For the last hundred years or so, we've engaged in a political fiction in which we treated the Native American Nations as sovereign, and they pretended they believed we really meant it. The Lakota Nation has chosen to call that bluff.
It happens that Aaron Two Elk, whom I mentioned recently, was Oglala Lakota. I'm sure he would be proud today. What we must watch is how the US government responds. In the past it hasn't taken movements of this type seriously; it may (and indeed will likely) simply ignore the declaration. What the Lakota Nation does in response, and what we do in response to that, will be interesting to watch.
15 comments:
Hi Grim,
The link to the Lakota Nation is leading me to a different place, unless I missed it.
Thanks... hope you are all doing well.
BTW -- There is a medieval fesitval near the Cloisters today!
Yeah, I don't know what's up with the missing article. I got it off the Drudge Report, but I don't know the source other than that. The article seems to have disappeared rather than been updated or corrected.
Looks like you can still read part of the text of the announcement here:
http://sfluxe.com/2012/09/29/secession-lakota-sioux-nation-leaves-united-states/
But they are also linking to the dead link at CNS News.
This link has some information. The comments are interesting, too.
Eric Hines
When they secede, does that mean they will give up their part of the 2.9 billion dollars in US federal funding that goes to these supposedly sovereign nations every year?
If so, then I'm all for it :p
Looks like it's not really happening. A good story covering the erroneous story here, and the cache of the CNS article here.
Don't know what happened to the first 'here' link- let's try that again.
Bad Eagle is a good source. I'm sure he knows what he's talking about.
What's less clear is his mystification about why "conservatives" as well as liberals are interested. The idea of the breakup of the country has been floated on both sides of the ideological divide; some want California and Texas to be independent of each other so that California can do the things it wants to do without being held back by reactionary Bible-thumpers, while others fear it may be necessary in the hope that states like Texas won't be dragged down with them. If the story had been true, it would have been an interesting test case for what secession looked like -- and whether the central government would use force to prevent it -- in our period.
He's right, though, about the general ignorance about tribal government. I'm not at all sure who the actual elected leadership is. I did run the question by Wikipedia, who agrees that Means is a leader of the Republic of Lakotah; but apparently that's like the "Republic of Texas."
Still, as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessee Ventura show, it's not unreasonable to assume that a celebrity might also be an elected official. It didn't sound very strange at the time.
My response to this is the same as the last time I heard of it a few years back (and the same as to all those "Freemen" nutters out west). Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. Seriously. LET THEM. Then make sure you give no power, no water, no aid, and most importantly no open border between their "nation" and the rest of the country. Now, it's a BIT more complicated when they claim a five state area (without any of the non-tribal residents consenting to leave), as that would be a hostile takeover of US Territory. But if they want to have the Reservation secede, go for it. Best of luck with that, let me know when you're ready to come back, we'll start re-negotiating at that time.
Very often, the best punishment is letting people have EXACTLY what they want.
Last time my state tried to secede, there was a war.
If it had just been yours, there wouldn't have been. The real issue was the Mississippi river, and with it control of something approaching the totality of US foreign trade where our goods originated in the near- or Mid-West.
That's the question I'm interested in, though. Would we fight a second war? Or would we let people go? Is there enough interest in forcing Texas to pay for California's bailout to send troops to enforce it? Would the troops agree to enforce it? Or would we agree that we have such different priorities as a nation that we could agree to part? The river isn't as important as it used to be, although it still matters a great deal.
Since the area in this case is very large (as Mike points out), and theoretically already sovereign, it would be an interesting case as to whether peaceful secession was possible. As Cass notes, there are good reasons why we might go along with it.
If it had just been yours, there wouldn't have been.
I live in South Carolina (just across the river from Georgia). We're the State that's "too small to be a country, too large to be an asylum." So very true. But in any event, Grim has the right of it. No single State could make a go of it alone. For all the talk of California being the seventh largest economy in the world, if we were to close the border with some "Republic of California", they would rapidly deteriorate. And the smaller the State, the more quickly they'd capitulate. Especially the land-locked states.
Which is one reason I don't particularly fear the Lakota Nation seceding. They could neveer be economically viable, and would potentially have trouble even feeding themselves. That is assuming we let them have all the territory they claim. And that's the only point of contention that could cause a war.
As it would if Texas decided to secede. They might be able to pull it off economically, but if they then said, "and we're taking Oklahoma with us" whether Oklahoma wanted it or not, THEN you'd have a fight. Because while I think US citizens would be unwilling to go to war with Texas if they just wanted to leave, I cannot believe we'd sit by and let them start seizing land without a fight.
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