I could not sleep last night, so I sat and made tobacco. There is something calming in working with red willow, sitting and thinking of those times with Grandma, who has been on my mind a lot. It is wintertime; this is supposed to be the time of stories and passing our history down to the young.

It was this time of year, a century and a half ago, when the “Long Knives” of the military forts and the Indian agents told the people they must either move to the reservations or die (known as the Sell or Starve, Act of February 28, 1877).

Historically, our people's resistance has been repressed with bloody battles and massacres -- but also by the hands of Indian collaborators. Our relatives did not see who the enemy was, because it was their own relatives who turned against them, enabled by the same kind of lies from the same kind of corporate media.

Our traditional leaders were forced aside by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1936, when federal authorities forced the establishment of tribal councils on the reservations. This is a colonial system of government with no basis in Lakota/Dakota/Nakota culture or teachings. It is the same tactic they used with the Indian agents and the Hangs Around the Fort betrayals. They fabricate a leader that will allow them to take what they want from us. The hunger for power can divide a people.

As everyone knows, there are many leaders to this movement, and yet there are none. This is a people's movement; this is a movement for the water, not owned or controlled by anyone.

Like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, and the other “agency” Lakota who so quickly surrendered our lands and way of life while thousands fought back alongside Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, today our tribal council has misunderstood what is really at stake.