Hemp farmer renewing his fight with government

Alex White Plume wants to plant and harvest the industrial raw material

Source: kotatv.com

The last decade has seen an easing in some marijuana laws across the country but it hasn't helped one KOTA Territory man in his fight to grow industrial hemp, a close cousin of the marijuana plant.

Alex White Plume surveys a lush green field on his property outside of Manderson on the Pine Ridge Reservation and reaches out to grab a dead weed.

“This particular hemp plant is called a super fiber plant,” he said pulling off some fibers off a stalk. “They've been standing up all year and they're still tough and still strong.”

Volunteer hemp plants still grow on White Plume's property but he can't by law touch them. He and his brother planted the crop for three years starting in 2000 but federal agents destroyed the plants.

 “It was like a military operation when they came here,” he said. “I wish I had had a camera.”

Since 2004 he has been barred by a federal restraining order from planting the crop and now, more than a decade later, he's starting to fight back. His formal, written request that the government rescind the restraining order was declined this spring and now he's preparing to go back to court.

“In a couple of weeks we're going to file a brief in federal court to sue the Department of Justice back for that restraining order,” he said.

White Plume is buoyed by the changes in marijuana and hemp laws. Hemp can be used to make a wide range of products but is illegal because it is a type of cannabis plant and looks like marijuana. But three states now have legal test hemp crops and four states have legalized marijuana. 

But for White Plume, the two key issues remain sovereignty and poverty. First, he says, the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty gives him economic freedoms he says are being abridged.

“And in that treaty it says that we can grow any food we want or utilize any material we want,” he said.

And second, he says he's looking for a road to prosperity.

“Look at the condition of my family. There's a house up there just run down,” he said with a wave of his arm. “I'm just so tired of poverty. Somebody is creating something new with hemp fibers or hemp oil every day. I just wanted to participate in that.”

White plume has the full support of Oglala Sioux Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele who sees hemp as an economic development tool.