GIVE US BACK OUR HEMP!

A Question Of Sovereignty

RAPID CITY - A bright blue sky served as backdrop to the stark white
concrete of the Federal building here last Friday as a crowd of 80 to 90
people gathered to show their support for the members of the Oglala Sioux
Tribe who had been trying to add industrial hemp to the paucity of cash
crops grown on the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. Spanning the age range
from infants to elders, Indian and white, the famous to the anonymous, they
came together to protest the draconian seizure of the hemp that had been
growing in two plots on Pine Ridge.

This past April the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council had passed an ordinance
confirming and reinforcing an earlier ordinance from 1998 that made it
legal for any OST tribal member to grow industrial hemp on tribal land they
leased or owned. To qualify as industrial hemp, the plants and seeds had to
test out at one percent or less of THC, the chemical compound that is
present in marijuana, the more notorious relative of industrial hemp.

All the crops seized by the federal agents had been in complete compliance
with those tribal ordinances and the tribal members want their plants back.
According to the Drug Enforcement Agency's own request for search warrant,
analysis of plants pulled by a BIA Criminal Investigations officer and sent
to an independent lab at the University of Mississippi showed "no
detectable THC" content.

The plants tested had come from the property of the WaCinHinSka tiospaye,
headed up by Alex White Plume. He had openly given the BIA officer, Colin
Clarke, permission to pull the plants for testing. As with the members of
the Slim Buttes Land Association, he was following a policy of being very
open and forthcoming about the hemp growing project. The OST Agriculture
Department and the Land Committee were active partners with the Slim Buttes
Association and the plot of hemp they were cultivating. It was even fenced
and marked with signs designating it an OST tribal project.

This week, the parties involved filed a petition to oppose the request
filed by Ted McBride, U.S. Attorney for the South Dakota District, to
destroy the seized hemp and they requested an expedited evidentiary hearing.

Using precedent in another case, the government had proposed to destroy
what they called "contraband" after documenting it through videotaping of
it. But the OST members' filing insists that, "substantive issues exist
regarding the seized material which, if resolved in favor of the
Respondents, would supercede government's preliminary characterization of
the plant material as 'contraband' and establish the Oglala Sioux Tribe's
right to the seized property, requiring its return."

Among the issues involved is the actual quantity of plants, and the
resulting value of the loss incurred by those looking forward to their
harvest, when they were cut down and hauled away. Statements by federal
authorities after the raids estimated the number of plants removed from the
White Plume property at 3,000 when in actuality, a count of the plants
stumps left behind in clumps indicates a number more than ten times that
estimate. Supporting the higher number is the fact that two 'U-Haul type'
vans of at least 14 ft. size were needed to remove all the White Plume hemp
plants, and those vans had each been more than 2/3 full.

At the rally, Milo Yellow Hair, in his capacity as OST Land Committee
Director, greeted the crowd and thanked them for coming to show their
support. He spoke to the crowd about the tribe's determination to govern
themselves and direct their own agricultural economic development projects
without accepting oversight or judgement of their activities by the federal
government.

"This is an issue that we call cutting edge, because it's going to set
precedent," Yellow Hair told them. "We have to do something about the 88
percent unemployment on the Pine Ridge reservation, we have to do something
about meeting the needs of the socio-economic conditions of our people on
the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. And one of those things, that's going to
start from the ground up, literally, is the cultivation, manufacture and
the use of hemp products. And this is what we're here for today."

"We believe that what has happened over the last few days is an invasion,"
Yellow Hair continued. "We believe that this is something that we want to
continue to do. It involves the sovereignty of an Indian nation, but
ultimately it is an economic-type question, 'How do we provide employment
to our people?'"

Tom Ballanco, an attorney from California who has specialized for years in
legal issues regarding the differentiation between industrial hemp and
marijuana, is representing the individuals and tribal entities involved. He
appeared at the rally in an entire ensemble of hemp clothing. His shoes,
socks, shirt and suit were completely hemp and he said the only thing that
was not hemp was his silk tie. He also shared with members of the crowd and
the media the many hundreds of useful products beyond clothing that can be
derived from industrial hemp. "Food is one of the most exciting things that
comes from hemp," Ballanco said. "The oil produced from the seed, and the
seed cake, have essential fatty acids required by the body in the exact
relationship that the body needs them. And these are fats that the body
can't produce on its own."

"They go into things like membranes of the cells, nervous system, digestive
tract, and others," he continued. "It's also very high in protein. It's
something where if you have just a small amount, a couple handfuls of hemp
seeds every day, it's enough to really take care of your nutritional needs.
And that's another things that's in such need and demand on the
reservation, food and housing."

Ballanco went on to describe the uses of industrial hemp as an amendment to
building products that are inexpensive and almost inexhaustible in supply
with hemp. One demonstration house constructed of hemp bricks is nearing
completion and plans for a second house were announced at the rally that day.

Tom Cook, a Mohawk married to OST member Loretta Afraid of Bear, addressed
the crowd on behalf of the Slim Buttes Land Association.

"My wife Loretta and I are the concept originators and the organizational
founders of the Slim Buttes Land Use Association, a simple collection of
landowners in a community on Pine Ridge," Cook said. "We use this
organization as a way to develop the things we need in this community:
food, clothing and shelter."

"So we've got one house up, a $100,000 house made of 60 percent hemp
composite materials. And we have a second house beginning today which is an
EarthShip. If you've ever heard of EarthShip, it's made of tire walls, and
we're going to use hempcrete to stucco and for many other uses in that unit."

He told the crowd that the Land Use Association's efforts were being
sponsored by the British owner of the bath and personal care products
stores called The Body Shops. "They are so much for hemp in use for health
and shampoo products that they backed us up in our quest to build a house
to show the industrial applications of this plant."

Actor Woody Harrelson, who had been acquitted of hemp-related charges in
the state of Kentucky on the same day the raids took place on the
reservation, had traveled to Rapid City to support people he says have come
to be his friends. He had arrived in town the night before, met with
attorneys who will be representing the parties involved and spoke to The
Lakota Nation Journal in a phone interview.

"This is my third time out here," Harrelson explained. "I was out for the
last two Sundances."

He expressed how meaningful the treaty and sovereignty issues were to him,
beyond his advocacy of the uses for industrial hemp itself. "What these
people are trying to do should be seen as being protected by their
treaties," Harrelson said. "If there's such a things as sovereignty, the
government has no business being out here."

"Every step of the way, every time Indians have tried to create something
for themselves, the federal government has stepped in to ruin it or take it
away." The afternoon of the rally Harrelson shrugged off being labeled a
"marijuana advocate" by the Rapid City Journal and spoke to the power the
DEA and other interests, including the U.S. government, were trying to
wield against a plant as different from marijuana as a horse is from a zebra.

"The DEA has millions and billions of your and my dollars that they can do
whatever they want with," he told the crowd. "And they have decided that
they have more authority than God because they can decide what plants can
and cannot grow on this planet." "It's ironic that a plant that is capable,
I believe, of revolutionizing this economy and bringing us out of the dark
ages of a hydro-carbon based economy, where petrochemical, mining, timber,
nuclear and pesticide interests rule and receive huge amounts of our tax
dollars in subsidies; they decided that that plant, which could
revolutionize things - which could start to make paper, which could start
to make plastic and fuel - that plant cannot be grown because it bears a
strong resemblance to another plant that makes you euphoric. I find that
confusing." The rally ended and the crowd dispersed to their own
destinations, leaving the next steps up to the attorneys and the petition
filed to save the crop that had been the hope of many people on and off the
Pine Ridge Reservation. But the White Plume family has to live with the
economic fallout of the loss of the plants.

Alex White Plume says he will be selling off some of his horses to provide
money that would otherwise have come from a check from Harrelson in
purchase of his crop. Then the family will sit out a long, cold winter
before they can get out into their fields to plant more hemp seeds and try
again to establish the crop they still believe is the ticket to their
long-term financial well-being.