Cante Tenza Okolakiciye - Strong Heart Warrior SocietyFree & Independent Lakota Nation Box 512, Hill City, South Dakota 57745 605-454-0449 or 605-517-1547 http://www.lakotaoyate.net/December 27, 2010 PRESS ADVISORY CONTACT: Duane Martin Sr. at 605-517-1547 or 605-454-0449.
New Years Eve Alcohol Blockade of White Clay, Nebraska Grows
By Strong Heart Warrior Society
Strong Heart Warrior Society and United Urban Warrior Society-AIM take stand in aftermath of December 24th Pine Ridge Protest and Killing of Duane Martin Sr.’s Dog “Small Guy," Challenge Tribal Government to Do the Right Thing and Take a Stand
Strong Heart Headsman Duane Martin Sr. issues public statement, “We Must Come Together to Fight the Epidemic of Alcohol and Drugs”
WHAT: Alcohol Blockade of White Clay, Nebraska
WHO: Strong Heart Warrior Society / United Urban Warrior Society / A.I.M. with support from Lakota people, activists and others.
WHEN: December 31st from 1:00PM to 11:00PM
WHY: On December 24th the Strong Heart Warrior Society led a protest against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation. In retalitation, bootleggers poisoned and killed “Small Guy”, the much loved dog of Strong Heart headsman Duane Martin Sr., at his home in Sharps Corner. But we refuse to be intimidated and we demand action from the Tribal Government, Public Safety and the Federal Government. Until they do the right thing, Strong Heart invites all people to come and stand with us to help stop the epidemic of drugs and alcohol on Pine Ridge by a December 31st New Year’s Eve blockade of White Clay Nebraska. On December 31st, we will unite with the Urban Warrior Society-AIM to make a stand! Lakota and non-Lakota are welcome. Come make a difference! Wear warm winter clothing.
Strong Heart Headsman Duane Martin Sr. issues public statement, “We Must Come Together to Fight the Epidemic of Alcohol and Drugs”
WHAT: Alcohol Blockade of White Clay, Nebraska
WHO: Strong Heart Warrior Society / United Urban Warrior Society / A.I.M. with support from Lakota people, activists and others.
WHEN: December 31st from 1:00PM to 11:00PM
WHY: On December 24th the Strong Heart Warrior Society led a protest against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation. In retalitation, bootleggers poisoned and killed “Small Guy”, the much loved dog of Strong Heart headsman Duane Martin Sr., at his home in Sharps Corner. But we refuse to be intimidated and we demand action from the Tribal Government, Public Safety and the Federal Government. Until they do the right thing, Strong Heart invites all people to come and stand with us to help stop the epidemic of drugs and alcohol on Pine Ridge by a December 31st New Year’s Eve blockade of White Clay Nebraska. On December 31st, we will unite with the Urban Warrior Society-AIM to make a stand! Lakota and non-Lakota are welcome. Come make a difference! Wear warm winter clothing.
Cante Tenza Okolakiciye also known as the Strong Heart Warrior Society of the Lakota Nation is an ancient Lakota warrior society as well as a broad-based civil rights movement that works to protect, enforce and restore treaty rights, civil rights, and sovereignty of Native people and their communities across Turtle Island. In addition to activist efforts to protect the land and people such as the blockade of White Clay, Nebraska, each year Cante Tenza collects and freely distributes shoes, winter coats, school supplies, food, and other support to Oglala Lakota elders, children and families.
“We Must Come Together to Fight the Epidemic of Drugs & Alcohol”
Strong Heart Warrior Society statement by Duane Martin Sr. following the retaliatory killing of his dog “Small Guy” by alcohol bootleggers and drug dealers on Pine Ridge Reservation.
In retaliation for the December 24th Strong Heart Warrior Society protest against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, “Small Guy”, the much loved dog of Strong Heart headsman Duane Martin Sr., was intentionally poisoned and killed at his home in Sharps Corner.
The loss of our four-legged brother is a key indication of how corruption still exists on Pine Ridge Reservation. The U.S. Federal Government, the Tribal Government, and Oglala Tribal Police do nothing to enforce residential policies and procedures that could have prevented this death, and the deaths of many Lakota people. This is why Strong Heart must continue our fight against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing.
As many of our supporters on Facebook and around the globe understand, this escalation began last Sunday December 19th, when an anonymous caller gave bogus information to Pine Ridge Tribal Police about a so-called house party being conducted by Strong Heart leader Duane Martin Sr., when he hasn’t touched alcohol in 22 years. Nine police raided a quiet house to find nothing!
It’s time for White America’s real people to take notice of what is happening in Pine Ridge. In addition to the illegal import and sale of drugs and alcohol, we have so many unsolved murders on Pine Ridge.
While the much publicized killing of former AIM member Annie Mae Aquash resulted in two convictions– we wonder why does one Canadian girl’s death 34 years ago get so much attention compared to dozens of unsolved murders on Pine Ridge? Why should one woman’s breath be so important that it costs thousands more justice?
It is time for the Tribal Government and tribal officials to really wake up and take a stronger look at what is going on in the very reservation they were elected from.
Scores of our young girls are being victimized and raped, not just at the hands of bootleggers and drug dealers, but also tribal police! And the only ones to make a question about this corrupted behavior? Not tribal officials. Only the Strong Heart Warrior Society.
We need people to understand that we must come together to fight this epidemic. By giving illustration to these points of view, we are calling for a serious stand in bringing the awareness of alcohol and drug addiction on Pine Ridge Reservation that we all must be intoned too – that is needed to kill this problem.
And we have to ask ourselves, and be honest with ourselves – this is not only an Indian problem, but it also a White problem. Responsibility exists on both sides to make a change. Enough already.
We can no longer accept when people say to us, “But we sent financial support!” What we truly need is to stand together in numbers to combat this problem. We need people to act not only with their wallets but with their hearts and bodies, with their participation!
So when Pine Ridge Reservation welcomes the New Year in three days with monthly checks that will be spent in White Clay and exchanged for drugs and alcohol– this celebration doesn’t act in retaliation by victimizing its own people. In order for us to have a healthy reservation, we have to make it healthy by eliminating the alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and sexual abuse caused by the dealers, bootleggers, and by law enforcement.
If the Christian people in this world claim to honor the meaning of the birth of the baby who was born on Dec 25, then consider this - that baby doesn’t exist in our country. Instead, there are scores of Lakota babies being born but nobody honors them. When these infants and children are abused, raped, and given drugs, no one is there to honor them.
So rather than sinning in a six day cycle then giving money on the seventh day as a token for forgiveness, remember our Great Spirit does not accept money. If the Christian God believed in money we would all be rich with wealth by greed and decades of killing Mother Earth and Native people.
But we all have a responsibility to do on this earth. And the only way that can be recognized is by the doing. The Great Spirit made the Strong Heart Warrior Society – the warriors of the 22nd century that have lived according to the test of time – and that it has to be alcohol and drug free. We are leading the way.
Strong Heart believes if you have a thousand Red men, a thousand Black men, a thousand White men and then a thousand Yellow men – you have 4000 men of these four sacred colors. These men can be warriors to combat the problem that keeps us in poverty and keeps our people addicted to alcohol and drugs. These 4000 warriors will make the rest of us understand there is a problem that can be fixed.
But it shouldn’t take 4000 people, or even four people, to make you understand the problem that is right before your eyes. If you can’t see it, then you must be blind. You are not seeing the creation the Great Spirit has given you. This creation is a life of freedom -a value system called love, and that love demands action.
This is the message the Strong Heart Warrior Society is giving those who believe in true freedom rather than the fake belief called social order. There are many mountains to climb- but the smallest mountain to climb is the hardest to get on –it’s called the alter of freedom. It takes people with love to get on that mountain. It never was a perfect mountain, but it is a mountain that understands love because it frees you from dependence on alcohol and drugs.
Last but not least, if we believe we are creations of what the Great Mystery has given us as two-legged beings – then let’s start acting like real human beings! Instead of just talking about it, let’s do something about the alcohol and drug abuse so poverty will kill itself because it has no one else to prey upon.
Let’s ask ourselves what great warriors we believe in – Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Rain in-the Face! In their times none of these four warriors were drunks when they went into battle. None of these four warriors were on cocaine when they loved their people. They left their marks on Mother Earth by leaving us a path of a traditional lifeway that can still be successful if we believe in it. Hoka Hey!
Cante Tenza Okolakiciye
Strong Heart Warrior Society
December 27, 2010
Pine Ridge Reservation
“We Must Come Together to Fight the Epidemic of Drugs & Alcohol”
Strong Heart Warrior Society statement by Duane Martin Sr. following the retaliatory killing of his dog “Small Guy” by alcohol bootleggers and drug dealers on Pine Ridge Reservation.
In retaliation for the December 24th Strong Heart Warrior Society protest against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, “Small Guy”, the much loved dog of Strong Heart headsman Duane Martin Sr., was intentionally poisoned and killed at his home in Sharps Corner.
The loss of our four-legged brother is a key indication of how corruption still exists on Pine Ridge Reservation. The U.S. Federal Government, the Tribal Government, and Oglala Tribal Police do nothing to enforce residential policies and procedures that could have prevented this death, and the deaths of many Lakota people. This is why Strong Heart must continue our fight against alcohol bootlegging and drug dealing.
As many of our supporters on Facebook and around the globe understand, this escalation began last Sunday December 19th, when an anonymous caller gave bogus information to Pine Ridge Tribal Police about a so-called house party being conducted by Strong Heart leader Duane Martin Sr., when he hasn’t touched alcohol in 22 years. Nine police raided a quiet house to find nothing!
It’s time for White America’s real people to take notice of what is happening in Pine Ridge. In addition to the illegal import and sale of drugs and alcohol, we have so many unsolved murders on Pine Ridge.
While the much publicized killing of former AIM member Annie Mae Aquash resulted in two convictions– we wonder why does one Canadian girl’s death 34 years ago get so much attention compared to dozens of unsolved murders on Pine Ridge? Why should one woman’s breath be so important that it costs thousands more justice?
It is time for the Tribal Government and tribal officials to really wake up and take a stronger look at what is going on in the very reservation they were elected from.
Scores of our young girls are being victimized and raped, not just at the hands of bootleggers and drug dealers, but also tribal police! And the only ones to make a question about this corrupted behavior? Not tribal officials. Only the Strong Heart Warrior Society.
We need people to understand that we must come together to fight this epidemic. By giving illustration to these points of view, we are calling for a serious stand in bringing the awareness of alcohol and drug addiction on Pine Ridge Reservation that we all must be intoned too – that is needed to kill this problem.
And we have to ask ourselves, and be honest with ourselves – this is not only an Indian problem, but it also a White problem. Responsibility exists on both sides to make a change. Enough already.
We can no longer accept when people say to us, “But we sent financial support!” What we truly need is to stand together in numbers to combat this problem. We need people to act not only with their wallets but with their hearts and bodies, with their participation!
So when Pine Ridge Reservation welcomes the New Year in three days with monthly checks that will be spent in White Clay and exchanged for drugs and alcohol– this celebration doesn’t act in retaliation by victimizing its own people. In order for us to have a healthy reservation, we have to make it healthy by eliminating the alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and sexual abuse caused by the dealers, bootleggers, and by law enforcement.
If the Christian people in this world claim to honor the meaning of the birth of the baby who was born on Dec 25, then consider this - that baby doesn’t exist in our country. Instead, there are scores of Lakota babies being born but nobody honors them. When these infants and children are abused, raped, and given drugs, no one is there to honor them.
So rather than sinning in a six day cycle then giving money on the seventh day as a token for forgiveness, remember our Great Spirit does not accept money. If the Christian God believed in money we would all be rich with wealth by greed and decades of killing Mother Earth and Native people.
But we all have a responsibility to do on this earth. And the only way that can be recognized is by the doing. The Great Spirit made the Strong Heart Warrior Society – the warriors of the 22nd century that have lived according to the test of time – and that it has to be alcohol and drug free. We are leading the way.
Strong Heart believes if you have a thousand Red men, a thousand Black men, a thousand White men and then a thousand Yellow men – you have 4000 men of these four sacred colors. These men can be warriors to combat the problem that keeps us in poverty and keeps our people addicted to alcohol and drugs. These 4000 warriors will make the rest of us understand there is a problem that can be fixed.
But it shouldn’t take 4000 people, or even four people, to make you understand the problem that is right before your eyes. If you can’t see it, then you must be blind. You are not seeing the creation the Great Spirit has given you. This creation is a life of freedom -a value system called love, and that love demands action.
This is the message the Strong Heart Warrior Society is giving those who believe in true freedom rather than the fake belief called social order. There are many mountains to climb- but the smallest mountain to climb is the hardest to get on –it’s called the alter of freedom. It takes people with love to get on that mountain. It never was a perfect mountain, but it is a mountain that understands love because it frees you from dependence on alcohol and drugs.
Last but not least, if we believe we are creations of what the Great Mystery has given us as two-legged beings – then let’s start acting like real human beings! Instead of just talking about it, let’s do something about the alcohol and drug abuse so poverty will kill itself because it has no one else to prey upon.
Let’s ask ourselves what great warriors we believe in – Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Rain in-the Face! In their times none of these four warriors were drunks when they went into battle. None of these four warriors were on cocaine when they loved their people. They left their marks on Mother Earth by leaving us a path of a traditional lifeway that can still be successful if we believe in it. Hoka Hey!
Cante Tenza Okolakiciye
Strong Heart Warrior Society
December 27, 2010
Pine Ridge Reservation
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