Keep Gold Mining Out of Black Hills: Contact United States Forest Service in Black Hills

“Kola (friends). I am Frank Fools Crow, Chief of the Lakota and I am here today with Frank Kills Enemy, one of the most respected headmen and also an expert on Indian treaty rights. Before we begin, I would like to ask you why when we speak you do not listen, and when you listen, you do not hear, and when you hear us, you do not choose to understand what we say. This is one time that I ask you to listen carefully and understand what we have to say. The people unanimously reaffirmed our long-standing position that the Black Hills are not for sale under any circumstances. We are therefore standing behind the resolution we passed at Ft. Yates in February of this year. That resolution, my friends, reads: The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota people. Both the sacred pipe and the Black Hills go hand and hand in our religion. The Black Hills is our church, the place where we worship. The Black Hills is our burial grounds. The Bones of our grandfathers lie buried in those hills. How can you expect us to sell our church and our cemeteries for a few token whiteman dollars. We will never sell.” http://www.oocities.org/lakotastudentalliance/weshallneversell.pdf

Gold is not just what the United States through Mineral Mountain wants to extract in the Black Hills – tribal sovereignty is with everything that means.

Company’s plan to drill for gold angers some Rochford landowners

Mineral Mountain has said in company documents that it considers the Rochford area to be under-explored for gold and similar to the geological environment of the former Homestake mine in Lead, where much of the 45 million ounces of gold mined in the Black Hills since the 1800s was found.

The fascist Tr*up Administration wants tribes to lose. To illustrate, this push toward privatization, commercialization, and development will strip many native tribes of their sacred lands in the process.

Black Hills Gold Exploration Oceti Sakowin Reps to “Consult” With USFS

In voicing their objections to the U.S. Forest Service representatives, tribal leaders recalled the Battle of the Greasy Grass – as the Lakota refer to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, as well as the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and how, in both events, massive numbers of Native Americans had been united against the federal government or corporations supported by the federal government.

“The tribes are 10,000 percent against anybody coming into the Black Hills and mining, or digging up our sacred lands,” he explained. “There was maybe 1 percent of each tribe that was actually present at the Standing Rock protest. And look at the thousands of people who were there. Imagine if there was 5 percent or 10 percent. That’s what digging for gold in the Black Hills will bring.”

Sazue added that tribes would prefer that the situation be handled peacefully.

Tr*mp, whose hero is Andrew Jackson, and who bragged he had “the guts to approve that final leg” of the DAPL – must think he “has the guts” to allow Mineral Mountain to rape the Black Hills, since he resurrected the Keystone XL pipeline that had stirred years of debate, and expedited another pipeline in the Dakotas that had become a major flash point for Native Americans.

‘There’s gold in them thar Black Hills’

“You will have war if this happens,” Oglala Sioux Tribal Chair Scott Weston told administrators of the Black Hills National Forest. “There will be bloodshed, because we have to stand up for our children and our grandchildren.”

The General Mining Act of 1872 must be nullified,

a controversial and still-valid federal law that upholds the right of virtually everyone — including foreign companies with U.S. subsidiaries — to explore for minerals on federal public land.

and speaking for myself, letters must be written to the US Forest Service in the Black Hills, such as the one below from the article by a local landowner.

“There is no sane reason for the United States, South Dakota, nor Pennington County to consider allowing a foreign for-profit only corporation to desecrate the Black Hills,”

Contact US Forest Service in Black Hills

Supervisor’s Office phone: (605) 673-9200. (Dial 711 for Telecommunications Relay Services)

Forest offices and visitor center contact & location

Email us: r2_blackhills_webinfo@fs.fed.us

*Note: If you would like to be included on the Forest news mailing list, please specify “mailing list” in the subject line below to receive updates on what’s happening on the Black Hills National Forest. (Disclaimer: Names and e-mails provided are secure and not shared or sold.)

JOINT STATEMENT OF CHIEF FRANK

FOOLS CROW AND FRANK KILLS

ENEMY ON BEHALF OF THE

TRADITIONAL LAKOTA TREATY

COUNCIL BEFORE HONORABLE LLOYD

MEADS SUB-COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR

AND INSULAR AFFAIRS. (September 10,

1976)

TRIBAL COUNCILS UNDER I.R.A.

On all our reservations today, there are tribal

councils operating under the 1934 Indian

Reorganization Act. These councils were placed

on the reservations by the United States

Government to replace our traditional councils.

These puppet governments are often times the

most corrupt governments around and bring out

the very worse in the whiteman system of

governments. Councilmen on these puppet

governments always represent the view of the

whiteman because they are indoctrinated by the

whiteman to act like this. These type of people

are on the council because very few of our

traditional people vote in these whiteman

elections. I am told that only 30 percent of our

people vote. These councilmen do not represent

the majority of the people on the reservation.

Naturally, many of them are here today to urge

the acceptance of this bill, as they have been

brainwashed to do by the whiteman.

JOINT STATEMENT OF CHIEF FRANK

FOOLS CROW AND FRANK KILLS

ENEMY ON BEHALF OF THE

TRADITIONAL LAKOTA TREATY

COUNCIL BEFORE HONORABLE LLOYD

MEADS SUB-COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR

AND INSULAR AFFAIRS. (September 10,

1976)