L A K O T A

CONFEDERACY OF THE BLACK HILLS

A Sovereign Nation Re-established at Bear Butte 
July 14, 1991

DECLARATION OF SOVEREIGNTY
INTERPRETATION OF JURISDICTIONAL GROUNDS


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. 

For LAKOTA TERRITORY the case for the LAKOTA/ 1851-1868 TREATY the case 
for contention rests on a different footing than the rest of native 
treaty claims. No formal conquest occurred, no declaration of war had 
been declared, and no Cession occurred. Moreover of NOVEMBER 4,1988 the 
United States decided to become civilized and signed the GENOCIDE 
TREATY. 

In a review of our understanding of the constitution and it's 
requirements for civilized activity, the desire of the American 
administration was to create INCHOATE TITLE. It was the intent of the 
United States to perfect title over time. However we, the indigenous 
people holding original title remain in peaceful occupancy. 

The LAKOTA not only hold ORIGINAL TITLE 
but our claim to sovereignty and peaceful 
coexistence and a continuous display of our authority over lands is 
contrary to the claim by the United States which has based their claim 
on the titles of discovery and of recognition by treaty and contiguity. 
i.e. titles relating to acts or circumstances leading to acquisition of 
sovereignty; they have not, however established the fact that 
sovereignty was so acquired and effectively displayed at any time. 

We the LAKOTA/CHEYENNE etc. concur with the precedent set in the UNITED 
STATES vs. NETHERLANDS, wherein the UNITED STATES lost it's claim to 
INCHOATE TITLE, (Palmas Island Arbitration, 1928). 

Impropriety such as the 1980 Supreme Court 
ruling upholding United States policy for providing compensation 
without return of lands or the inherent 
sovereignty or jurisdiction rights is mere desire and political 
ambition and cannot extinguish the principle of the continuous and 
peaceful display of the functions of the natives of 1851 treaty 
occupation within the territory and is a constituted element of 
territorial sovereignty which is recognized as a principle of 
international law. 

The creation of American sovereignty was done on a theoretical plane 
and the confederation the colonists formed was not a sovereign gov't 
and the issue of sovereignty and concept was not resolves by the 
declaration of independence and continues to be a theoretical question. 

In the contest between the states and congress, the ideological 
momentum of the Revolution lay with the states, but in the contest 
between the people and the state governments it decidedly lay with the 
people. For the Continental Congress had realized that the Articles of 
the Confederacy was not a government and the Articles held no 
sovereignty. "Benjamin Rush federal debate 1787" "The people of America 
have mistaken the meaning of sovereignty". 

Quote, Noah Webster federal convention debate, 

"A fundamental maxim of American Politics is that 
sovereign power resides in the people. Written constitutions and bills 
of rights can never be effective guarantees of freedom. Liberty is 
never secured by such paper declarations, nor lost for want of them. 
The truth is that government takes its form and structure from the 
genius and habits of the people, and if on paper a form, in spite of 
all the formal sanctions of the supreme authority of the state a form 
is not accommodated to it will assume a new form. To credit a perfect 
wisdom and probity in the framers of the U.S. Constitution is both 
arrogant and impudent. The very attempt to make PERPETUAL constitution 
is the assumption of a right to control the opinions of FUTURE 
GENERATIONS and to LEGISLATE for those over whom we have as little 
authority as we have over a nation in ASIA. 

To remedy the defects of the Articles of the Confederacy the 
convention. was called to frame the federal constitution. This said to 
point to the fact that, Under this Constitution the UNITED STATES 
became a government, and as a matter of history it is true that some 
new states are formed out of the sovereignty of the old and whereas 
others are created out of opposition to the former territorial 
sovereign. 

It is not reasonable to suppose that, a distinction between 
ORIGINAL and derivative titles are relevant to the proper 
interpretation of the change in territorial sovereignty that takes 
place when a new state is created, as in the case with the United 
States. 

The confusion is with the quasi-sovereignty status derived from 
foreign countries versus the ORIGINAL SOVEREIGNTY of the LAKOTA, 
CHEYENNE, ARAPAHOE.

 In historical truth of legal fact the United States 
never conferred power over the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahoe. Today we 
have 200 years of decisions by the United States Supreme Court and 
legislation by Congress and the President, lacking Constitutional 
authority over us. The United States has also abrogated the liberty and 
the property of the said natives under the color of the Constitution. 
This abrogation was no part of the original understanding and the 
Constitution does not confer it. Acts of Congress, and Presidential 
Approval or recommendations and Supreme Court Rulings do not make them 
Constitutional. 

The United States has exercised powers over the Lakota, Cheyenne, and 
Arapahoe and their lands without authority in taxes, civil 
jurisdiction, criminal jurisdiction, zoning, hunting, fishing, water 
and mineral rights, religion and general police powers. Congress 
mandated these activities without the consent and approval of the 
original inhabitants. This now exposed illegal activity is a 
Constitutional assault on the integrity of the indigenous self-
determination. This unconstitutional taking of powers not granted to 
the United States government and the unjust claim for jurisdiction is 
without constitutional footing. This desire and claim for jurisdiction 
has created a couse for action for the 1851-1868 signatories as the 
unconsented taking of jurisdiction falls under the color of the United 
States Constitution for the test of the Supreme law of the land. 

Although the United States has granted sovereignty to itself it fell 
short of the Constitutional test to conquer, to defeat in war, to honor 
in peace, to enter into treaties for cession of lands now occupied by 
natives of the territories in contention by primarily LAKOTA, CHEYENNE, 
ARAPAHOE. 

The desire and original transaction by the United States is 
infected with FRAUD. But the real party (s) of natives have not with 
their agents, obligated the acts for the transfer of any rights to the 
United States. Therefore we are charging the United States for treaty 
fraud in the alleged appropriation of this 1851 treaty boundary. The 
United States cannot grant to themselves sovereignty to the territory 
still inhabited and in use by the aboriginal title holders, which they 
legally do not posses. A treaty in which fraud is involved is not 
valid. The recognition of Lakota sovereignty is still intact within 
both the U.S. Constitution and Lakota people. Any attempt to supplant 
the legitimate sovereignty of the Lakota by the absorption of territory 
without the course of negotiations must be considered as an unlawful 
premature annexation.

 Source:

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