Fate of Lakotahs highlights America's failed Native American policies

On November 6, South Dakota's governor Michael Rounds declared a state of emergency as heavy snow blanketed the state and threatened all parts of it - including Native American reservations.

They, however, were excluded from his declaration. They'll get no badly needed help, and it's an all too familiar story for our nation's original inhabitants. They've been abused and slaughtered for over 500 years. At Mabila, Acoma Mesa, Conestoga, the Trail of Tears, Pamunkey, Mystic River, Yellow Creek, Sand Creek, Gnadenhutten, and Wooded Knee. At far too many other places as well at a cost of many millions of lives, now forgotten and erased from memory.

Worst still, our Native people continue to be systematically repressed and mistreated. They live in poverty and despair. They're mocked and demonized in films and society as drunks, beasts, primitives, savages, and people to be Americanized or warehoused on reservations and forgotten.

Their cultures are willfully denegrated. Their legacy is one of millions slaughtered, betrayal, treaties made and broken, stolen lands, rights denied, and welfare criminally ignored to this day.

The Lakotahs are one of many examples, and the Republic of Lakotah web site highlights their plight. It welcomes "all self-sufficient People who come with an open Heart, a Passion for Freedom and a Love for Grand Mother Earth."

In a commentary titled "Broken Promises & Laws," it describes a Broken People whose lands were stolen, buffalo massacred, people slaughtered, and who were herded onto reservations in violation of Treaties successive US governments signed and then abrogated.

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