Defenders of the Black Hills
Urgent Action needed today
Update Report December 2008Defenders of the Black Hills
P. O. Box 2003, Rapid City, SD 57709 www.defendblackhills.org Email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
UPDATE REPORT December 2008 Hello Defenders: The past three months were running over with deadlines to submit comments to federal agencies, tabling at Pow Wows, giving speeches, and attending a hearing in Pierre, SD. Our gratitude to all who helped in these efforts, to all who generously gave donations so we could accomplish the work, and to those who provided the opportunities to participate. The following are short summaries of some of those activities as well as upcoming events.
Board Decision Endangers Bald Eagles and Archaeologic SitesPRESS RELEASE Pierre, SD - A decision made by the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment ignored recommendations by the SD Game, Fish, and Parks Department [GF&P] to protect a bald eagle nest, and the SD Archaeologist to study five possible cultural resource sites in an area slated to become a uranium processing plant.
|
"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)