March on Whiteclay planned
By Steve Miller, West River Editor
WHITECLAY, Neb. - Pine Ridge Reservation residents and supporters will march again on Saturday, June 7, to protest the unsolved murders of two Pine Ridge men whose bodies were found four years ago just north of Whiteclay.
The march to Whiteclay will protest the investigation into the deaths, other unsolved murders in Sheridan County, Neb., and continuing beer sales in Whiteclay, according to organizer Tom Poor Bear of Wanblee.
A series of marches to protest the murders and beer sales began shortly after the brutally beaten bodies of Wilson "Wally" Black Elk Jr., 40, and Ronald Hard Heart, 39, were found June 8, 1999, in a field between Whiteclay and Pine Ridge Village. The two had last been seen in Whiteclay, Poor Bear said.
Poor Bear, Black Elk's half brother and Hard Heart's cousin, criticized the FBI for what he called the lack of progress in the investigation and for not maintaining communication with the murdered men's families.
The FBI has said in the past that it checked out every lead in the murders of Black Elk and Hard Heart but had not come up with enough evidence to make an arrest.
The FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs officers on Pine Ridge are still investigating the case, according to Mike Elton, special agent with the Rapid City office of the FBI.
"As far as the investigation, any information that would come in will be investigated," Elton said Monday. "All leads have been investigated, and any leads that would come are high priority."
Poor Bear said American Indian Movement activists Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt likely will take part in the June 7 march, and AIM leader Dennis Banks has been invited. Also scheduled to attend are representatives of Nebraskans for Peace, a group that has lobbied to close down the Whiteclay beer sales; the Democratic Party of Nebraska; and religious and civil-rights groups.
The march will converge on Whiteclay from two directions. Pine Ridge residents and their supporters will begin the march at 1 p.m. from Billy Mills Hall in Pine Ridge north of Whiteclay.
Nebraskans for Peace and others will march to Whiteclay from the south.
In Whiteclay, the groups will hold a rally to protest the unsolved murders, alleged liquor-regulation violations by Whiteclay bar owners and eight other unsolved murders in Sheridan County, Poor Bear said Monday.
Rally organizers will seek a report from the FBI and the BIA updating the investigation on the Black Elk-Hard Heart case, he said. "We would like to see a special team of investigators other than the FBI to investigate crimes against our people."
The group will also ask for a federal grand jury to investigate the case.
After the rally, the group will walk to Camp Justice, just across the Nebraska-South Dakota border, for a meal, honorings and prayers.
Camp Justice was established in 1999 to keep focus on the murders and related issues. "Since the physical presence of Camp Justice, none of our people have been found dead in Sheridan County in the last four years," Poor Bear said.
The first march to protest the deaths, on June 26, 1999, ended with the looting and arson of a Whiteclay grocery store.
Subsequent marches were peaceful, although several activists were arrested in a later march for crossing a police line.
Poor Bear said a boycott of the Whiteclay stores that sell beer didn't work.
Whiteclay is about 200 feet from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol is banned. The reservation has one of the nation's highest alcoholism-related mortality rates.
The Whiteclay stores annually sell more than 4 million cans of beer, virtually all of it to Pine Ridge residents, according to Nebraskans for Peace.
Nebraskans for Peace contends that Nebraska police don't enforce open-container and public-drunkenness laws in Whiteclay.
Nebraska officials counter that the sale of alcohol is legal and that whenever a violation is cited, a ticket is issued.
Pine Ridge residents, tribal officials and Nebraska activists have lobbied the Nebraska Legislature to shut down or limit the beer and wine sales in Whiteclay, so far unsuccessfully.
Legislation to reform Indian land policies is on the Congressional agenda again this year after failing to pass last session.
The American Indian Probate Reform Act of 2003 is pitched as a way to encourage estate planning and prevent the increased fractionation of Indian lands. Its main sponsors are Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the leaders of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
Tomorrow, the panel will hear from a slate of representatives on the need to create a unified inheritance code for Indian Country. Indian landowners are currently subject to 33 state probate laws, leading to unequal treatment, according to tribal leaders and Bush administration officials.
Last year, a version of the bill was included in an omnibus package that was approved by the Senate. But the House adjourned without taking up the matter.
To some in Indian Country, that was good news. Several tribes, mostly in the Plains, passed resolutions against it and some inter-tribal organizations like the Indian Land Working Group opposed a controversial provision to create a new status of land called a "passive" trust.
The new version, S.550, includes the same proposal to limit the federal government's trust responsibilities. If enacted, the Department of Interior will not be required to account for revenues generated from land held in passive status. The Bureau of Indian Affairs will not be required to approve most leases on passive land.
The government will still be responsible for probate and any other activities that otherwise apply to Indian lands. Passive land remains free from state taxation and alienation -- unless it is converted to fee status.
Passive trust came out of discussions between tribal attorneys, the Bush administration and the Senate committee. It was considered a compromise between tribes who wanted Congress to adopt expansive definition of "Indian" in order to prevent land from falling out of Indian ownership and the Interior, which opposed increasing its trust responsibilities.
According to Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, the department has a hard time managing the 11 million acres of land held in trust for individual Indians. Much of it is fractionated, meaning hundreds of owners share an interest in small plots of land.
A pilot program in Wisconsin resulted in the purchase of 40,000 "undivided" interests, said Griles at a House hearing in March. But during that same time period, an equal number of new interests were created.
"We're getting further behind," he said. "We're not able to keep up."
Probate reform is one way to eliminate fractionated ownership because it encourages Indian landowners to develop wills and plan for their estates. It can make it easier not just on the federal government but on tribes who often deal with "checkerboard" ownership patterns on reservations where land is split between Indians and non-Indians.
But defining who can inherit Indian land was a touchy subject when the bill came up for debate last year. Tribes are worried that a limited definition of "Indian" would hurt lineal descendants who may or may not meet tribal membership criteria but are considered Indian nonetheless.
"It is breaking her heart that she cannot leave her non-enrolled grandchildren any of her property as it would pass out of trust," Maurice Lyons, chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians of California, said of an elder confronted with the dilemma.
The witnesses for tomorrow's hearing include Wayne Nordwall, a regional BIA official; John Berrey, the chairman of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma who sat on the Interior's "as-is" study of trust activities; Cris Stainbrook, executive director of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation; and Austin Nunez, chairman of the Indian Land Working Group.
Change in regulations would disinherit thousands of Indian landowners
Posted: November 19, 2002 - 1:20pm EST
by: Mark Fogarty / Today Correspondent
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A pending change to the Indian Land Consolidation Act (ILCA) would disinherit thousands of American Indian landholders, according to the Indian Land Working Group.
The 2000 Amendments to the ILCA, which have been signed into law but not yet converted to Department of Interior regulations, would change its definition of "Indian" to an enrolled member of a tribe, rather than use the more liberal lineal descendant definition.
The more than 200 attendees at the Working Group's annual Indian Land Consolidation Symposium heard that this change, if implemented by DOI, would cut inheritance rights to heirs of Indian allotments who are not tribal members, either because they fail to meet blood quantum tests or for any other reason.
"Membership is a social or political concept. ‘Indian’ is blood. We never confused tribal member with Indian," said administrative law-judge Sally Willett at the meeting. Willett, a former DOI employee with twenty years of experience in Indian probate, called the change in definition "the ethnic cleansing of the American Indian."
Bill Ballew, who heads the planning department for the Lummi Nation of Washington state, told the meeting the change in definition would definitely have an adverse effect on his nation.
"Quite a few families will lose their land base," he said. What will happen is that the current generation will receive a life estate in the property, but won’t be able to pass it along. "The next generation is going to be the one losing it," he said.
"It looks as if we’re going to be stuck with this new definition of Indian so I guess we’re going to have to find a way around it," he said. His tribe is considering a tribal "land assignment" in which the tribe could assign the allotment back to the affected family.
Austin Nunez, chair of ILWG and chair of the San Xavier district of the Tohono O’odham Nation, testified before Congress earlier this year that "at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation alone, 4,096 heirs representing 15,749.44 acres will not be able to inherit."
Underlining the sovereignty issues for Congress, Nunez testified "Defining who can inherit is a tribal authority and needs to be determined by each tribal community."
Helen Sanders, vice chair of ILWG, detailed other objections the group has to the passed amendments and others that are currently pending in S.1340, which is currently being considered by Congress. Another is "joint tenancy with right of survivorship." Here, if an Indian landowner dies without a will, his heirs would inherit jointly, with the last surviving heir inheriting the land. This would have the effect of disinheriting descendants of the heirs who die first.
In her own case, Sanders said she would benefit from joint tenancy, since she is the last surviving sibling on one half of her great grandfather’s allotment on the Quinault reservation in Washington. But this would unfairly disinherit her nieces and nephews, she said.
She also objected to the pilot project that allows the Secretary of the Interior to purchase small interests in allotments and deed them over to the tribe.
The idea is to try to lessen "fractionation" of Indian lands, caused by multiple heirs in succeeding generations getting an undivided interest in the land (her great-grandfather’s 80-acre allotment on the Quinault now has about 80 heirs).
But, she said, the program is targeting the two-percent or less interests that were the focus of the Supreme Court case Babbitt v. Youpee. In that case, the high court found the previous taking of these tiny parcels unconstitutional, and DOI issued a directive to return those taken to their owners.
But, she said, by and large these two-percent "escheats" have not been returned, and buying them and donating them to tribes does not jibe with the Supreme Court decision.
Willett also said she objects to the "partition" provisions of the new amendments, feeling that they will lead to partitions of lands that can’t be partitioned.
A "passive trust" provision is also problematic, she said, as it will cause large amounts of land to pass from trust to "fee" (private property) status.
SOUTH DAKOTA BULLDOZES NATIVE BURIAL GROUNDS & SACRED SITES!
The State Of South Dakota is preparing to increase tourism this summer,
by celebrating the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The
preparations include developing the newly acquired lands up and down the
Missouri River, developing the "North Point Area" to provide recreation
areas, sewage facilities, toilets, welcome centers and fish cleaning
stations. This development is happening in spite of the known fact that
this land (along the Missouri River) is the burial ground for hundreds
of thousands of ancestors of the U.S. Native people from many tribes.
The excavation began this month and as soon as the earth moving began,
the Human Remains of the Native Burial Grounds have been unearthed. Skulls,
bones (human legs, arms, joints, vertebrae) mourning bowls and
ceremonial items have been found in the moved earth. The contractors have said
they were never told this was a burial ground, they are disturbed by this and
have said this is a very different job than they were contracted for.
The state of South Dakota is ignoring the request of the Native People
to STOP the desecration of these known burial grounds. As you read this,
women, men and children are struggling on their hands and knees to
scratch at the earth, to recover the bones of their ancestors. No one in the
state of South Dakota seems to care! As a result, we are calling for a
National/International BOYCOTT Of The State Of South Dakota.
Join in a new NATIONAL BOYCOTT OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA!
Tell them you will NOT visit a state that robs Native people of their
lands, then bulldozes and desecrates their sacred sites and burial grounds to
make RV sewage dumps, fish cleaning stations, parking lots, and picnic areas
all in the name of tourism and $. Tell them you will be spreading the word
by telling your family, friends, and loved ones to also join with the
thousands of others who will not go to South Dakota until the state stops its
desecrations and disrespect of the tribes of South Dakota!
Please contact the South Dakota Department of Tourism to let them know
you support the BOYCOTT of the state of South Dakota because of the
desecration of the native burial grounds. We will not visit or support the state of
South Dakota until the excavation stops and the wishes of the Native People
are respected!
Contact List for South Dakota action to register your boycott:
" South Dakota Governor
M. Michael Rounds 605-773-3661 Fax 605-773-5844
governor@state.sd.us
" Representative Bill Janklow (R)
202-225-2801 fx 202-225-5823
" SD Game Fish & Parks Department
605-773-3391
" US Army Corps of Engineers
Colonel Kurt Ubbelohde, Omaha, Nebraska
Human burial grounds are is respected the world over. No one would
willingly desecrate the graves of human beings, anywhere. This is
respected the world over, except in the State Of South Dakota, USA.
PLEASE support the Boycott of the state of South Dakota, which has
ignored the repeated request of many Native Peoples to stop the excavation of
their burial grounds. This means, a concentrated refusal to have any dealings
with South Dakota, especially, no travel to South Dakota until this atrocity
stops!
PLEASE! Call your congressional representative to let them know how you
feel. This is a National issue, the past and current treatment of
Indigenous peoples must be recognized federally. Contact all your
representatives, local, state, federal and national. To all our
international supporters, please contact the appropriate governmental
office, as well as the United Nation representative for your country.
Again, many thanks for helping us to create a public outcry that these
leaders might hear. They may not pay attention to us, but if enough
people from this country and beyond speak out in support of our efforts to
protect our relatives, we feel we have a chance. Thank you for responding to
this Human Rights Action.
White Swan/North Point Team
For more information, please call;
1 (605) 487 - 7769
