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Pine Ridge, South Dakota
October 12, 2000
Kentucky Hemp Growers Co-op offering to replace Lakota Indiana's hemp
destroyed by Drug Enforcement Agents
Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D. - In a pre-dawn raid on August 24, 2000,
thirty-three (33) heavily armed Drug Enforcement Agents (DEA) trespassed
onto the sovereign Lakota Nation at Pine Ridge and destroyed two
industrial hemp crops being grown as a commercial venture under tribal
ordinance. As it turns out the loss of the plant material, which was
going to be used for composite construction materials, will not slow
down the Lakota Hemp Project.
“The Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative is offering to replace some of
the hemp lost to the nightmare of the drug war,” said Alex White Plume,
whose 1-acre hemp crop on Wounded Knee creek was seized and destroyed.
White Plume now believes the DEA's actions are helping, not derailing
his long-range plans. He said the positive feedback is showing that,
"Lakota hemp is gaining respect in the world."
In a letter to White Plume, the Kentucky Hemp Growers Co-op's executive
director, Joe Hickey, characterized America's hemp policy as
"fundamentally absurd and destructive... In light of international
treaties protecting its cultivation worldwide, the policy is ludicrous
and irresponsible." In the face of Kentucky's Supreme Court ruling that
'hemp is marijuana,' Hickey has offered to help make up the loss by
transporting and delivering legally imported Canadian hemp bales from
Kentucky, across state lines, to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
White Plume is quick to point out that, "It's all hemp from Canada. Why
doesn't the DEA list Canada as a drug-producing country, if they are
going to treat Pine Ridge like one?"
Tom Cook, whose name was on the Slim Buttes "grow out" operation, also
had his crop seized and thinks, "It's a big money thing. The DEA has
made more money off this seizure than anyone, nearly $3 per hemp plant,
according to the national average." Quoting a January, 1998 Vermont
legislative study of the DEA's national cannabis eradication program
Cook said, “In South Dakota the DEA eradicated 224 marijuana plants in
1997, while that same year they eradicated over 189 million "ditchweed"
(hemp) plants! According to the Vermont study, 99.28% of cannabis
eradicated nationally was ditchweed, while only 00.72% was actually
marijuana. In comparison, South Dakota's percentage of ditchweed, to the
total amount destroyed, was 100%."
White Plume agrees with Cook's characterization of the national
eradication program as an "extensive DEA jobs program, a display of
unlimited law enforcement budgets being used to change the cultural
landscape of America and controlling the mental processes of people."
Despite the ultimate threat of death penalties and the expanding
prison/industrial complex, neither sees hemp as a hopeless prospect. "We
didn't get indicted because we had the truth on our side," said Cook,
adding "however, they have said they will indict us if we do it again."
"The entire matter looks like universal deceit" White Plume states, and
"unless the policy is corrected, law enforcement will continue on its
present course of losing credibility. Their confiscation of our economic
activity - meant to stop legitimate efforts to help ourselves - is
having the opposite effect."
An upcoming trip to Germany underscores international interest in the
Lakota hemp project. White Plume will be one of five Indians in a
delegation invited to Bavaria by the Lakota Village Fund to collaborate
with university hemp researchers. They will also be inspecting the local
hemp industries in the Catholic monastery near Bernried. If hemp is
truly a godsend to the Pine Ridge people, its uses will be fashioned
with the help of Catholic priests who, after all, first cultivated the
plants on the reservation over a hundred years ago. (END)
Contacts:
Alex White Plume (605) 455-2155
Tom Ballanco, Esq. (310) 291-3659
*************************************
C. Penn, HIA Exec. Secretary
Hemp Industries Association
PO Box 1080, Occidental, CA 95465
Tel: 707 874 3648 Fax: 707 874 1104
Email: info@thehia.org
http://thehia.org
http://hempstores.com
http://hempembargo.com
http://votehemp.com
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