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Road Trip USA
From The West Australian: 2007
I headed on up Interstate 29 and left American Federal territory and entered the Sioux Indian reservation of Sisseton and Wahpeton in North Dakota........
........One of the fascinating things about America is that there are two sovereign nations inhabiting the same land. There are the "First Peoples" as the Canadians politely call Native North American Indians and then there are the white settlers. How significant the two nations issue is depends on whether you ask an Indian or someone in Washington........
........Everyone knows the history of duplicitous land treaty violations and enforced military dispossession but I was shocked to discover how the reservations were run. They were more akin to refuge camps. All hunting weapons were taken from the Indians so they were forced to be totally dependent on food handouts from the government which was often withheld to blackmail the signing away of more land........
........Bodies and sometimes skins of Indians were taken back East for research, exhibition and entertainment. I visited a new graveyard that had been created for bodies recently returned from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, including 5-year-old children with skulls crushed by rifle butts. They have now been laid to rest in a beautiful cemetery near Sisseton with a level of dignity denied to them for 150 years........
........In 1876 the government stopped pretending to take Indian land by agreement and annexed the Black Hills, of this Henry Whipple, the chairman of the Indian commission, in his report to Congress said:
"Our country must forever bear the disgrace and suffer the retribution of its wrongdoing. Our children's children will tell the sad story in hushed tones, and wonder how their fathers dared so to trample on justice and trifle with God"
(Bureau of Indian Affairs, annual report, 1876)........
........In Sisseton I met a man called "Paints Himself Yellow" (English name Denis Gill) who showed me that Sioux spiritual beliefs remain in tact. I spent a couple of days with him and saw how he is working to reinvigorate Sioux Indian culture........