Protestors forced to dismantle camp

RAPID CITY – The legacy of Lakota Territory treaty violation reared its head to haunt city officials in the freezing wake of South Dakota’s 2020 Native American Day, as #Landback adherents, in violation of city ordinance, set up a tipi encampment to shelter homeless here on Oct 16.

Before the end of the day, the participants were forced to dismantle the camp at the orders of Rapid City Police, who arrived in some 20 patrol cars with red lights flashing, backed by the Pennington County Sheriff and the South Dakota Highway Patrol.

Six participants in the camp mobilization who refused to obey orders to abandon the premises were arrested, handcuffed, forced into a transport vehicle, booked, and released after nightfall.

The tipi circle, named Camp Mni Luzahan by the independent homeless watchdog Mni Luzahan Creek Patrol that established it, took their names from the Lakota words that translate to Rapid Creek.

The camp, consisting of four tipis and a chow line, as well as gear designed to provide warmth, light, and sanitation, popped up at a location over which the city claims jurisdiction on the banks of Rapid Creek adjacent to the fairgrounds.

Backing it, a loose coalition of Constitutional treaty rights restoration and homeless protection advocates assert that if the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty were honored, homelessness would not exist in the Black Hills area; but since the treaty is broken, the city should bow to their demands for a native-run base to alleviate immediate needs of community members facing pandemic and cold season conditions.

Camp Mni Luzahan, fostered by, among others, the Rapid City-based national non-profit NDN Collective, which launched the #Landback movement in July, stated:

“The settler state of South Dakota, the settlement of Rapid City, and the Rapid City Police Department create the conditions that make it so that our relatives are unsheltered and kept from basic living necessities. It is our right and our duty to care for our kin.”

The police and mayor sustained that the Mni Luzahan Camp’s mobilization is a protest not related to homeless needs, rather to #Landback pressure.

The day after the tipi takedown, some news outlets received a media advisory that Mayor Steve Allender would hold a briefing to address the events surrounding it. Native Sun News Today, Rapid City’s only weekly newspaper, did not receive an invitation.

Freelance photojournalist Chynna Lockett, a member of the Independent Media Project who has been a contributor to Native Sun News Today, was personally refused entrance by the mayor, flanked by Police Chief Don Hedrick.

Lockett insisted: “I’m a journalist.”

Allender retorted: “No you’re not. Step out, Chynna. You’re not coming in. You’re not invited. We’re not turning this into a circus.”

Mark K. Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota poet educator from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was one of about a dozen people who also sought to attend the press conference. Allender told him to quit holding the door open with his foot as Lockett argued she is a journalist.

He ordered Tilsen three times, “Shut the door,” then commanding, “Move your foot and shut the door; this public building is closed,” he pushed Tilsen back.

Allender’s action was greeted with shouts of, “That’s assault right there.” Supporting Tilsen, participants called on Hedrick to arrest Allender, saying “If that was me that pushed him, I would be in handcuffs right now. You know it!”

Spouting expletives, they nonetheless dispersed after Hedrick said, “We’re not going to argue about this right now,” and “I don’t want to take anybody to jail today, okay?”

Lockett and Tilsen had not filed charges by press time. However, they could be eligible for support from a new Mni Luzahan Legal Fund. The mayor is the former police chief.

Lockett had been on the scene of the tipi takedown and documented Lakota grandmother Carrie MiddleTent’s detention, among other things, reporting:

“She was roughed up or aggressively handcuffed in the tipi…dragged to the unmarked police van…put face down on the ground in the freezing rain during her arrest. She is facing three charges — obstruction, resistance, and camping. The 5 others arrested are facing lesser charges, and no one else was charged with camping.”

MiddleTent reaffirmed the information in a media conference hosted by NDN Collective. She has been an integral part of the creek patrol and was a speaker at a Sept. 11 ominiciye here, calling on the mayor and city council to meet with grassroots leadership to set aside a “command center” where Native people can take charge of appropriate measures to support homeless relatives.

They are also demanding the city provide measures to stem long-term shortages of employment and affordable housing for all underserved community members.

On Oct. 18, the day after the exclusive media conference, Camp Mni Luzahan went up anew, this time on land universally recognized as being under tribal jurisdiction in a rural area outside of Rapid City.

Lloyd BigCrow Sr., a leader of the OyateKin Chante Wastepi-Feeding our Relatives initiative, proclaimed, “The ancestors are with us,” as he noted, he is “proud of the youth and elders” setting up the camp in the snow.

Some of the same advocates who had set up the first camp, been forced to dismantle it, gotten arrested and gone to the mayor’s office were replanting the tipis, carrying firewood, and moving homeless from hotel rooms procured for the previous night.

The replacement camp is on land under the control of the Cheyenne River, Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux tribal governments, whose top elected leaders have given permission, Lockett confirmed.

Sicangu Lakota grandmother Cheryl Angel, who is a spokesperson for pan-Indian unity was among the first to tread on the grounds and exalt the new fire ignited at reborn Camp Mni Luzahan.

“Since time started, we’ve been lighting fires,” Angel told Lockett. “We start in ceremony and we stay in ceremony. All the knowledge we need to be sustainable are in it. We’re experiencing something our ancestors have been doing for tens of thousands of years.

“We’re in the sacred Black Hills. There were treaties signed on these lands and one of the things tribal people agreed to at that time was to maintain the peace. Maintaining the peace means making sure people’s healthcare, educational, physical, spiritual, and mental needs are met.

“The government has failed to maintain their responsibilities to the treaties. We are upholding our treaties. We’re going to maintain that peace and we’re going to take care of our people. “Anyone who comes in, they are disturbing the peace.”

Oglala Lakota creek patrol stalwart Hermus Bettelyoun leaned on his shovel at the camp as his breath formed clouds in the cold, telling Lockett, “We are not protesters or activists. We are here for our people. We set up camp over here for their safety. At the same time, we’re going to have an ongoing creek patrol.”

Arrested and charged in the original camp eviction, he said, “We want to bring our people back. This is a healing for a lot of us. It’s a combined effort of many different people. We got tired of just hearing people talk.

“I’ve been arrested for standing up for my people and I’ll do it again. If it takes me to sit in a white man’s jail, that’s what I’ll do. If you do something with a good heart, everything’s going to work out.

“Camp Mni Luzahan is here and were going to keep it going,” he concluded.

The police and mayor sustained that the Mni Luzahan Camp’s mobilization is a protest not related to homeless needs, rather to #Landback pressure.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 awarded $105 million to the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation for the theft of the Black Hills and other lands guaranteed under the 1868 treaty, which had promised the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires,  “the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Reservation.”

“A more ripe and rank case of dishonest dealing may never be found in our history,” Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun said in his opinion of the U.S. failure to enforce the treaty language as required by the U.S. Constitution.

Three decades later, the interest on the money in the U.S. Treasury has brought the offer to upwards of $1.4 billion. However, insisting that “the Black Hills are not for sale,” the Sioux Nation tribes refuse to accept a payout and have lobbied for a settlement to return them the portion of the Black Hills that is under federal management.

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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