Counting Coup – Lakota Citizens Stop US Helicopters from Landing at Wounded Knee
In answer to today’s United States Government and its Colonial Corporation, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Government’s press conference: “We the Lakotah People, do not want our massacred dead bodies of Men, Women and Children at the mass grave at Wounded Knee used for publicity by the United States Government nor their colonial corporation, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Government.” On May 1, 2010, two young men, the Camp brothers counted coup on the first 7th Cavalry helicopter and Debbie White Plume, an elder and grandmother who charged the second helicopter preventing it from landing. By running under the blades and touching them without harming the enemy and getting away is how the Lakotah counted coup on this eventful day. May 2, 2010
at 9:35am At high noon today US Army helicopters of the US Seventh Cavalry air division attempted to land their Blackhawk aircraft upon Lakota Sacred Burial grounds in South Dakota. The presence of military aircraft from this unit is a sad and insulting reminder of the slaughter of more than 300 American Aboriginals on December 29, 1890 when soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry gunned down more than 300 Aboriginal Minneconjou Lakota refugee children, women, infants and the elderly at what is now called Wounded Knee in South Dakota Indian Country. The military then left the bodies of their victims to decay unburied in the driving snow. According to reports from Indigenous Rights Movement Radio host Wanblee this afternoon, Lakota resident Theresa TwoBulls was given less than 24 hours notice that three US Army 7th Cavalry helicopters would make a landing on the sacred burial grounds at Wounded Knee. As of this writing, the US military was confronted by angry but peaceful and steadfast community resistance as the Aboriginal people of the area have so far, according to reports from Lakota people on the ground, managed to prevent the aircraft from touching Indigenous ground. For all American Aboriginals of the Americas, this is a sacred area. This is the place where the promise of a people died while fleeing from a genocidal US military unit hell-bent on liquidating the continent of its Indigenous population. There has never been any official apology offered for this massacre and the military awards bestowed upon the genocidal aggressors involved in this conflict still stand, as does a physical monument in honor of the US Army killed during Custer’s “last stand” against a defiant and united Indigenous resistance to their own demise. The history of the US Army 7th Cavalry is important to understanding the level of violence used against Indigenous peoples. It is important to remember that after the US Seventh Cavalry officially ended the “Indian Wars” at home, they were then dispatched to do battle against Indigenous Filipinos struggling to maintain their hard-won national independence from the colonialist Spanish. In other words, the US War Department sent this very same unit to do overseas what was done here to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In this historical light, it is only logical for Indigenous peoples to assume that the Obama administration is attempting to make a political point out of this spectacle. Only, what sort of message are you sending by insulting and humiliating a people already suffering from five centuries of continuous pro-Europocentric, anti-Indigenous genocide? This domestic military action is a deliberate insult and an obvious message of ongoing colonialism, state-sponsored racism and apathetic Indigenous genocide to all Indigenous peoples across the Fourth World; to the whole of the Lakota/Dakota Nation; and to the Indigenous residents of Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee. The symbolism of dispatching the Seventh Cavalry to Wounded Knee in an attempt to land weapons of mass destruction on Aboriginal sacred ground tells us how little this government, and this particular administration, respects the people of Indian Country and our significant historical perspective as survivors of the racist Euro-settler xenophobic purges waged against the Indian in the Americas. To make matters worse, this action comes on the heels of newly-passed legislation in Arizona state that requires law officers to racially-profile anyone they believe “looks,” “sounds” or “dresses” like an illegal immigrant, a thinly veiled “race law” that directly effects both our Indigenous sisters and brothers native to Occupied Mexico as well as the Native American population of Arizona in the United States. Given that most Indigenous peoples of the Americas share the same general physiotype and more often than not, similar Spanish last names, the passage of this guideline will without a doubt lead to widespread abuses against that state’s brown-skinned population. The legal door now opened, Texas and other states led by neo-confederate constituencies are moving to pass their own anti-immigrant/anti-Indigenous directives that will broadly effect anyone and everyone who could be perceived by the colonial European majority as a “foreign invader.” The Obama administration has shown America and the world that they are no different than any other previous US government in their view that the American Indian on both sides of the US border is nothing more than a prop or a tool to be displayed only when it is useful to promote the “contemporary” 21st-century neo-colonialist capitalist agenda. The Obama administration, an office headed by a man of African descent, has shamed itself and all those who have supported his candidacy in arrogantly dismissing the memory of our people interred at Wounded Knee by rubbing the military might of the historically anti-Indigenous 7th Cavalry in our faces by forcibly entering Indian Country in an attempt to land their machines of war on top of the bodies of our ancestral dead. Clearly, the culture war against the American Indian is not over. Welcome to the new American century. Pass this on. We must get the word out…. Let everyone know.... Contact your local media…. Tell them the Local Media in (Rapid City, SD) haven’t even mentioned this in the news…. So typical for Rapid City, SD media…. and if they did post it, it would not be the truth.... I tried to contact the Rapid City Urinal…. LOL. They won't return my calls or post any of the comments I have made in defense of our people. ~ James ( Magaska) Swan AIM Black Hills South Dakota iReport – CNN news 5/3/2010 Today at just past Noon Central Time; Three US Army Helicopters attempted to land on Lakota Sacred Burial grounds at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The Helicopters
were from the Seventh Cavalry which were Historically remnants of
General G.A. Custer whose troops were defeated at Little Big Horn
in one of the many battles of the United States as they waged a
war of attrition and Genocide on Native Americans after the Civil
War. Theresa TwoBulls was given less than 24 hours notice that three US Army 7th Cav helicopters would land on the burial grounds at Wounded Knee today. They were met with peaceful but firm resistance, as Lakota (Sioux) women and children stood immobile on that sacred ground, preventing the gross, unspeakable insult of 7th Cavalry choppers to land on the same ground where more than 300 murder victims lay buried. A Lakota mother said.... ”I cannot believe they are doing this, have they (7th Cav) NO respect for our dead”? Evidently the 3 helicopters and brass in charge did not know their history..and what a unspeakable insult it was to the residents of Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee and the Lakota people; to have the ACTUAL Seventh Cavalry choppers attempt to land on this sacred ground. This was Broadcast Live on Blogtalkradio, Indigenous People Rights today. Reprinted from the Republic of Lakotah website. May 31, 2010
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