who gets to speak for 'the people'?

[sophiaserpentia]

The American Indian Movement yesterday launched a new, interesting discourse on authority and colonialism, in declaring their intention to dissolve the treaties between the Lakota nation and the United States of America and seek international recognition as a soveriegn nation.

I have to confess, i read about what happened yesterday with a great deal of joy, but also a considerable amount of worry. The AIM is not well regarded by the US federal government and, assuming the feds don't just ignore this completely, they are likely to find themselves being designated a terrorist organization.

If that happens, any US citizen who expresses support for their cause would be considered by the federal government to be a terrorist sympathizer. Let that sink in for a moment.

Consider these two different articles describing yesterday's event:

from Lakota group pushes for new nation (thanks to zarq for the link)

A group of "freedom-loving" Lakota activists announced a plan Wednesday for their people to withdraw from treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government.

Headed by leaders of the American Indian Movement, including activist, actor and Porcupine resident Russell Means, the group dropped in on the State Department and the embassies of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and South Africa this week seeking recognition for their effort to form a free and independent Lakota nation. The group plans to visit more embassies in the coming months.

... "I want to emphasize, we do not represent the collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America to ensure our poverty, to ensure the theft of our land and resources," Means said, comparing elected tribal governments to Nazi collaborators in France during World War II.

Contrast this with Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US (thanks to bifemmefatale and others)

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

Here's what i want to draw my attention to, because it's essential to how the world and the US federal government are going to respond to this. The first article describes the Lakota delegation as a collection of freedom-seeking activists who pointedly do not represent the official tribal governments. The second article characterizes the delegation as a collection of Lakota tribal leaders, and treats their declaration as if it has official force.

So, what does this mean? Essentially the move is being done by a collection of influential activists who are denouncing the authority of their official tribal governments and claiming for themselves the authority to negotiate with the United Nations on behalf of the Lakota people.

Can they do that?

Well, that's a hell of a question, isn't it?

Who has the right to speak 'on behalf of' someone else? Well ideally, someone can only speak for you if you have individually granted them that authority. But functionally it's just not possible to get individual assent from every single person.

I'm not familiar enough with the AIM or with Russell Means and his allies to know how much popular backing and authority they have within the Lakota nation. I think, though, that they are acting on their own and counting on widespread popular support for their actions within the Lakota nation: a sort of after-the-fact delegation of authority from the populace to speak for them. The underlying chance they're taking is that a significant number of Lakota Indians will even notice it. So whether or not Means & co. can claim to speak for the Lakota people will become clear over time.

In the meantime, it may be said that they perceive a need to speak out, even without that official, on-paper authority which we all pretend comes from democratic elections. They perceive that they live under an unjust hegemony and feel driven by conscience to speak out against it and to seek allies, to seek like-minded people who have the position and authority to give assistance. As such, they're taking a chance that in claiming authority before the fact it will materialize after the fact when a 'critical mass' of people act as though they have it.

Which is why AIM is seeking the assistance and recognition of the new South American Superpower.

In any case, isn't this basically what a prophet does? I mean, setting aside religious and spiritual dimensions, a prophet is basically someone who speaks on our behalf before the rest of us even know that a thing needs to be said. I'm not saying Russell Means & co. are prophets (you can each be the judge of that), but i am saying that we don't always know who is and who isn't a prophet until after the fact.

Comments

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

At least one band, the Rosebud Band, has declared Means does not speak for them.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Is that, though, the tribal government who the AIM has been comparing to Vichy France?

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Not sure.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this could be the start of a power struggle within the Lakota nation.

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

The one similar situation I can think of is when former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver was fleeing the law in the US, and set up shop in Algeria. The Algerian government, which had no diplomatic relations with the US, agreed to recognize Cleaver & the exiled Panthers as the legitimate "US government in exile" and afforded them full diplomatic status. Needless to say, Nixon & his people were not amused.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Well... it's a little different because (1) the UN recently approved a sweeping new mandate observing the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples, and this, if pressed, could become a test of that, and (2) the governments to whom the Lakota are appealing for recognition are part of a newly-blossoming superpower, not a backwater state with little global presence.

[beowulf1723.livejournal.com]

The whole reservation system is de facto apartide, although you won't see the Feds -- or "Liberals", for that matter -- saying that.

We'll have to see if this spreads to other tribes, especially those like the Navajo who still have their language and a lot of their religion and culture left.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Don't generalize about "Liberals", thanks. Many Liberals *are* involved in justice for Native Americans.

Clarificaiton

[beowulf1723.livejournal.com]

My apologies for being a bit unclear.

I was referring to "Liberals" who made a big deal about apartheid in South Africa while ignoring the exact same situation here in re Native Americans.

I thought the hypocrisy pretty gross at the time -- and still do.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Indeed. This will either fizzle, be swiftly suppressed, or it will take off like wildfire. We'll see.

[jimkeller.livejournal.com]

Considering that the only part of the Native American treaties that our government bothers to obey are the ones that are to the government's benefit, I feel this is long overdue. And the courts have been no help (a few years ago the Supreme Court even ruled that a tribe wasn't allowed to buy back on the free market land stolen from the reservation to repatriate it).

However I do concur that it's likely to get ugly. Witness the discord still going on (largely unreported down here) in Canada. And that discord is happening in places where reservations are genuinely remote, not intertwined with established towns like they are down here.

It will be interesting, if nothing else, to watch.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The US has indeed demonstrably failed to live up to its treaty obligations, and if nothing comes of this beyond a way to hold the US accountable for that shortcoming, it will be a vast improvement. In any case, there is a clear issue of justice here. The Indians were conquered by force and their land taken. It's up to us now to define a just response to the injustice committed by previous generations. I hope this can be accomplished without it getting ugly.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

There is a slur I learned back in the 1970s when I worked at Glad Day Press, which worked closely with Native Americans who were not happy with "tribal leaders". The "tribal leaders were called "Apple Indians" because they may be red on the outside, but were white on the inside. The BIA made sure that only Indians who wanted to work closely with the BIA would ever get to be "tribal leaders". US presidential elections are not the only elections which get rigged in the US. Native Americans are treated as second class citizens in the US. Hard to fight against such a corrupt system from within.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's another dimension to this.

The United States is founded on the principle that people have the right to deny the authority of unjust, tyrannical governments. This presumes that the common people can be trusted to judge that their government is tyrannical. That's a presumption i agree with, BTW. Most people are apathetic towards their government until its actions become patently unjust.

It's very much rooted in the Lockean notion that human beings are sovereign unto themselves and are only required to give authority to governments to which they consent to be governed.

By that right, what AIM and co. are doing is a manifestation of that fundamental principle - they reject their official tribal government as unjust and tyrannical and they seek to make their own, just government. The difficulty is, of course, that tyrants do not readily concede their power - that's why they're tyrants. They will try to complain that AIM did not go through proper channels, but according to the principle of individual sovereignty, they are under no obligation whatsoever to accommodate the convenience of the bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as the US government was installed, it abandoned this principle.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

The things which keep many Native Americans apathetic is quite similar to similar problems in the Black community. Poverty, bad schooling, lack of opportunity lead to alcoholism, family violence, and dispair. Galvanizing a down-trodden people is not an easy task.

XP

[la-veuve-chibi.livejournal.com]

"Apple," never thought of that--I'll have to ask my Cayuga brother-in-law.

[wyndhover.livejournal.com]

Well ideally, someone can only speak for you if you have individually granted them that authority. But functionally it's just not possible to get individual assent from every single person.

Decision by total consensus is a pretty common method among a lot of tribal peoples, and I hear they actually make it work. I don't know if the Lakota nation are among such, though.