Defenders of the Black Hills
Forest Service Vandalizes Okawita Paha
The Forest Service has begun destruction-by-bulldozer within the Norbeck Preserve in the Palmer Gulch Timber Sale, beginning in the area proposed for Wilderness designation by environmental groups in 1991. The first of 39 miles of unnecessary and destructive temporary haul roads are being created by driving bulldozers over the area east of Willow Creek Horse Camp in the Okawita Paha sacred landscape..
Road work and logging operations in the Palmer Gulch Timber Sale are causing excessive damage to soils, and have obliterated the Willow Creek Trail #8 east of Willow Creek Trailhead for over 1/2 mile, and by feller-bunchers for another 3/4 mile. The bulldozing has completely destroyed Trail #8, as can be seen in the photo above. Five miles of trails are scheduled for such treatment.
The South Dakota Peace and Justice Center is honoring Defenders of the Black Hills with an awardCongratulations, Defenders! The South Dakota Peace and Justice Center is honoring Defenders of the Black Hills with an award at their annual meeting this fall. An agenda is copied into this message. If any of you can attend, please do. We will be having our own Prayer Gathering on Saturday morning, Oct. 8, at 10:00 at Sioux Park off of Canyon Lake Drive, with a pot luck meal and meeting to follow at the Mother Butler Center.
Statement by the United Nations High Commissioner Statement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay for 9 August, the International Day of the World's Indigenous PeopleAs we celebrate the International Day of the World's Indigenous People this year, many of the estimated 370 million indigenous peoples around the world have lost, or are under imminent threat of losing, their ancestral lands, territories and natural resources because of unfair and unjust exploitation for the sake of development. Â
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"Defenders of the Black Hills is a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the environment of the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Territories, Treaties made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation."
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)