[A-List] Lakota elder on the stars and stripes

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch, October 1, 2002

Troy Black Feather: the Most Controversial Statement of Our Time?
by BRENDA NORRELL

STRONGHOLD TABLE, S.D. Lakota elder Tony Black Feather told the United
Nations that the American flag represents a racist nation that violates
natural and spiritual laws, dishonors treaties and engages in a game plan
of corporate greed.

In his statement delivered to the United Nations and distributed here on
Stronghold Table, Black Feather pressed for disarmament and peace as
President Bush pressed for war in Iraq.

Urging America to "come clean in the eyes of the world," Black Feather said
people often ask him about the red, white and blue of the American flag

"I tell them that the aboriginal Lakota people of this country look at this
flag as a piece of red, white and blue cloth that stands for the foreign
racist system that has oppressed Indigenous peoples for centuries.

"For traditional Lakota people, that piece of red, white and blue cloth
stands for a system and a country that does not honor it's own word."

Black Feather, in his statement to the Working Group on Indigenous
Populations, said the flag represents a nation of dishonor.

"If it stood for honor and truth, it would remember our treaties and give
them the appropriate place under international law. But it doesn't. It
dishonors its own word and violates its treaties, that piece of red, white
and blue cloth."

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/norrell1001.html