Uranium Mining in the Black Hills::

Energy Development in the Hills Today

Energy development still poses a threat to the Hills region, however. The Black Hills lies on the eastern edge of what has been called, 'the great coal basin of the nation'. Coal is found in abundance in Wyoming. In 1971, a group calling itself the Power Supply Entities of the North Central and Rocky Mountain Region released a report that called for the construction of some twenty-two power plants and six gasification plants in the area. In addition to these, seventy-three power plants were planned by other companies. These coal-fire power plants are slowly being built. One has been completed in Gillette, Wyoming, one in Wheatland, and another in Montana. Because uranium is present in these coal beds, there is local concern that the burning of coal is releasing low-level radiation. Like any type of mining, coal mining uses up great quantities of water and there is concern that water is being contaminated. The Big Horn Mountain region, where much of the coal resides, supplies the major water supply to the aquifers that supply water specifically to Pine Ridge Reservation. Moreover, the water moves through the Hills which acts as a recharger of all the water that comes out of the Missouri in the east and the Big Horns in the west.

In 1976 and 1977, the South Dakota State Geologist declared several parts of western South Dakota "ideal" for a nuclear power plant and nuclear waste disposal. The same report notified the public that the Union Carbide Corporation had been awarded a five-year grant by the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) to explore western South Dakota for nuclear development. Indeed, during World War Two, one small town in the southern Hills - Igloo - was an atomic bomb storage area that wasn't closed down until the mid-fifties. A train used to run between Ellsworth Airforce Base in the northern Hills to Igloo, transporting nuclear bombs. Today, Igloo has been declared a Superfund Clean-up Site by the Environmental Protection Agency and the town, which once housed some 10,000 residents, is now virtually deserted.

Shortly before the Gulf War, the US government wanted to use one of the Lakota's seven sacred sites in the Black Hills - Hell Canyon - as a weapons testing area for uranium-tipped shells what were subsequently used in the war. Once again, public outcry, fuelled by a coalition of Lakota and non-Lakota activists, put a stop to the plans. Not only is the area a sacred site, but it harbours a wild horse sanctuary as well as pre-historic petroglyphs and tipi-rings. During my fieldwork, the entire area was under heavy road construction to facilitate tourism, a different kind of threat to the Black Hills.

Military interests in the mineral composition of the Black Hills still remains. The mineral tantalum is still mined for its use in bullet-proofing military aircraft windshields.Today plans are afoot for the building of a railroad to transport coal from these coal beds in Wyoming, around the southern Hills, across the Cheyenne River border of Pine Ridge Reservation, and back east. At the time of fieldwork, several organisations, including the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council and the Lakota Landowners' Association, and local chapters of the Sierra Club and Peace and Justice group, were campaigning against the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern (DM&E) railroad plans. Environmental concerns expressed included the by-passing of the railroad through several areas the Sierra Club have requested the Forest Service to be designated wilderness areas; the threat of coal spillage and pollution along the Cheyenne River; air pollution from the coal dust and train smoke; fire threats to parched summer grasslands; the noise and disruption to local residents and wildlife; and the possibility that the railroad might be used for nuclear and other waste transportation also. One Lakota woman even posed the question: "Is it possible that there are ideas of talking the Oglala Sioux tribal council into opening up a major waste dump site, hence the nearness [of the proposed railroad] to the reservation border?" (White Face, Rapid City Journal 1998). She went on to situate the issue within the Lakota concept of Seven Generations, arguing that environmentally-damaging effects ensuing from the line does not consider long-term effects on future generations: "That old Lakota philosophy of thinking ahead for seven generations was not such a bad idea. […] Personally, I think there should be an international mandate that everyone in the world is required to follow that says all development of resources must first pass the test of the effect on the seventh generation".

Political concerns, largely expressed by the Lakota, revolved around treaty issues. At several meetings at the Oglala tribal offices at Pine Ridge, an elder exclaimed: "They haven't paid us for the last railroad they built through our country, why are they thinking about doing another one here?" The entire region that the railroad will pass through is claimed by the Lakota, and the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty is still an existing legal document, according to them. A member of the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty told me that Article 11 of the 1868 Treaty still holds for the Lakota in regards to railroads, and since the Black Hills region is still legally the Lakotas' then the DM&E railroad is a direct violation (1998). Referring to railroad companies, he said, "How long are they going to go on and on violating our treaty rights? We're not going to shut up and just turn over!".

In 1998, this man told a group of DM&E representatives

"that if we were going to build an Indian railroad right across the Pope's front lawn, I said, what do you think the world would say? All the Christian people, the Catholics, they would be jumping mad because we'd be violating sacred ground, right through the Pope's holy city. So I said, I could probably come that close to a comparison. And I think after last week some of them understood it. But of course, they're working for a corporation, they have no choice but to continue to hammer away at the Indians to build this railroad. The lady […], who was representing DM&E, […] said, 'If you could show us a piece of sacred ground, […] we will more or less fence it off and we will leave that part alone.' I always thought our conception of sacredness doesn't have four walls. It doesn't have a perimeter. It doesn't have a boundary. It's out there."

He told the representatives that the Black Hills was the location of Crazy Horse's birth, although where, precisely, no one knows.

"So the next question that was brought up was, 'Well, if you could identify exactly where Crazy Horse was born, we'll […] put up a boundary.' I said, 'No, you can't do that! That's his birthright, and if that's the way you're thinking, if you're thinking boundary, he fought for a whole 1851 Treaty boundary, and that's three states wide! That was his territory. That's what he defended. And you bought Custer over.' So again they backed off. So we'll be going out there, looking for Crazy Horse's birth site. Once we establish some of this stuff, we have to… It's getting to a point where we have to define sacred space now."

And defining sacred space, for the Lakota, is no simple thing.

"You see, in Indian terms we understand what we're talking about. But in the English term, there's no such thing. […] [S]acred space is without walls, without containment, without a perimeter, or without lines - it's there. That's the way we see it. It's like the Black Hills, that's a sacred ground. Again, they say, 'How far?' It could be all the way up, all the way down."

To date, the DM&E are still considering the route as a possibility.

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