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Pierre, SD - The U.S. Senate added $800,000 to an Emergency Appropriations bill passed, Friday, May 14, to speed up a controversial land transfer in South Dakota. The funding was contained in an emergency spending bill that was passed to fund the NATO military strikes in Yugoslavia.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Department of Water and Natural Resources has been working on the land transfer issues for the Corps of Engineers lands along the Missouri River since 1986. According to the Department Administrator Shirley Marvin, the Corps of Engineers owns land above the Missouri River reservoirs, both on and outside of the existing Indian Reservations. "The Corps lands on the Reservations were taken from Standing Rock and the other Tribes. The land along the river outside of the Reservations was Sioux Nation land under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty," Marvin explained.

Under a 1998 budget rider, however, the off-Reservations Corps lands are to be transferred to the state of South Dakota. Two Indian Tribes, the Cheyenne River and Lower Brule Sioux, also shall receive the Corps lands within their reservations, and the state and Tribes shall receive federal Wildlife Trust Funds.

"Most Sioux Tribes and the Great Sioux Nations Treaty Council oppose this legislation," Marvin stated. The Standing Rock Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes have passed Resolutions opposing the land transfer to South Dakota.

South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, succeeded in getting emergency funding to speed up the land transfer over the objections of these Tribes. The Tribes are working with the Corps of Engineers to investigate ways to protect the Native American cultural resources on the land to be transferred to the state.

In testimony to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on April 26, Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Charles Murphy stated that "Native American human remains, funerary objects and cultural resources associated with the Standing Rock and the Great Sioux Nation are embedded in the banks...above the Missouri river reservoirs." Murphy decried the transfer of the land to the state on these grounds. "This legislation seriously threatens the rights of Standing Rock and the Great Sioux Nation," Murphy told the Senate Committee.

Meanwhile up to 15 Lakotas from Pine Ridge Indian reservation are encamped at LaFramboise Island in Pierre, SD. The campers contend that the land transfer to South Dakota violates the Treaty, and that they shall refuse to leave the camp until Congress reconsiders the land transfer provision.

That is why the inclusion of funding in the Emergency Spending Bill is disappointing to Standing Rock and the other Tribes, according to Marvin. "They are in such a hurry to transfer the land that they added money to the Spending Bill for the crisis in Yugoslavia. In the same Bill they fund efforts to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, they violate the rights of the Sioux Nation."

Standing rock has been working with the Oglala, Rosebud, and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes in seeking an Oversight Hearing on the land transfer is impact on Sioux Nation Treaty rights, and the protection of Native American cultural sites along the Missouri River. No hearing has been scheduled as of yet, but the efforts of the Tribes are continuing.