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<div class="entry-date">May 29, 2013<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/29/lakota-to-file-un-genocide-charges-against-us-south-dakota/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/29/lakota-to-file-un-genocide-charges-against-us-south-dakota/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><big><big>Human Rights Abuses on Native
Lands</big></big></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Lakota to file UN Genocide Charges Against
US, South Dakota</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle"><big><big>by JEFF ARMSTRONG</big></big></div>
<div class="main-text"><big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>In April, a grassroots movement led by Lakota grandmothers
toured the country to build support for a formal complaint of genocide
against the United States government and its constituent states. Though
temporarily overturned, the recent conviction of Efrain Rios Montt for
genocide against indigenous Guatemalans should give US officials,
particularly members of the Supreme Court, pause before dismissing the
UN petition as a feeble symbolic gesture.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big><big><big>
</big></big>
<p style="text-align: left;"><big><big>The tribal elders’ 12-city
speaking tour culminated in an April 9 march on United Nations
headquarters in New York and an April 18 press conference in
Washington, D.C., where the Supreme Court had just heard arguments in a
challenge to the landmark 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
Attracting support from Occupy Wall Street and other non-Native allies
in the New York march, the Lakota Truth Tour delegation was physically
blocked by UN security officers from presenting Secretary-General Ban
Ki-Moon’s office a notice of charges against the U.S. under the 1948
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>An excerpt from the complaint, still being refined into
its final, legal form, reads: “This letter serves notice as complaint,
that the crime of genocide is being committed, in an ongoing manner,
against the matriarchal Tetuwan Lakota Oyate of the Oceti Sakowin, an
Indigenous First Nation people whose ancestral lands comprise a large
area of the Northern Great Plains of Turtle Island, the continent known
as North America.” As evidence, the Lakota cite systematic American
usurpation of their land and sovereignty rights, imposition of
third-world living conditions on the majority of Lakota, US
assimilation policies that threaten the future of their language,
culture and identity, and environmental depredations including
abandoned open uranium mines and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline
slated to invade the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Lakota grandmothers
and their allies in the Lakota Solidarity Project have even produced a
powerful, full-length documentary, Red Cry, available on DVD or online
at <a href="http://www.lakotagrandmothers.org/media/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.lakotagrandmothers.org']);"
target="_blank">www.lakotagrandmothers.org/media/</a>.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>But the UN complaint is just one facet of a multi-pronged
legal, political and educational movement within the indigenous Lakota
(Sioux) nation to stop the state removal of Native children from their
families into white foster homes and institutions, arguably the most
salient and best-documented evidence of ongoing US violation of the
genocide convention. Article 2 of the convention defines acts of
genocide as follows:</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>“…any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group, as such:</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>(a) Killing members of the group;<br>
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;<br>
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;<br>
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;<br>
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Historically, one could make a case for the applicability
of most, if not all, of the above provisions to official US policies
over more than two centuries. Certainly the Indian Removal Act of 1830,
the Wounded Knee massacre (of which the perpetrators have yet to be
stripped of their Medals of Honor) and Sand Creek slaughter perpetrated
by the US military in the latter part of the 19th century, the General
Allotment Act of the same time period, the Termination/Relocation
policy of the 1950s, the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement, and
the cumulative legal decisions validating the above on explicit or
implicit grounds of racial or cultural superiority, come to mind as
constituting violations of contemporary international standards of
crimes against humanity, if not genocide per se.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Indeed, the ink was scarcely dry on the Genocide
Convention before the US deliberately set out to violate Article 2(e)
by arbitrarily removing Native children from their families as part of
a comprehensive strategy of abolishing reservation boundaries and
absorbing indigenous peoples into the states that surround and besiege
them. In 1950 President Truman appointed Dillon S. Meyer, fresh from
his experience administering the Japanese internment camps with an iron
fist, as Indian Commissioner to carry out the final solution to the
Indian Problem (i.e., their stubborn refusal to fade into the mists of
history, itself a genocidal concept) that has haunted this nation since
its inception. It was the formal policy and procedure of the United
States at the time to forcibly transfer indigenous children to white
homes and boarding schools as a component of a strategy to “terminate”
tribes as distinct peoples, meeting the essential threshold of intent
under the Genocide Convention. It would have been embarrassing to say
the least if the Soviet Union or its allies would have initiated legal
genocide charges against the self-avowed fount of human liberty at the
United Nations. So it was that the US celebrated its victory over
genocidal Nazi imperialism by rebranding the practice in Indian Country
as emancipatory individualism and refusing to ratify the 1948
convention until nearly 40 years later.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Ironically, it was the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978
that enabled the US to ratify the Genocide Convention by manifesting
its intention to stop the wholesale removal of Native children from
their families and tribes. ICWA established minimal protections of
due-process rights for indigenous parents and recognized the exclusive
jurisdiction of existing tribal courts to adjudicate child welfare
cases within reservation boundaries, also allowing tribes to intervene
in state cases. Ratified by the US in 1986, the Genocide Convention was
not implemented until 1989, and then only after denying universal
jurisdiction and limiting prosecutions under the act to a five-year
statute of limitations for violations of the federal crime of genocide.
As a measure of the government’s commitment to punishing the ultimate
international crime, the federal offenses of arson, art theft,
immigration violation and some crimes against financial institutions
all carry a statute of limitations period longer than five years. Rios
Montt himself would be immune from prosecution under the federal
genocide act.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>A remarkable 2011 National Public Radio series, Native
Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families, revealed that the
federal government not only fails to enforce the baseline standards of
ICWA against the states. but actually underwrites the removal of Native
children in some cases with additional funds, adding an economic
incentive to the racial and cultural ones. Focusing on South Dakota, a
yearlong investigation by NPR reporters Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters
found that 90% of the 700 Native children taken from their homes yearly
in that state were placed in white foster homes or group homes, in
blatant violation of ICWA provisions mandating that any Indian child
taken into foster care be placed with a family member, tribal member,
or other Native family in the absence of “good cause” to the contrary.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Far from punishing states for violations of ICWA, despite
its finding that 32 states systemically violate its terms, the federal
government effectively promotes the legal abduction of children by
offering a $12,000 bounty to the state for permanently removing
“special needs” children from their natural families to adoptive
placement, a designation the state of South Dakota applies to all
indigenous children, according to NPR. Foster families in South Dakota
receive as much as $9,000 annually for each child. While the federal
government also provides ICWA workers for each reservation, these
typically serve as flunkies for the states, at most tepidly attempting
to shift federal funds to tribal coffers. The NPR report quoted Crow
Creek ICWA Director Dave Valandra saying, “I get along real good with
the state and I have a good rapport with them.” This fraternal
relationship is unhindered by the fact that none of the 13 cases
Valandra is working on involve placement in Native homes, which
apparently never occurred to the ICWA director before being confronted
by a reporter: “”Of my cases right now, I think they’re all…right now,
the placement of the children right now are…boy that’s, huh,” he said.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Perhaps the most damning revelation of the NPR report,
however, is its tracing of South Dakota’s kidnapping for profit scheme
to the state’s highest official:</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big>“Critics say foster care in South Dakota has become a
powerhouse for private group home providers who bring in millions of
dollars in state contracts to care for kids. Among them is Children’s
Home Society, the state’s largest foster care provider, which has close
ties with top government officials. It used to be run by South Dakota’s
Gov. Dennis Daugard. An NPR investigation has found that Daugard was on
the group’s payroll while he was lieutenant governor — and while the
group received tens of millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts.
It’s an unusual relationship highlighting the powerful role money and
politics play in South Dakota’s foster care system.”</big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>If the federal government were to uphold its obligations
under ICWA and the Genocide Convention, Gov. Daugaard would seem a fit
candidate for the first indictment of a US-born citizen under the
federal genocide statute. Thwarted by the five-year limitation, the US
Justice Department indicted former Rwandan official Lazare Kobagaya in
2009 for allegedly lying about his participation in genocide on his
application for citizenship, but the government failed to prove his
involvement in the 1994 bloodbath and eventually dropped the charges.
At a May 15-17 Great Plains Indian Child Welfare Act Summit, Daugaard
declined to attend, despite a personal invitation from US Assistant
Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, the top federal Indian
bureaucrat. So Daugaard is not only aware, thanks to the NPR report, of
the genocidal effects of policies from which he personally profited,
but is unwilling to meet with the victims toward rectification of the
crimes of his Department of Social Services, which include the coverup
of cases of sexual assault in white foster homes and extensive
pharmaceutical drugging of children without parental consent. Following
the governor’s lead, no South Dakota officials attended the historic
meeting, in which nine tribes and top federal officials participated,
along with more than 200 aggrieved tribal members.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The tribal summit and the NPR series were spearheaded by
the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP), which has relentlessly
challenged the state legally and politically and is bringing increasing
pressure on the federal government to act. Dan Sheehan, chief legal
counsel for the LPLP and director of the Romero (formerly Christic)
Institute, said South Dakota officials are “into a total dialectical,
confrontational stance. They’re feeling like they’re under siege from
the tribes, so they’re circling the wagons and getting ready to fight.”
Sheehan said the South Dakota legislature recently appropriated $2.3
million to defend the state from an imminent class-action federal civil
rights lawsuit.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Sheehan traced the institutionalization of state
kidnapping of Native children back to the late William Janklow, a
former South Dakota congressman, governor, and attorney general
notorious for his role in what the the Lakota refer to as the “Reign of
Terror” on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the years following the
American Indian Movement-led occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.
According to Sheehan, members of the George W. Bush administration
tipped off Janklow on a Texas strategy to grab millions of dollars in
federal subsidies by administering a psychological test devised by the
Eli Lilly pharmaceutical corporation to children taken into protective
custody. Replicating the strategy, South Dakota developed a mental
health test failed by 98% of Native children, who then become “special
needs” cases under federal law, with the state receiving up to $79,000
for each Indian child and the child being placed involuntarily on
psychoactive drugs.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>“They ask questions like ‘do you feel like people are
staring at you when you go out in public’ in racist Rapid City, or ‘do
you feel you’re treated unfairly’ to a child who’s just been uprooted
from his home and placed with strangers,” said Sheehan.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The immediate priorities of the LPLP, Sheehan says, are to
effect the transfer of South Dakota child protection services to the
tribes and to persuade the US Justice Department to serve as lead
plaintiff in its civil rights suit against the state. The latter is
currently on hold pending the Supreme Court’s decision in the atypical
“Baby Veronica” case, which challenges the constitutionality of the
Indian Child Welfare Act.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Sheehan says tribal officials have yet to determine
whether they will support the Lakota Grandmothers’ UN genocide
petition, suggesting their decision may hinge on whether the Justice
Department exercises its responsibility to take up their cause
domestically. And while it is exceedingly unlikely that President Obama
or Chief Justice Roberts (who termed the minimal protections of ICWA
placement standards “extraordinary rights” in oral arguments) will ever
be called to account by an international tribunal for complicity in
genocide so long as the US refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court, they may wish to consider the potential
damage to their personal reputations and that of their nation that even
an unenforceable international verdict could bring.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Just ask Lazare Kobagaya.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><i><strong>Jeff Armstrong</strong> is a longtime
journalist and activist in Fargo, North Dakota. He can be reached at <a
href="mailto:armstrong@i29.net">armstrong@i29.net</a></i></big></big></p>
<big></big></div>
</font></font>
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