Lakota Declaration of Sovereignty

--Lakota, Northern Cheyenne

"We the LAKOTA, NORTHERN CHEYENNE and on behalf of signatories of the 1851 TREATY OF FT. LARAMIE, 1868, charge the United States with the infringement of our territorial sovereignty. This violation has been recorded in history as the 1871 Appropriations Act (Rider). Our LAKOTA DECLARATION hereby terminates colonial occupation and interests of the territory defined as "PERMANENT INDIAN TERRITORY" in the previously mentioned treaties. LAKOTA unwritten sovereignty over this territory since time immemorial has now come into conflict with the claim of the United States, for their laws are written in the form of a constitution, based on an assumption of superiority of written words. However LAKOTA laws are original, customary, traditional, oral and inherent. Our claim to jurisdiction is inherent and it is for the natives of this territory to determine the destiny of our territory and not the territory to determine from afar the destiny of the people. LAKOTA hunting fishing trading land and water mineral and sovereignty rights have not been yielded to the United States during peacetime, at war, nor through the conveyance of a treaty. A treaty was not a grant of rights to the indians but a grant of rights from them. There was an exclusive right to jurisdiction and sovereignty reserved within them. We the LAKOTA challenge the Supreme Court rulings and legislation introduced by acts of Congress as inapplicapable to the natives of the respected territory. Hence the claim to jurisdiction based on the Conquest and Discovery has never occurred. ..." --read more on cite