Reznet

Means Would Declare Reservation Disaster Area

By Kevin Abourezk

As Hurricane Ike beat up on Texas in mid-September, Russell Means watched as President Bush declared 29 Texas counties major disaster areas, making federal funds available for storm recovery.

Means hopes to use that same tool to bring federal and international aid to his own ailing people, the Oglala Lakota, if he's elected tribal president on Tuesday.

"This is far beyond a national disaster area," he said of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. "It's an international disaster area."

If federal aid can be spent on one of the richest cities of the world, Houston, why not one on of the poorest places in the world? Means asked.

He recited a litany of statistics to support his contention that the reservation is in dire need of outside aid:

• An underfunded, understaffed Indian Health Service hospital;

• An average life expectancy of 44 for men, 52 for women, among the lowest life expectancies in the world;

• Over 80 percent unemployment;

• A suicide rate more than 150 times the national average;

• A government bureaucracy that stifles economic development by forcing aspiring entrepreneurs to meet archaeological, cultural and business requirements they wouldn't have to meet if developing a business off the reservation;

• An average household size of 17 people (Means said he knows of one home in Manderson, S.D., where 30 people are forced to sleep in shifts for lack of beds);

• And 1 in 4 Oglala children being adopted out to non-Indian families.

"I look at my people and my God," he said, pausing. "If you're a human being, you'll sit down and cry ... and I'm no longer going to stand for it.

"I need to, I have to be elected."

It could be an uphill battle, he said, as his opponent, Theresa Two Bulls, appears to have more support from tribal members.

Means, a former American Indian Movement leader, has a history of suggesting extreme solutions to Indian problems. This spring, he announced that he and a group of Native leaders planned to secede from the United States to form the independent Republic of Lakotah, a nation formed on the basis of the Treaty of 1851 and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

Means appears to be backing off from that plan.

He said this week it's not necessary to secede as the Oglala Sioux Tribe is already a sovereign nation, a fact he plans to force the U.S. government to respect if he's elected tribal president.

The international disaster declaration, he said, would be his first step in enforcing his tribe's sovereignty as declaring disasters is a power other heads of government have, including governors and presidents.

He said the difference between a national disaster declaration and an international one would be that foreign governments could send the Lakota aid as well. In fact, Means said, he knows of several foreign leaders who would enjoy embarrassing the U.S. government by sending aid to struggling American Indians.

"That's what my candidacy is all about is conquering genocide," he said. "This is the Republic of Lakotah. This is our land."

Kevin Abourezk's "Red Clout" columns are available for syndication. Please contact reznet to purchase republishing rights.

Kevin Abourezk, Rosebud Lakota, is a reporter and editor at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star. He writes reznet's "Red Clout" political blog and teaches reporting at the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. Abourezk was awarded a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism in 2006.

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