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From: Libyad817@aol.com
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 00:08:16 EST
Subject: RC Journal Ignores Treaty Laws
To: kolahq@skynet.be

news analysis by David Seals

     The crooks are continuing to buy and sell land in the sacred Black
Hills, and the local news media, led by the dominant daily Rapid City
Journal, assiduously publish extensive reports of all the legal and financial
comings and goings of ranchers, realtors, and developers, but never are the
legal Indian treaties included in the journalistic equations.

     For example, there is a huge development project in the northern Hills
called Frawley Ranch, in which voters in the Spearfish area are going to the
polls (no doubt in the usual record numbers, of about 20%) on Tuesday
February 1 to decide if the land should be rezoned from rural to urban, so
that a Denver developer can come in here and build another huge complex of
rich homes, a golf course, a business park, RV camping facilities, a hotel,
and retail stores.

     Never once in months of coverage has the Journal, or any other of the
regional media including KOTA-TV or Indian Country Today, mentioned the role
of Indians in these negotiations, or the Treaties which make Indians
essential legal partners in any decision about the land in the entire 1851
Fort Laramie Treaty bioregion.

     This is some of the most beautiful and almost pristine land you'll ever
see anywhere in the world. Despite a century of cattle shit and cyanide
leeching in the creek from Homestake Gold Mine it still evokes an image of
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull riding alone in peace and beauty for days and
weeks on end without seeing another human being. The light on the brown
pastel buffalo grass and red cliffs is the color of apricots in late
afternoon. Buffalo grazing at nearby Bear Butte, THE most sacred place on
earth to me, are as natural and part of the perfection of life as the eagles
and coyotes.

    For all its adolescent B-picture storytelling, 'Dances With Wolves' was
shot nearby, capturing the lyric and wistful hopes of the world in this
unique and wonderful land. Never mind, South Dakota businessmen are saying,
along with Kevin Costner who made the movie and got fabulously rich from it,
Let's put in a luxury hotel-casino up the road at Deadwood.

     You can almost hear what they're saying and thinking in the pages of the
Journal, who routinely endorse right-wing republicans like Governor Janklow
and Congressman Thune. "Treaties? What a joke."

    They had a huge editorial endorsing Frawley Ranch in Sunday's paper
(January 30). They wrote in part, "This property will be developed no matter
the outcome of Tuesday's ballot. The question before voters is to allow for a
concentrated, planned development with environmental safeguards and a boost
to the local economy and tax base... we urge a 'Yes' vote on the Frawley
Ranch project."

     We urge people all over the world who care about Indian and Treaty
Rights and preserving the sanctity of the Black Hills to write the Journal
and protest their unjournalistic political advocacy (journal@rapidnet.com).

     When and if the Lakotaki and other signatory Nations of the 1851 Treaty
can organize effective traditional government, as the efforts of the
Grassroots Oyate suggest in the recent Takeover of the illegal IRA Tribal
Council headquarters on nearby Pine ridge reservation, then perhaps we can
begin to tackle the really important problems - the Land, and the economy
that depends on it for all people.

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