Defenders of the Black Hills
"America's Secret Chernobyl"
Fact Sheet
Uranium Mining and Nuclear Pollution
in the Upper Midwestern United States
1. World War II ended with the nuclear bomb and introduced the use of nuclear energy for the production of electricity which caused the price of uranium to rise. Uranium mining in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota began in the middle of the 1960s. As the economy of the Northern Great Plains states depends primarily on agriculture, when uranium was discovered in the region, many get-rich-quick schemes were adopted. Not only were large mining companies pushing off the tops of bluffs and buttes, but small individual ranchers were also digging in their pastures for the radioactive metal. Mining occurred on both public and private land, although the Great Sioux Nation still maintains a claim to the area through the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868, the March 3rd Act of 1871, Article VI of the US Constitution, and the 1980 Supreme Court decision on the Black Hills. The Great Sioux Nation was never consulted on any of this.
Individual Rights Only, for Indigenous Peoples at the UN
Sioux Nation Treaty CouncilSince 1984, the Sioux Nation Treaty Council has been sending delegates to the various committees of the United Nations seeking the upholding of lawful and viable treaties made between the Great Sioux Nation and the United States. Meeting after meeting were attended such as the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, the Commission on Human Rights, and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
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Update on Pesla Road Project
There are some meetings scheduled for the Pesla Road Project. Information was sent to you before about plans to blacktop this road through an area that is sacred to many Native American nations. Called Pesla, meaning Bald, the area is in the west middle portion of the Black Hills and can clearly be seen by satelite. It is being handled by the Pennington County Road Department. If you can, please attend both of the meetings and voice your concerns. More sacred places in the Black Hills should not be impacted by paved roads. 1. A Community Information meeting will be held on Thursday, March 1, 2012, from 5 - 7 PM at the Rochford Firehall in Rochford, SD. 2. A Public Scoping Meeting to begin the Environmental Impact Study process will be held on Thursday, April 19, 2012, from 5 - 7 PM at the Hill City High School in Hill City, SD. This will be the most important one to attend.
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Speaking about radioactive fallout, the late President John F. Kennedy said,
"Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some, in comparison with natural health hazards. But this is not a natural health hazard and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby who may be born long after we are gone, should be of concern to us all. Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics toward which we can be indifferent."
July 26, 1963 upon signing the ban on above ground nuclear tests
"The radiation levels in parts I visited with my students were higher than those in the evacuated zones around the Fukushima Nuclear disaster...." Nuclear Physics Professor Kimberly Kearfott, University of Michigan, in comparing the readings obtained in northwestern South Dakota at the Cave Hills open-pit, abandoned uranium mines.
“It must always be remembered that the various Indian tribes were once independent and sovereign nations, and that their claim to sovereignty long predates that of our own government.”
Thurgood Marshall, US Supreme Court Justice
(McClanahan v. Sate Tax Commission, 1973)