Defenders of the Black Hills
Crow Butte ISL Uranium Mines
Pictures of the in situ leach wells at the Crow Butte ISL Uranium Mine near Crawford, Nebraska.
They are immediately behind the Crow Butte Cemetery.
Today is a very good dayDear Defenders, Today is a very good day! The following article was sent by Board member, Harold One Feather, who has been fighting the uranium issue for more than a decade. He, along with others from Defenders, attended many hearings with the state of South Dakota regarding Powertech Uranium Corporation and uranium mining laws, where the treatment of the Defenders was abominable. Yet, neither he nor anyone else at any time lost their professional demeanor and self-respect. Harold's perseverance in continually sending research on many uranium issues to increase the awareness of these problems by the public, are now being talked about by many groups in South Dakota and is commendable. Thank you Harold, for all your great work!
Black Hills National Forest Project near Harney PeakThe Vestal Project proposes to log almost all (99%) of the federal forest acres within the Project Area including in the Sylvan Peak, Calamity Peak, and Buckhorn Mountain areas of the Okawita Paha National Monument and International Peace Park proposed by Defenders of the Black Hills. The 43,516-acre Project Area contains 25,726 National Forest acres (60%). Of the National Forest acres, 99% or 25,449 acres will be logged and given slash treatment, with prescribed burning on 7% or 1,761 acres. One question is: have all the sacred places, burial sites been researched? How will they be protected from logging trucks, chains to haul out logs, or not burned or disturbed? 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)