Pe’sla in the Black Hills: Sacred ground, not mining ground
ROSEBUD — As a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and a state representative for District 26A, I am calling on South Dakotans to pay attention to what is happening right now in the Black Hills, and to ask themselves whether the principles they stood on during the Summit Carbon Solutions fight apply here too.
Pe’sla is sacred ground. It sits at the heart of He Sapa, the Black Hills, and has been a place of prayer, ceremony, and gathering for the Očeti Šakówiŋ for more than 2,000 years. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, along with other Sioux tribes, purchased portions of this land in 2012, 2015, and 2018 to protect it. For over a decade, those tribes have been working to have the land placed into federal trust through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management. That effort remains unresolved.
Last week, it came to light that Pete Lien & Sons, a Rapid City-based mining company, had already begun exploratory drilling for graphite near Pe’Sla, with approval from the U.S. Forest Service, and without any tribal consultation. On May 1, nine tribes — the Oglala Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux, Crow Creek Sioux, Lower Brule Sioux, Santee Sioux, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Spirit Lake Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux, and Yankton Sioux Tribe — filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The lawsuit alleges that federal agencies violated their own legal obligations and bypassed a standing two-mile buffer agreement established with the tribes to protect Pe’Sla. It further argues that the Forest Service improperly used a categorical exclusion, a procedural shortcut, to approve a project involving drilling, road construction, and other significant ground disturbance that does not qualify for that exemption.
This situation is deeply familiar to me, and it should be familiar to South Dakotans who followed the Summit Carbon Solutions debate. Not long ago, farmers, ranchers, and families across this state stood up and said that a private corporation does not have the right to take their land against their will. They organized. They testified.
They pushed the South Dakota Legislature to ban the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines, and they won. That fight was grounded in a principle most South Dakotans share across party lines: Your land is your land, and no company gets to run over you because they have resources and legal leverage. I stood with those landowners. I stand on that same principle today.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the other plaintiff tribes are landowners. They bought this land. They have maintained it, protected it, and fought through proper legal channels for years to secure it. A private company and a federal agency have now moved forward with an industrial project right on their doorstep, without consultation, without consent, and in apparent violation of an existing agreement.
If landowner rights matter in South Dakota, they have to matter here. That principle does not stop at the reservation boundary. I urge my colleagues in the Legislature, South Dakotans who fought alongside landowners in the Summit battle, and anyone who believes in the rule of law and respect for property rights to stand with the nine tribes who filed suit yesterday.
I also call on the U.S. Forest Service to immediately suspend drilling operations pending full government-to-government consultation with the affected tribes, consistent with federal trust responsibilities and the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act.
Pe’Sla must be protected.
Rep. Eric Emery represents House District 26A in the South Dakota Legislature and serves as House Minority assistant leader. Emery is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
Photo: Black Hills forest, public domain, wikimedia commons
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