Manderson, SD: Members of the Ogalala Lakota Nation at Pine Ridge successfully harvested several acres of industrial hemp this week in defiance of federal law outlawing the crop. This year was the third successive time Oglala Nation members had planted hemp, but the first time that federal law enforcement officials failed to confiscate their crop.
Alex White Plume, whose family planted this year’s crop, “has become the first farmer within the borders of the United States to complete a cycle of planting, growth, harvest and delivery of industrial hemp since 1958,” said Bob Newland of SoDakNorml and the South Dakota Industrial Hemp Council. Newland is sponsoring a statewide ballot measure (Initiated Law No. 1) to allow farmers to possess and cultivate marijuana consisting of no more than one percent THC for food, fiber and other commercial purposes.
The dried hemp has already been sold to the Madison Hemp and Flax Company of Lexington, Kentucky. Affiliates of the Kentucky firm are scheduled to pick up the crop next Thursday.
Despite the federal ban on hemp cultivation, Lakota tribal leaders passed an ordinance in 1998 permitting members to cultivate hemp containing less than one percent THC. Oglala Sioux tribal leaders maintain that hemp cultivation is legally protected under provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which ratified the Lakota Indian Nation’s right to grow food and fiber crops on tribal lands. The Pine Ridge reservation, located in the southwest corner of South Dakota, is the poorest county in the nation.
Though federal agents had previously confiscated the White Plume’s hemp crop in 2000 and 2001, no criminal charges were ever filed.
For more information, please contact either Paul Armentano or Allen St. Pierre of The NORML Foundation at (202) 483-8751.