According to some foreign news sources, a group of Lakota Indians have declared independence from the United States and are unilaterally withdrawing from treaties with the US. Their justification is based on UN treaties and the US Constitution. Yet, they refer to treaties with the US as "meaningless words on meaningless paper" on their website. I guess you can have it both ways.
I imagine that this is a fringe group that does not represent all Lakota and is probably nothing more than a publicity stunt. However, if this is truly a step toward succession, any treaties that were withdrawn would no longer apply. If that is the case then they need only open up a history book to see what happened when a few states thought it was a good idea to no longer be a part of the United States.
Of course I don't think that the US would actually go to war or try to occupy the area. Although war would be a possibility if anyone had the backbone of Abraham Lincoln. However, it would be easy enough to deny passage through US territory to access the "new sovereign country" until the proper treaties could be ratified. Oops, treaties are worthless pieces of paper. But without them there would be no entry or exit to LakotaLand.
If the Lakota were able to take a part of the Midwest and start a new country could the People's Republic of California be next?
Update: USA Today confirms the story 12/21/07 and the bloggers there think it is a fantastic idea. I guess I am just a wacko who does not believe in freedom. Waco, TX should be a wakeup call. Koresh was not even trying to form a new country and look where he and his followers ended up.
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I have mixed feelings about this development.
First of all, I think the reason some people are cheering this is due to the fact that many people are getting sick and tired over the continued encroachment on our freedoms by a government that is becoming more and more socialist every day. MANY people want to tell Big Brother where to stick his CAFÉ standards, smoking bans, confiscatory taxes, politically correct speech codes, stifling environmental regulations, judicial activism, and countless other bureaucratic nonsense. So here you have somebody taking on city hall, so to speak. It may not have anything to do with your issues or help you at all but at least someone is taking it to "the man".
Another aspect of this to consider is the reasons the Lakota are giving for doing this. They cite land claims, low life expectancy, high infant mortality, high suicide rates, high poverty, and high unemployment. Sounds bad and it may well be. Now they're independent…..what difference is that going to make for those problems? What now exists to help them fix these problems that didn't exist before? Ironically, I suppose, every single Lakota has instantly been lifted out of poverty though since the "poverty line" is an artificial AMERICAN number which is no longer applicable to them.
Also, consider this VERY non PC idea in regard to them blaming the US for their problems: Is their situation all that different from before Europeans settled here? Were they living any longer, having less infant mortality, or rolling in the dough roaming the plains or living in the woods as nomads? We (some of us anyway) seem to have this idea that being "one" with nature is somehow better and the best way to live. Perhaps the Lakota are not really any worse off than they were hundreds of years ago. Now that they are juxtaposed to are culture and civilization and see the differences in the issues they cite they don't like what they see. However, they don't want to look to themselves to see that some, if not all, of there problems start and end with them.
This is not to say that Western civilization can't and shouldn't learn things from people like the Lakota or anyone else. We don't get it all right by any means. But all cultures are not equal and we sure do get quite a bit right. Maybe, just maybe, other cultures should step back and try to learn a thing or two from us for a change.
All that aside, the US should weigh its response very carefully. The precedence this sets could set the stage for some far more seismic shifts in the future of our nation - good or bad. We are a nation born and molded out of succession. It happened twice. One time I believe the cause was just while another time I believe it was not quite as noble. Fortunately it succeeded when it was just and failed when it was not. Unfortunately, neither time did "political bands" "dissolve" peacefully.
'When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
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