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South Dakota - "I hope they don't arrest us for planting tomatoes!" said one of the Lakota men at Oceti Sakowin spiritual encampment on La Framboise Island near Pierre, South Dakota. Another responded, "Even worse, what if they arrest us for planting marigolds?" These men were part of a group assisted by CPT who engaged in what some may call a subversive activity--planting a vegetable garden.

"This is a real international effort," CPTer Cliff Kindy said. "We have Lakota, Cree, Micmac, Eastern Cherokee, Apache, Hungarians and Americans involved in this garden."

The Oceti Sakowin encampment has been in place since March in an effort to resist the unprecedented transfer of 92,000 acres of Lakota Treaty land to the state of South Dakota. The group determined they would be at the encampment for some time in the future and therefore it would be necessary to have some fresh vegetables for eating and for harvesting in preparation for winter.

Men began preparing the soil in June to plant tomato, cucumber, and squash plants as well as corn, spinach, carrot and marigold seeds. This was probably an illegal activity, since LaFramboise Island is federally-owned land, maintained by the US Army Corp of Engineers since the late 1940's when it was annexed from treaty lands in dispute before the federal Indian Claims Commission. The total land taken was 200,000 acres, much of it now flooded by reservoirs of the Pick-Sloan Dam Project on the Missouri River.

The Mitigation Act, recently passed by Congress as Title VI of the 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act, provides for 92,000 acres of "excess" taken land to be transferred to South Dakota along with a trust fund of $108 million of federal taxpayer dollars to help the state develop and maintain recreation sites along the river.

The garden was named "Wotakin Makoce" (Earth Food) and will be tended by the members of the encampment until winter.