Federal drug enforcement agents recently destroyed several acres of hemp growing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, located in the southwest corner South Dakota. The seizure, which occurred Monday, was the second time in two years law enforcement officials have forcefully prohibited members of the Oglala Lakota Nation from cultivating hemp.
“This is a case of armed invaders entering a sovereign nation, chopping down an innocent farmer’s crop, then fleeing back across the border,” said South Dakota NORML President Bob Newland, who reported that criminal charges were not filed during the raid.
Lakota Nation tribal leaders had tried to persuade authorities to call off the raid, arguing that federal and state police had no legal authority to seize their plants. Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele maintains that hemp cultivation is protected under provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which ratified the Lakota Indian Nations’ right to grow food and fiber crops on tribal lands.
“The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 did not divest the Lakota People of our reserved right to plant and harvest whatever crops we deem beneficial to our reservation,” Steele wrote in a July 18 letter to Michelle Tapken, U.S. Attorney for South Dakota. “Therefore we regard the enforcement of our hemp ordinance and prosecution of our marijuana laws as tribal matters to be handled by our Oglala Sioux Tribal Public Safety Law Enforcement Services.”
The Lakota Nation passed an ordinance in 1998 permitting tribal members who are part of land use associations to cultivate hemp. The ordinance defines industrial hemp as Cannabis sativa plants containing less than one percent THC. The tribe intended to use this year’s crop for fiberboard and other building materials.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of The NORML Foundation, at (202) 483-8751 or Bob Newland, South Dakota NORML President, at (605) 255-4032.
