HEMP RAID STUNS FAMILY

Family Hopes Riding On Sale Of Crop Dashed By Federal Seizure

MANDERSON - The armed flak-jacketed federal agents that burst upon the
White Plume tiospaye's property at dawn a week ago left in a storm of dust
that coated the trees and bushes for yards away from the road.

As the sounds of the federal helicopters, planes, trucks and agents faded,
the White Plume family sat in dejection and shock, trying to absorb and
comprehend the far-reaching nature of the loss that had been visited on
them so suddenly.

The field that a few hours before had been crowded with tall, delicate,
fragrant green hemp stalks was now a scarred patch of ground, bare except
for clumps of frayed stubble. It had truly been a family affair with three
generations of the White Plume family working together to plant the seeds,
thin the plants and pull or hoe out weeds that threatened to stunt or
weaken the fibrous plants.

Alex White Plume, the family patriarch by virtue of being the eldest male,
had enjoyed the way the family had bonded tighter since the planting in
April. His brother, Percy, and his sisters Ramona, Rita and Alta had spent
hours in the field along with their children and even some of those
children's children.

Harvest Was To Begin Last Weekend

Alex had been looking forward to relaying to them, after the harvest was
completed, a very pleasant surprise. He had sold the majority of the crop
to actor and hemp advocate Woody Harrelson, and the family was going to
realize and share in a good income for their hard work.

The harvest was to have begun that very weekend, and they were all looking
forward to it. The family planned to dress in full traditional garb, do
ceremony to bless the plants and give thanks for the growing season that
had resulted in more than 35,000 healthy plants reaching more than 10 feet
towards the sun.

Instead they were seated in a circle next to their one-time "field of
dreams" holding a family meeting to assess what had happened and try to
anticipate what lay before them. They began by sharing their stories of
what had happened that Thursday morning. "When they came here it was about
5:30 in the morning," Alex White Plume said. "Philip Jumping Eagle across
the creek heard them when he came out to start his truck."

"I woke up and tried to come down to the field," he continued. "Federal
agents had made a circle around the field but I was in a four-wheel so I
just drove around them. When I got close a U.S. Marshall pointed a machine
gun at me and said 'Halt' at me three times, real domineering and it kinda
scared me.

"I jumped out of my pickup and starting walking towards the field and I saw
Percy trying to come at it from another direction but they herded him out
and wherever we went they just kept us away.

"We tried to reason with them. I said 'Hey, you need to stop this. We're
getting ready to harvest and those plants are our future.' But it didn't
stop them."

Ramona and her children were living in a mobile home only yards away from
the field. The teenage girls had been frightened by the aircraft sounds and
the pounding of an agent on the door of the trailer. Ramona told of how the
girls rushed screaming down the hall to the very back of the trailer. One
of the braver ones moved toward the door, but the rest shouted, "Don't open
the door, don't open it," so she joined them and stayed away from the door.

Alex's nephew, Vic, had been leader of the family guard around the field
and was upset at being caught unawares, but he had another reason for
feeling distress over the loss of the crop. "Vic was really angry because
he was planning on buying school clothes and things from the money that
would have been his share of the harvest," White Plume said. "And so were
Rita and Ramona and all of us, because it was our family business."

Loss Of Crop Leaves Family In Bind

"I don't know exactly what I am going to do. We would have had a check next
Wednesday from Woody, after the harvest. They really wanted to buy it, it
was a historical thing to them, to have the first crop from here," Alex
told the family members. "As you all know, my lease is coming up. We own
some of this land but we also lease part of it. Now I might have to sell
some horses to make the payments to keep up the land."

Tom Ballanco, attorney for the Slim Buttes Land Use Association and the
White Plume family, had spoken to Alex that morning by phone and told him
that U.S. Attorney Ted McBride had filed a request to destroy the
confiscated plants and Ballanco was filing to stop the destruction until
the merits of the case could be heard. "This is going to be about our
property. Our property was wrongly taken from us."

The family sat around second-guessing their conduct during the raid. They
had offered no physical resistance and now felt some regret that they had
let their property, the fruits of their hard work, go without a struggle.

Although in the end they decided it was better to have shown restraint, the
initial shock and disappointment was evolving into anger and resentment by
what they saw as an intolerable and insulting attack on their tribe's
sovereignty as well as an unjustified attack on their individual rights.
Each member of the tiospaye was given an opportunity to speak to what they
felt the family should do.

"This is the same kind of treatment we've been getting for the last 150
years," said Percy. "Standing here watching them cut down and take away our
crop, I had a small feeling of how our ancestors felt when they were told
not to go off the reservation, that they couldn't hunt buffalo, or to do
this and not do that."

"We should go ahead and continue on. This is a small setback," he went on.
"Our downfall in the past has been in not keeping on with what we were
striving for, we should continue on."

He stopped to consider his next words carefully. "People get intimidated by
the enormity of the U.S. government and Congress sitting up there, seeming
so powerful. People have a tendency to look at the big picture and it looks
so big it keeps them from going forward. We have to be different, we can't
look at this as a downfall. We need to support each other.

"There are a lot of things, good things, useful things, that can be done
with hemp," Percy said. "We need to look at this as a learning point and
continue on with what our intention was: to plant thousands of acres of hemp."

Family Looks To Tribal Council For Support

Ramona said she felt the same way Percy did but she added, "There are new
tribal elections coming up and this is an ordinance the council passed.
They should support us. This is really an issue of sovereignty.

"What gives them (the feds) the right to do this to us? This was only 1.5
acres, our own field of dreams," Ramona said. "This is really sovereign
land. The land is the issue, what we have the right to do on our own land.

"After 150 years of defeatist attitude we need to stand up and show our
kids how to stand strong and fight this, even if we do have to fight it
over several years. We can't let it go. People will say, 'Oh, they gave up.'"

Rita strongly agreed with her brothers and sister. "We shouldn't let it end
with what they did Thursday," she said. "We have our kids' future to think
about, and our grandkids', too."

The elder generation of siblings agreed to stand together, even if federal
indictment or arrest is to come. They discussed fact that arrest and
conviction presents them with the sobering reality of sentences of ten
years to life for each count. "If indictments are going to come down then
we should all be indicted," Percy said, while Ruth and Ramona nodded their
assent.

The second generation was made a part of the discussion and they supported
the decisions their parents had made to fight for the return of their
property and the honoring of their tribe's sovereignty, to stand together
as a family, and to continue their efforts to grow what they all feel is a
legitimate and valuable crop.

For much of the time the elder generation of White Plumes talked, the
younger ones moved through the field, counting the number of hemp stumps in
each cluster and counting the number of clusters. A statement on the raid
issued by U.S. Attorney Ted McBride had said they had taken 3,825 plants
from the field, but the family knew there had been a great deal more than
that in the field and were determined to quantify their loss more accurately.

"They left here with two U-haul vans, at least 14-footers," said Alex.
"Each one of those vans was full to near the top with our plants. 3,825
plants would even half fill one of those vans. We think they are trying to
understate how much they took from us in case they have to compensate us
for our loss. They don't want to be responsible for the real amount they've
taken from us."

Another Assault On Tribal Sovereignty

The White Plume family discussion was joined by Sandy Sauser, a tribal
member who is part of the OST Agriculture Department, and Joe American
Horse Sr. of the Slim Buttes Land Use Association. Sauser had worked with
the White Plumes and also in the fields of Joe American Horse Sr. and Tom
and Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook.

Sauser is deeply angry at the action taken against the fields and the
setback it represents in the tribe's efforts to establish a new cash crop
on the reservation. "What right does one agency of the federal government
have to declare two related plants to be identical even when they're not?"
Sauser said. "There was no THC in these plants. You'd have to have smoked
this whole field in one sitting to get a buzz."

Joe American Horse Sr. was firm in his conviction that the Slim Buttes Land
Use Association and the White Plume family should stand together and fight
for the principles and rights, both individual and as a tribe, that this
effort represents. He feels it is just another link in the chain of actions
taken by the federal government throughout history to leave the tribe with
nothing.

"In 1888 three of our chiefs went to Washington to tell the President we
didn't want this allotment, they even went to Congress to say we didn't
want the allotments," American Horse Sr. said. "In 1889 they gave us
allotments. You know, 'divide and conquer.' They divided up land to each
tribal member and whatever was left over they called submarginal land and
gave it to white homesteaders."

He talked about the legal tricks and technicalities played on then-poorly
educated Indians that resulted in their allotments of land being taxed
without their knowledge. "We didn't know that there was tax on there,"
American Horse said. "And after time when there got to be so much tax that
nobody could pay for it, the state takes it over and, again, gives it to
homesteaders. That's how we have all those checkerboard jurisdictions like
in Yankton. And right now we're trying to form groups to buy the land back
and that's a difficult job." He continued, "There's no THC in these plants.
We are not drug dealers, we don't approve of drugs and we aren't advocating
drugs. We've got to stick together on this thing."

They all agreed to hold fast to their goals and their principles and
beliefs. A preliminary decision was reached about holding a mass peaceful
demonstration in Rapid City the timing of which would be determined by the
expected arrival of Woody Harrelson, who had just been acquitted of charges
for planting hemp seeds in Kentucky. He was due to travel to the
reservation in the company of a troupe of Kentucky hemp farmers and
attorney Ballanco.

The group agreed to meet as one when the convoy arrived and finalize their
plans. They are hoping to find support from the Native American community
throughout the Black Hills and Rapid City area, as well as non-natives.

The main point of the demonstration would be to advocate for the return of
the hemp crop taken, but they are also hoping to show their unified
conviction to continue the efforts to establish hemp as an economic
development crop on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The two groups expect to
make hunka and unite as a single family with a ceremony during the
demonstration.

After sharing an afternoon meal of fry bread and buffalo stew the hemp
pioneers ended the meeting as it began, with a prayer for continued
guidance and protection from Spirit.