Indigenous Resistance to Genocide and Land Theft

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz:

“From the beginning of colonialism some 5-6 centuries ago, those first hit by the brunt of it and survived—the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas—have always known that it wasn’t only about their own survival, but also the survival of humanity, of all life and sustenance. They have continued to resist and to survive, but they cannot overcome and transform without the mass of humanity being involved. Everything now is about survival, so it’s not so much a question of supporting Indigenous resistance, as joining it.” The American genocide, indigenous resistance and human survival (2015)

The Great Sioux Nation was my first book in 1977 (isbn.nu). It came out of the Wounded Knee trials…. So we decided to have these remaining cases … be dismissed on the basis of this [1868 Fort Laramie] Treaty that said that any crimes committed in the Great Sioux Nation, the people were subject to punishment by Sioux authorities. This [1868] was when the Great Sioux Nation was a contiguous land base that covered all of North and South Dakota, some of Wyoming and Montana and much of Nebraska. That has been broken down into 7 separate little reservations within that. The largest amount of that land, taken away when the Black Hills were the sacred area of the Sioux, were taken illegally…. [B]ecause of AIM and Wounded Knee and the Sioux Treaty hearing, in 1980 the Supreme Court accepted a case and found that the Black Hills were taken illegally [United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371]. But the Federal Government only pays money compensation, not restoration of land. So the Sioux refused to take the money and now it’s up to something like almost 2 billion dollars in a trust fund that the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere refuse to take because they want the land back. Time of Useful Consciousness Radio broadcast Part Two, 17:24-19:48 (2015)