In regard to the Corps of Engineers announcing meetings to review its draft operating plan, I should like to remind all that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution is clear that “This Constitution and the Laws of the United States made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” Also pointing out here specifically the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties with the seven bands of the Sioux Nation. But irrespective of any laws of any nation in the world, including the Black Hills taking act, the Allotment Act, Majors Crimes Act, Indian Citizenship Act, Indian Reorganization Act, Flood Control Act of 1944, and P.L. 83-776 (Oahe taking), we’re satisfied that we are an independent government with aboriginal powers; accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1975, in United States v. Mazurie, that Indian tribes were exactly such governments and not private, voluntary organizations. The water that will be discussed at these meetings, all 21,000,000 acre feet of it, is water that the same Supreme Court ruled in 1908, in Winters v. United States, that Indian tribes have “prior and paramount rights” to all waters arising upon, bordering or underlying any Indian Reservation; become known as the “Winters Doctrine.” Also, in any place where the waters of the existing reservoir has encroached on land above the established taking area, and there are many such instances up and down the shoreline, most notably the flooding of graves at the Black Foot Cemetery near Promise a few years ago. Compensation must be made for this desecration and for each bit of land taken, no matter how small. I can show you numerous spots on Stove Creek, Stranger’s Creek and Parker’s Creek in Range Unit 220. I would hope that the tribal chairman, at least on behalf of the survivors of those whose graves were flooded, would give these cases some legal consideration. Personally, I think all five main stem dams should be breached, with the irrigation fiasco and the silting and all. In fact, I was told by an older relative once that at a meeting in Pierre, in the early seventies, a Corps of Engineers colonel was the featured speaker; he told that the Oahe dam had not been set clear down on bedrock, but rather on a foundation known as Pierre Shale, and that since 1959 when the dam had been closed, the water had seeped down into this shale, lubricating it, and that the Oahe Dam was expected to breach itself at some point in the next thirty or forty years - just about now. The colonel prefaced his presentation with “You Indians, you’ll get your land back.”
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 14:46:46 +0000
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