OST Okays legal action against BLM

PINE RIDGE – The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council has authorized legal action in response to a federal Bureau of Land Management decision allowing oil-and-gas fracking on a 1.5-million-acre swatch of unceded Ft. Laramie Treaty territory in Wyoming, the Native Sun News Today learned Jan. 6.
The BLM denied all of the tribe’s arguments, as well as those of the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, Inc., in a Dec. 23 announcement of approval for the looming Converse County Oil and Gas Project.
The agency in the U.S. Interior Department announced its decision “could generate billions of dollars for the American public and will strengthen domestic energy production and independence” by allowing development of up to 5,000 new oil-and-gas fracking wells.
The tribe and the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance Inc., to which it belongs, presented arguments to the BLM in an Aug. 31 “Letter of Protest to the Final Environmental Impact Statement and Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment for the Converse County Oil and Gas Project.”
Concerns over fracking threats to water supply, air quality, health, and cultural resources motivated the tribes’ treaty-based contentions and allegations of agency personnel’s violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
In the formal letter, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, headquartered at Pine Ridge, notes it is the tribal government nearest Converse County (100 miles East) whose reservation is named specifically in the BLM’s environmental impact statement process for the project.
The Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance Inc. coordinates water protection of the Missouri River Basin, the longest inland waterway in the United States.
Documentation the Oglala Sioux Tribe compiled in the letter of protest notes inadequate tribal consultation. In an official document dated December 2020, the agency responds: “The BLM adequately consulted with tribal governments regarding the Converse County Final Environmental Impact Statement.”
The tribe’s compilation boosts Native history and Indian law, by making access readily available.
The leading argument in the protest blames the BLM for using a version of the “origin history of the Sioux tribes … that is based on speculation of white historians.” The agency “did not include any history from Sioux spiritual leaders and historians that is based on empirical evidence that cultural resources, stone features, sacred sites and burial sites throughout Converse County and surrounding area are of Sioux origin …,” it states.
The BLM version of history is wrongly based primarily on a paradigm created by James Mooney in his manuscript “The Siouan Tribes of the East” (Mooney, 1895), which traces a migration from North Carolina, contends the letter, which is part of the impact statement process.
The agency version evidences the appearance of Sioux language speakers in Minnesota in 1640, in South Dakota as far west as the Black Hills in the 1700s, and in eastern Wyoming in the 1800s.
“The origins of the Sioux in the Final Environmental Impact Statement should have been based on the history and testimony from Lakota spiritual leaders such as Pete Catches and Leonard Little Finger, and Sioux historians such as Johnson Holy Rock and Vine Deloria, Jr.,” the thoroughly footnoted letter reads.
“We have continued to layer our oral knowledge of our elders on our connection to the Black Hills and surrounding areas including the areas in eastern Wyoming, i.e., 1851 treaty territory, over the academic record based on numerous studies …,” it says.
Catches described the sacredness of the Black Hills to the Lakota people in this way: “To the Indian spiritual way of life, the Black Hills is the center of the Lakota people. There, ages ago, before Columbus traveled over the sea, seven spirits came to the Black Hills. They selected that area, the beginning of sacredness to the Lakota people. Each spirit brought a gift to the Lakota people. Our people that have passed on, their spirits are contained in the Black Hills. This is why it is the center of the universe, and this is why it is sacred to the Oglala Sioux. In this life and the life hereafter, the two are together.”
What’s more, “Ethnologists and scholars studying the Mandan subscribe to the theory that, like other Siouan-speaking people (possibly including the Hidatsa), they originated in the area of the mid-Mississippi River and the Ohio River valleys in present-day Ohio.
“This migration is believed to have occurred possibly as early as the 7th Century but probably between 1000 and the 13th century, after the cultivation of maize was adopted. It was a period of a major climatic shift, creating warmer, wetter conditions that favored their agricultural production.
“Later the Pawnee and Arikara moved from the Republican River north along the Missouri River. This would place the Mandan’s, a Siouan speaking people, migrating to the Missouri River in 500 A.D. or 900-1200 A.D.,” the letter continues.
The impact statement further justifies its basis for fracking approval by omitting that ancient petroglyphs in the Black Hills have been identified as Lakota in origin. (Linea Sundstrom, Storied Stone: Indian Rock Art in the Black Hills Country (March 22, 2004), according to the filing.
Her book states in part that: “Ancient petroglyphs and paintings on rocky cliffs and cave walls preserve the symbols and ideas of American Indian cultures. From scenes of human-to-animal transformations found in petroglyphs dating back thousands of years to contact-era depictions of eagle trapping, rock art provides a look at the history of the Black Hills country over the last ten thousand years.”
The book’s own description is: “Storied Stone links rock art of the Black Hills and Cave Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming to the rich oral traditions, religious beliefs, and sacred places of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Mandan, and Hidatsa Indians who once lived there.”
It is “only one example we provide to support our connection to Converse County and the surrounding areas in the five-state region of the Great Plains,” the tribal letter says.
Further objecting to the BLM stance that “Issues concerning water rights, boundaries and treaty rights are beyond of the scope of this Environmental Impact Statement,” the tribes noted, among other things, “The BLM failed to consider the existence of downstream tribal water claims to the Cheyenne River, and the potential adverse impacts to these waters that may result from the project.”
They added: “The Cheyenne River is an extremely important water source for the Great Sioux Nation, and it flows into the Missouri River, the primary water source for the water alliance tribes. All of the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation possess extensive water rights to the Missouri River main stem, of which the Cheyenne is a major tributary.
“The Powder River is a tributary to the Yellowstone River, which flows into the Missouri River. The Powder River is also an important watershed for the Lakota. This area comprises the tribes’ traditional hunting grounds and is unceded treaty land of the Sioux.
“Under Article 16 of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868: The United States hereby agrees and stipulates that the country north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains shall be held and considered to be unceded Indian territory, and also stipulates and agrees that no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same, without the consent of the Indians … (15 Stat. 639).
“Thus, the Sioux Nation enjoys extensive treaty rights in the project area, including reserved water rights to the Missouri River and Cheyenne River downstream from the project area. Significantly, Indian water rights include the right to adequate water quality for all beneficial uses. Upstream, non-Indian users may be required to limit their diversions as necessary to achieve or preserve the required quality of tribal water rights. (Cohen’s Handbook on Federal Indian Law §19.93).”