Americas native prisoners of war Aaron Huey

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I’m here today to show my photographs of

the Lakota how many of you may have

heard of the Lakota or at least the

larger group of tribes called the Sioux

the Lakota are one of many tribes were

moved off their land to prisoner of war

camps now called reservations the Pine

Ridge Reservation the subject of today’s

slideshow is located about 75 miles

southeast of the Black Hills in South

Dakota it is sometimes referred to as

prisoner of war camp number 334 and is

where the Lakota now live now if any of

you have ever heard of aim the American

Indian Movement or of Russell Means or

Leonard Peltier or the standoff at

Oglala then you know that Pine Ridge is

ground zero for Native issues in the

u.s. so I’ve been asked to talk a little

bit today about my relationship with the

Lakota and that’s a very difficult one

for me because if you haven’t noticed

from my skin color I’m white and that is

a huge barrier on a native Reservation

you’ll see a lot of people in my

photographs today and I become very

close with them and they’ve welcomed me

like family they’ve called me brother

and uncle and invited me again and again

over five years but on Pine Ridge I will

always be what is called washi Jew and

while she Jue is a Lakota word that

means non-indian but another version of

this word means the one who takes the

best meat for himself and that’s what I

want to focus on the one who takes the

best part of the meat

it means greedy so take a look around

this auditorium today we are at a

private school in the American West

sitting in red velvet chairs with money

in our pockets and if we look at our

lives we have indeed taken the best part

of the meat

so let’s look today at a set of

photographs of a people who lost so that

we could gain and know that when you see

these people’s faces that these are not

just images the Lakota they stand for

all indigenous people

on this piece of paper is the history

the way I learned it from my Lakota

friends and family the following is a

timeline of treaties made treaties

broken and massacres disguised as

battles

I’ll begin in 1824 what is known as the

Bureau of Indian Affairs was created

within the War Department setting an

early tone of aggression in our dealings

with the Native Americans 1851 the first

Treaty of Fort Laramie was made clearly

marking the boundaries of the Lakota

nation according to the treaty those

lands are a sovereign nation if the

boundaries of this treaty had held and

there is a legal basis that they should

then this is what the US would look like

today ten years later the Homestead Act

signed by President Lincoln unleashed a

flood of white settlers into native

lands 1863

an uprising of Santee Sioux in Minnesota

ends with the hanging of 38 Sioux men

the largest mass execution in US history

the execution was ordered by President

Lincoln only two days after he signed

the Emancipation Proclamation 1866 the

beginning of the transcontinental

railroad a new era we appropriated land

for trails and trains to shortcut

through the heart of the Lakota Nation

the treaties were out the window in

response three tribes led by the Lakota

chief Red Cloud attacked and defeated

the US Army many times over I want to

repeat that part the Lakota defeat the

US Army 1868 the second Fort Laramie

Treaty clearly guarantee is the

sovereignty of the Great Sioux Nation

and the lakotas ownership of the sacred

Black Hills the government also promises

land and hunting rights in the

surrounding states we promised that the

Powder River country will henceforth be

closed to all whites the treaty seemed

to be a complete victory for Red Cloud

in the Sioux in fact this is the only

war in American history in which the

government negotiated a peace by

conceding everything demanded by the

enemy 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad

was completed

began carrying among other things large

numbers of hunters began the wholesale

killing of Buffalo eliminating a source

of food clothing and shelter for the

Sioux 1871 the Indian appropriation Act

makes all Indians Ward’s of the federal

government in addition the military

issued orders forbidding Western Indians

from leaving reservations all Western

Indians at that point in time were now

prisoners of war also in 1871 we ended

the time of treaty making problem with

treaties is that they allow tribes to

exist as sovereign nations and we can’t

have that we had plans 1874 General

George Custer announced the discovery of

gold in Lakota territory specifically

the Black Hills the news of gold creates

a massive influx of white settlers into

locota nation Custer recommends that

Congress find a way to end the treaties

with the Lakota as soon as possible

1875 the Lakota war begins over the

violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty

1876 on July 26th on its way to attack a

Lakota village Custer’s seventh Cavalry

was crushed the Battle of the Little

Bighorn 1877 the great Lakota warrior in

chief named Crazy Horse surrendered at

Fort Robinson he was later killed while

in custody

1877 is also the year we found a way to

get around the Fort Laramie treaties a

new agreement was presented to Sioux

chiefs and their leading men under

campaign known as seller starve signed

the paper or no food for your tribe only

10% of the adult male population signed

the Fort Laramie Treaty called for at

least three-quarters of the tribe to

sign away land that clause was obviously

ignored 1887 the Dawes Act communal

ownership of reservation lands ends

reservations are cut up into 160 acre

sections and distributed to individual

Indians with a surplus disposed of

tribes lost millions of acres the

American dream of individual land

ownership turned out to be a very clever

way to divide the reservation until

nothing was left the move destroyed the

reservations

making it easier to further subdivide

and to sell with every passing

generation most of the surplus land and

many of the plots within reservation

boundaries are now in the hands of white

Ranchers once again the fat of the land

goes to wash you to 1890 a date I

believe to be the most important in this

slideshow this is the year of the

Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29th

US troops surrounded a Sioux encampment

at Wounded Knee Creek and massacred

chief Bigfoot and 300 prisoners of war

using a new rapid-fire weapon the fired

exploding shells called a Hotchkiss gun

for this so-called battle twenty

congressional medals of Honor for valor

were given to the seventh Cavalry to

this day this is the most medals of

Honor ever awarded for a single battle

more medals of Honor were given for the

indiscriminate slaughter of women and

children than for any battle in World

War One World War two Korea Vietnam Iraq

or Afghanistan the Wounded Knee Massacre

is considered the end of the Indian Wars

whenever I visit the site of the mass

grave at Wounded Knee I see it not just

as a grave Lakota or for the Sioux but

as a grave for all indigenous peoples

the holy man Black Elk said I did not

know then how much was ended when I

looked back now from this high hill of

my old age I can still see the butchered

women and children lying heaped and

scattered all along the crooked gulch as

plain as when I saw them with I is still

young and I can see that something else

died there in the bloody mud and was

buried in the blizzard a people’s dream

died there and it was a beautiful dream

with this event a new era in Native

American history began everything can be

measured before Wounded Knee

and after because it was in this moment

with the fingers on the triggers of the

Hotchkiss guns that the US government

openly declared its position on native

rights they were tired of treaties they

were tired of sacred Hills they were

tired of ghost dances they were tired of

all the inconveniences of the Sioux so

they brought out their cannons you want

to be an idiot now they said finger on

the trigger

1900 the US Indian population reaches

low point less than 250,000 compared to

an estimated 8 million in 1492

fast-forward 1980 the longest-running

court case in US history the Sioux

Nation versus the United States was

ruled upon by the US Supreme Court the

Court determined that when the Subaru

settled on two reservations and 7

million acres of their land were opened

up to prospectors and homesteaders the

terms of the second Fort Laramie Treaty

had been violated the court stated that

the Black Hills were illegally taken and

at the initial offering price plus

interest should be paid to the Sioux

Nation as payment for the Black Hills

the court awarded only a hundred and six

million dollars to the Sioux Nation the

Sioux refused the money with the

rallying cry the Black Hills are not for

sale 2010 statistics about native

population today more than a century

after the massacre at Wounded Knee

revealed the legacy of colonization

forced migration and treaty violations

unemployment on the Pine Ridge Indian

Reservation fluctuates between 85 and 90

percent the housing office is unable to

build new structures and existing

structures are falling apart

many are homeless and those with homes

are packed into rotting buildings with

up to five families 39 percent of homes

on Pine Ridge have no electricity at

least 60% of the homes on the

reservation are infested with black mold

more than 90% of the population lives

below the federal poverty line the

tuberculosis rate on Pine Ridge is

approximately eight times higher than

the u.s. national average the infant

mortality rate is the highest on this

continent and is about three times

higher than the u.s. national average

cervical cancer is five times higher

than the u.s. national average the

school dropout rate is up to 70% teacher

turnover is 8 times higher than the u.s.

national average frequently Graham

parents are raising their grandchildren

because parents due to alcoholism

domestic violence in general apathy

cannot raise them 50% of the population

over the age of 40 suffers from diabetes

the life expectancy for men is between

46 and 48 years old roughly the same as

Afghanistan and Somalia the last chapter

in any successful genocide is the one in

which the oppressor can remove their

hands and say my god what are these

people doing to themselves they’re

killing each other they’re killing

themselves while we watch them die this

is how we came to own these united

states this is the legacy of manifest

destiny prisoners are still born into

prisoner of war camps long after the

guards are gone these are the bones left

after the best meat has been taken a

long time ago a series of events was set

in motion by a people who look like me

by washi Jew eager to take the land and

the water and the gold in the hills

those events led to a domino effect that

has yet to end as removed as we the

dominant society may feel from a

massacre in 1890 or a series of broken

treaties 150 years ago I still have to

ask you the question how should you feel

about the statistics of today what is

the connection between these images of

suffering and the history that I just

read to you and how much of this history

do you need to own even is any of this

your responsibility today I have been

told that there must be something we can

do there must be some call to action

because for so long I’ve been standing

on the sidelines content to be a witness

just taking photographs because the

solution seems so far in the past

I needed nothing short of a time machine

to access them the suffering of

indigenous peoples is not a simple issue

to fix it’s not something everyone can

get behind the way they get behind

helping Haiti or ending AIDS

we’re fighting a famine the fix as it’s

called may be much more difficult for

the dominant society than say a $50

check or a church trip to paint some

graffiti covered houses or a suburban

family donating a box of clothes they

don’t even want anymore

so where does that leave us shrugging

our shoulders in the dark the United

States continues on a daily basis to

violate the terms of the 1851 and 1868

Fort Laramie treaties with the Lakota

the call to action I offer today my Ted

wish is this honor the treaties give

back the Black Hills it’s not your

business what they do with them

[Applause]

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