Independance Day!!

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five state area that encompasses our country are free to join in!"
This was a statement made today by Indian activist, Russell Means at a press confernence in Washington, DC to reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian Embassy.

This was after a delegation of Lakota Nation leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday announcing that they were unilaterily withdrawing from all treaties made with the United States over the last 150 years.

They visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezualan Embassies and plan to start an over seas mission to establish formal ties with foreign countries.
The Lakota Indian Nation encompasses portions of Five States: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming. The new country will issue it's own passports and drivers licenses. Living there would be tax free, providing residents renounce their US Citizenship.

Means said,"The treaties are merely worthless words on worthless paper. they have been repeatedly violated over and over again in order to steal from our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life."

"Withdrawing from the United States was entirely legal" he said, "This is in accordance to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the Constitution. Article Six states that treaties are part of the supreme law of the land."
"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and approved by the USA and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independant."

There have been 33 treaties with the Lakotas. They are the last tribe who were officially at war with Ameica. They are the tribe of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull..
Now these proud people have been reduced to an oppressed society whose males have one of the shortest life expectancies in the world...44 years average.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 times above the national average and the infant mortality rate is 5 times more than the rest of America. Unemployemnt is rife..

Phyllis Young, a spokes person for the tribe said, "Our people want to live, not just survive and crawl and be mascots..
We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting the battle would not be won in her lifetime.