Thursday, April 23, 2009

Land Dispute? Outside The Middle East?

Found here:

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- A band of Sioux whose ancestors were driven from the majestic Black Hills more than 130 years ago is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, upsetting other tribal members who say taking money for the sacred land would be legitimizing the theft.

A lawsuit filed last week asks a federal judge to release as much as $900 million in compensation and interest that eight Sioux tribes refused decades ago. The tribes insisted instead on return of the rugged land in southwestern South Dakota they lost in military battles that included Custer's Last Stand...

...The dispute dates back more than a century. In an 1868 treaty, the United States government agreed the Black Hills would be set aside for use by the Sioux. After gold was discovered there, miners and other fortune-seekers flocked to the area. That led to military battles culminating in George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876.

When the Sioux refused to sign a new treaty giving up the Black Hills, Congress passed a law taking the land in 1877.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 upheld a lower court ruling that awarded eight Sioux tribes $106 million in compensation, the 1877 value of $17.5 million plus interest. The justices said the government had to pay for taking the tribal property.

But all the Sioux tribes have refused to take the money, insisting instead on the return of the land.


Still thinking this one out.

My very good friend and fellow-activist L. Marc Zell once wrote this:

I wanted to give you a perspective that the articulate and well-known left-wing activist David Newman saw fit to overlook. The Jews of Gush Etzion are not interlopers or trespassers; just as their counterparts all over Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not. They are the "Indians" (Native Americans) who have returned to their ancient home. They are part of the long and unending chain of Jewish "settlers" who have been part of this landscape since the time of Abraham to this very day.


and a Elias Sanbar spoke this (and here, too)in 1982:

We are also the American Indians of the Jewish settlers in Palestine.


and to mix you up, read this:

“The Inquisition only had authority over Catholics,” Bedolla said. “The Inquisition could not force anyone to become Catholic. But once you were Catholic you had to stay Catholic.” Klein said regardless of what the Inquisition had the power to do, it was administered by people who “went after anybody.”

“They went after Jews and Indians,” he said. “They thought they could out there...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, the Sioux homeland was in Minnesota, if such a mobile society can be said to have one at all.

At the time of first white settlement of eastern North American and following, the Crow, Cheyenne, Hidatsa, Pawneee, Arapaho, Sutaio, etc lived in the Black Hills, until finally some Sioux tribes moved there in the mid-1800's, having been pushed out of Minnesota by white settlement.

Hardly the equivalent of hundreds of years of Jewish occupation, state building, removal, and re-occupation of Israel.

But nice try.