Defenders of the Black Hills
Final 2008 Defenders' Financial Summary
Land Clearance Eludes Uranium Mining Company“April 20th Hearing on Objection†RAPID CITY, SD --The “clearance†that Powertech (USA) Inc. needs for the land on which they plan to mine uranium is still not forthcoming. During a hearing held Feb. 19, 2009, in Pierre before the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment, Max Main, the attorney for Powertech stated that an error occurred on the number of cultural sites in the area they wish to mine. Powertech contracted with the Archaeology Laboratory from Augustana College in Sioux Falls to do a cultural resources survey.
Notice of Hearing on the Nominations of LandIMPORTANT INFORMATION !!
The SD Department of Environment and Natural Resources has sent a Notice of Hearing on the Nominations of Lands to the Preliminary List of Special, Exceptional, Critical, or Unique Lands. The following is a summary of that information. “Notice is hereby given that the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources has received three petitions to nominate land for inclusion on the preliminary list of special, exceptional, critical, or unique lands. These petitions were received from Charmaine White Face and the Defenders of the Black Hills,…Debra White Plume,… and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, through its attorney, Elizabeth Lorina…The nominated area includes land 12 to 17 miles northwest of Edgemont, South Dakota….†[To see the nominations go to http://denr.sd.gov/des/mm/powertechsupage.aspx]
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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)