Some good news for our Indigenous Peoples

[annabanana]

http://www.nativetimes.com/index.php/culture/12842-sacred-site-pe-sla-gains-indian-land-status

Sacred Site Pe’ Sla Gains Indian Land Status

HILL CITY, S.D. – The United States Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs informed the Great Sioux Nation (Oceti Sakowin) on March 10, 2016, of its decision to take Pe’ Sla, a 2,022-acre sacred site in the Black Hills of South Dakota, into federal Indian trust status.

In 2012, the Rosebud, Shakopee Mdewakanton, Crow Creek, and Standing Rock Sioux Tribes worked together to raise $9 million to purchase the land. The tribes petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to take the land into trust status so that it could retain its original character as a sacred site.

At a meeting of the tribes last week, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe presented the other tribes with an initial financial contribution confirming its long-term commitment to the Pe’ Sla land initiative. Chairman Herold Frazier said of the contribution, “We must all work together to protect our sacred sites.”

The Oceti Sakowin, Seven Council Fires of the Lakota, Nakota, Dakota Oyate (or Sioux Nation), has revered the high-mountain prairie named Pe’ Sla as a sacred site for time immemorial. Pe’ Sla was originally protected by the 1868 Sioux Nation Treaty until the United States unconstitutionally seized the land in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 Pe’ Sla was then sold for non-Indian homesteads and used to graze cattle.

[Mike__M]

1. Excellent news

Even though...

Does it strike anyone as totally twisted that tribes have to buy land, then turn it over to the government (trust status) in order to use it as they wish.

"Make America great again", my ass.