The Flex of Sovereignty

Let's remind the bastards who's in charge

Yesterday, June 25th, was the anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. That's when Custer and his 7th Cavalry got their asses handed to them by a coalition of mostly Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho people. Remembrance of the event was being shared by a number of Native folks I follow on twitter under the hashtag #VictoryDay. I like that.

I've visited the battlefield and it is a powerful, somber place. I didn't expect to feel the way I did as I moved thought the site: compassion. Not just for the Indians, but for the cavalrymen. The terror they must have experienced, the pain. The true bloody tip of imperialism, it's likely most of these soldiers were poor men at the mercy of the powerful, employed in the military because they had no other options apparent to them, used as a tool of oppression against people they had more in common with than they ever realized. It's a story that repeats over and over again today. If you ain’t rich, you’re potential cannon fodder.

But make no mistake: Custer and all of his men deserved their fate. They were in the midst of hassling the Lakota and surrounding tribes over land they had no business intruding into and the People weren't having it. That the battle was more of a "last stand" for the tribes is beside the point. It was a glorious achievement, if there is any glory in this kind of conflict. I'm not a war guy, but when people are fighting for their very existence it becomes something else.

I hate to sound melodramatic, but I can't be alone in feeling an irrational urge to fight back in the wake of the imagery we see every day. Cops beating and murdering people in the streets while surrounded by a ring of their fellows to prevent anyone from intervening. Trump and his idiot enablers marching through the smoke of tear gas and violence for his ridiculous church-front photo op. I see the desert being torn apart for his border wall, see earth movers headed into Bears Ears, and understand the desire to pick up any weapon at hand and charge into the fray. That is wrong, and this isn't the time ... but I sure do understand it. I often feel powerless and that gets me angry.

The Battle of the Little Big Horn, like any large event, had ramifications that reverberated throughout the region. When Sitting Bull and his people retreated north after the fight and crossed the Medicine Line into Canada, the American government, fearful of his battle prowess and leadership, built Fort Assiniboine up near Havre to "protect" the area from his depredations. Of course nothing ever happened. But it was out of Fort Assiniboine twenty years later that the 10th Cavalry Regiment of African-American Buffalo Soldiers under First Lieutenant John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing (he wouldn't pick up the "Black Jack" part of his name until later, which was a "softening" of the original derisive name he'd been given, "Nigger Jack," for his association with the troop) were employed to round up "Cree refugees" under the Cree Deportation Act of 1896 and drive them back to Canada. It was a farce, of course, a ploy by the US government to rid themselves of all the Indigenous people north of the Missouri—my people—once and for all.

Everything is connected.

The Custer campaign stemmed directly from gold being discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota just a couple years earlier, and the desire by white people to have it, despite the land being sacred to the Native people of the area and already "given" to them via the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

Similar events unfold. Last month, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (a Republican, of course) went crying to the feds when her order to Oglala and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes to remove roadblocks through their lands went ignored. These roadblocks, established in April, are to prevent spread of COVID-19 through Tribal lands, and they have been effective. Tribal infection rates are far below the average of the rest of South Dakota, and to date there have reportedly been no deaths.

But Noem needs to keep the supply of modern American gold—oil—flowing. The Keystone XL pipeline, opposed every inch of the way by all nine South Dakota tribes and anyone else who cares about the planet, needs these highways as supply routes to its construction. Noem, ever the settler capitalist, beholden no doubt to big campaign donors, can't have this obstruction on her watch. Trump sees this as well, and has threatened the Tribes' access to their share of the $8 billion provided to Native Americans in the CARES Act. In response, earlier this week the The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe sued the feds.

This conflict is what sovereignty looks like and I love it. Yesterday the Blackfeet Tribe announced they are closing entrance into Glacier National Park through their lands (large swaths of the park is land stolen from them in the first place) for the remainder of the 2020 tourist season. This is due to a recent spike in COVID-19 infections in Montana and their desire to keep infected tourists out. I love this too.

In similar fashion, the small, isolated Havasupai Tribe have banned Colorado River outfitters leading trips through the Grand Canyon from accessing their lands. "The Havasupai have said they will have officers stationed at the reservation boundary. The small isolated tribe has no coronavirus cases and plans to keep it that way. It does not have the health care staff or resources to deal with a pandemic."

The Havasupai are another of the people forced into a fraction of their homeland by the creation of a national park, a concept not so much "America's best" idea as it is America's "typical" idea.

More sovereignty in action and (white) America doesn't know what to do about it. More instances of the entitled being faced with the attempted exercise of privilege and being told no.

“For every action that we take, and the tribes take, they’re setting precedent,” South Dakota's Governor Noem has said. “If we allow checkpoints to shut down traffic in this situation, then we are setting precedent for that to happen far into the future in many other situations as well.”

Damn straight, Noem. I hope this very much is an indication of what the future looks like. If there is anything the last few months have made painfully obvious (if you've missed it over the last few decades, or centuries), it's that more and more of the powers-that-be need reminded of who is truly in charge.

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In other news, I was interviewed earlier this week for the Mountain & Prairie podcast by host Ed Robison. You can check that out HERE if you have an hour and any interest in hearing me talk about myself. Ed is a great guy and asks wonderful questions. I had a good time and I wish we’d recorded the casual part of our conversation as well. Anyway, take a chance with it. I hope you like it too.

Until next week, be kind, be curious, and stay brave.