4. Lakota Nation President Defies the New Anti-Abortion Law in South Dakota, by Bill Templer
11th April 2006
Posting 4. to On the Ground, by Bill Templer
In a video “Dispatch From South Dakota: Tribal President Cecelia Fire Thunder Speaks”
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm ,
tribal president Cecilia Fire Thunder takes a stand against the new South Dakota law banning all abortions. She is invoking the Oglala Lakota tribe’s status as a sovereign nation within the state of SD to override state law, by building a family planning clinic on the reservation at Pine Ridge. Check out this extraordinary video, highlighting grassroots Native American women’s rights resistance at the local level and tribal sovereign identity. Every American county should become a kind of Lakota nation.