RAID ON PINE RIDGE

Oglala Hemp Fields Chopped Down And Taken By Armed Federal Officials

MANDERSON - A small army of armed men from several federal and local law
enforcement
agencies swooped down on the modest and pastoral hemp fields of Alex White
Plume's
tiospaye in the early hours of a hot August day this past Thursday,
shocking and
scaring the family members and ripping their carefully cultivated crop from
their land.

The raiders that descended on the isolated land north of Wounded Knee
consisted of at least 25 officers decked out in bulletproof vests, 12
vehicles, two airplanes and a helicopter. The officers carried
automatic weapons including machine guns, and their weaponry was
augmented by large weed-eaters that were used to chop down the lofty,
8 to 10 foot tall green plants.

Stunned by the force of the assault on the tribal land owned by his
family, White Plume was still in a state of shock four hours later. "I
cannot comprehend why they needed to do this to us," White Plume said
quietly with disbelief trembling through his voice. "This crop was
going to be the beginning of our future, we followed all of the
criteria of the tribal legislation, we were totally open with everyone."

OST Public Safety Not Included On Raid

White Plume said that he didn't see any members of the Oglala Sioux
Tribe Public Safety Department or the local BIA Criminal
Investigations officers among the men swarming over his property.

"They not only didn't use them, I don't think they even gave them the
courtesy of letting them know they were coming," White Plume said.
From the words stenciled onto the back of their flak jackets, White
Plume determined that the men were from the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency, the FBI, the U.S. Marshall service and the Shannon County
Sheriff. Various officers from Indian police agencies other than Pine
Ridge were there, too, but White Plume was not able to determine which
tribes they came from.

"They acted like they expected us to be dangerous or something," said
White Plume. "And I had told McBride (U.S. Attorney for South Dakota
Ted McBride) over and over that they would never have anything to fear
from us."

"We were trying to build our family's future with a useful crop,
following all the tribal ordinances on tribal land," he continued.
"They don't have the right to do this to us."

White Plume Feels "Violated"

Although armed to the teeth and clad in body armor, White Plume said
the officers' demeanor was generally pleasant. "They were friendly, so
friendly it made me sick considering the destruction they were doing.
I've never been treated like that before. It made me feel like
something's not right, here, and it made me sick."

White Plume added in a mournful tone of voice, "They treated me like a
relative and then they violated us."

Not every officer was pleasant, however. After being awakened and
served with the search warrant White Plume went down to the hemp field
and tried to get in amongst the plants that carried so much of his
family's hope for the future and of which he had been so fond. "When I
got within a couple yards of the field a U.S. Marshall pointed a
machine gun at me and told me to halt," White Plume said. "He made it
very clear he was willing to shoot if I didn't stop."

Some of White Plume's nieces and nephews who live in a mobile home
near the field stood in shock, wrapped in blankets, and watched the
destruction. "One of my niece's was crying," he said. "She didn't want
to see her uncle taken to jail or shot."

White Plume was not arrested although he had expected to be. He asked
the officers why they weren't taking him in with his plants. "They
said they didn't want to get into anything political." That may not be
something the federal government can avoid, however.

Plants Were Tested As Low-THC

The crop the family had seeded their land with last April and tended
so carefully was industrial hemp, a cousin to the more infamous
marijuana but without more than a trace of marijuana's psychotropic
component, THC. Officers on the scene of the raid even admitted to
White Plume that his plants were known by them not to be marijuana.
"They told me they had gotten some leaves from my crop earlier and
tested it," he said. "They told me it tested out at less than one
percent THC content."

That left White Plume even more puzzled about the need for the assault
and seizure. "I asked them why they would take my plants if they knew
they weren't really drugs," White Plume said. "They told me it was to
deter other Lakota from doing what I was doing, and because they
wouldn't differentiate between marijuana and hemp."

The DEA has a policy of refusing to acknowledge or operate as if there
is a difference between the two plant cousins. Very probably, White
Plume says, because to the eye hemp is nearly indistinguishable from
marijuana and enforcement of anti-marijuana laws would be less simple
if they had to test for THC content before seizing cultivated plants.
But industrial hemp is a legally cultivated cash crop in Canada and
other countries where it is recognized for its usefulness as raw
material for paper, food, clothing, rope and building materials, among
thousands of other things.

DEA Has Authority To Define 'Marijuana'

U.S. Attorney McBride, in a phone conversation that day, refused to
call the plants anything but marijuana. "Congress has given the DEA
the authority to define marijuana and there are court cases that
uphold their authority to consider hemp as marijuana without
relationship to the THC content."

"The 1st Circuit Court ruled in a case from either Vermont or New
Hampshire this year," he continued. "They upheld DEA's authority
against a claim similar to the one being made by the Pine Ridge people
about low THC content."

McBride would not say with what federal agency the request for the
search warrant originated, saying that it was all one and the same.
"We are all on one page on this, the DEA, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney."

A second plot of hemp is in the ground on the property of former
two-term tribal president Joe American Horse Sr. of the Slim Buttes
Land Use Association. Although McBride said a second plot just south
of Oglala in the Slim Buttes area was also raided, American Horse Sr.
said his land had not been raided.

"Our plants weren't planted until April 29th and aren't even four feet
tall," he said. "They aren't ready for harvest the way Alex's were and
McBride had always said that if we prepared to harvest it he would do
something."

American Horse Sr. was indignant about the show of force displayed
during the raid on the White Plume property and the federal refusal to
honor tribal sovereignty.

"There was no need to have that many officers with flak jackets on,"
he growled. "We don't believe in drugs and we would never promote
drugs. Those people were farming a crop, just like we are farming a
crop. These plants are not drugs."

He said he did not expect to sleep too soundly for the next couple of
weeks, knowing what had taken place that morning. "We have our plot
fenced and marked with a sign that says 'OST Dept. of Agriculture
Experimental Farm.' But that may not make much difference to them,
either."