Honoring Treaties With Indians

I read with great interest that the Mexican government has finally recognized the American Indians of Chiapas as “full equals, men and women deserving, and capable of formulating, their own human and civil rights” (Feb. 20). It took only 477 years.

When is the U.S. government going to follow this example and treat the American Indians, whose lands it has expropriated and whose culture it still seeks to exterminate, as human beings “deserving, and capable of formulating their own human and civil rights”?

It won’t happen as long as there is apartheid in America ruled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which forces ever-shifting bureaucratic dictates on my people. And there can be no opportunity for us to be treated as equals when the Department of the Interior holds our land “in trust” and finds myriad ways to help big business steal our minerals and rape our Grandmother, the Earth.

When will the U.S., which proclaims itself to the world as a nation of laws, abide by Article VI of its own Constitution, which requires that ratified treaties with all nations have the same force of law as the Constitution itself? Will we also have to wait 477 years?

RUSSELL MEANS

Santa Monica Caption: BOB CAREY / Los Angeles Times

Tony Dulin and Denzil Xavier string computer cable on NetDay at Menlo Avenue School.