of
the Ghost Dancers, who danced here to bring back the buffalo
and the old ways, are revealing themselves at this time for a
reason.
With a message for humanity and calling
for disarmament around the world, Black Feather chastised the
Park Service for entering sacred grounds in the Badlands with
armed park rangers.
At the resistance camp manned by the
Tokala Warrior Society, the traditional Grey Eagle Society, Russell
Means and others chastised National Park Service officials.
Pointing out violations of federal laws,
Lakota said the arrogance and racism is indicative of federal
Indian policy and a nation that is spiritually bankrupt.
Black Feather's comments on deception
and the flag were representative of the situation here.
Black Feather said of the American flag,
"This colorful cloth represents imperialism with the professed
Christian duty to destroy many races of peoples throughout the
world, to illegally confiscate their possessions, property and
even their lives when U.S. interests need to be served.
"It is their intention to establish
one world government, based solely on the American system of
corporate greed.
"The cloth represents a political
language that is designated to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable. This piece of red, white and blue cloth represents
a political system that is contrary to the principles of Natural
Law and the moral principles, which govern a diversified humanity.
"This piece of cloth misrepresents
the human race.
"As Lakota people, we engage in
different actions to remember the Natural Law and to assert our
rights."
Black Feather said the takeover of the
Oglala Sioux Tribal Council offices and the current resistance
on Stronghold Table asserts the rights of the Lakota people.
"As the aboriginal people of this
land, we must understand and assert that it is under our care.
The continents of the world belong to its aboriginal peoples.
"Someday somebody will have to account
for these violations of the Natural Law and violations against
Creation that the piece of cloth has been responsible for.
"The United States needs to come
clean to cleanse its conscience in the eyes of the world. Only
then will we have justice and balance in this world."
Black Feather's statement was among those
of the Tetuwan Oyate Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council, delivered
to the XXth Session of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations
in July and on Stronghold Table in August.
Brenda Norrell writes
about Indian affairs and the American west.
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