10 Years Later, Badlands Park Management to be Transferred to Lakota Tribe

Ten years after the Oglala Lakota set up an encampment to stop treasure-hunters from looting their ancestors bones - as well as a US-government planned fossil dig on sacred ancestral grounds - it appears that an agreement has finally been reached to transfer management of part of Badlands National Park to Tribal authorities.

The South Unit of the national park – which entirely overlaps lands that are part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - came one step closer to becoming the nation’s first tribal national park after Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele signed a Management Agreement between the Park Service and the Tribe on Saturday. It is expected to be signed next by Mike Reynolds, regional director of the National Park Service. That signature will conclude a decade-long process to confirm the South Unit’s General Management Plan. The plan is a document that outlines a working relationship between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the National Park Service to oversee the unit.

In 2002, this blogger had the honor of spending several weeks among the Oglala Lakota at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. At the time, the Tokala Oyate (or “Kit Fox Society,” which serve as contemporary tribal warriors) had physically occupied a section of Badlands National Park that ‘overlaps’ the Pine Ridge Reservation. The occupation occurred after the National Park Service proved unable to prevent the looting of bones from Lakota graves on a landform called the Stronghold Table. Adding insult to injury, the Park Service itself had planned a major archaeological dig in a search for fossils.

 "We want the National Park Service out of the Badlands!” George Tall, Tokala Society, directly told the Badlands Park Service. His comment came on a guided tour of the proposed site that Lakota said was insulting to them and their ancestors. Badlands Park Paleontologist Rachel Benton admitted to the Lakota that she applied for a research grant to excavate titanothere fossils, dated 35 million years ago. The excavations were to take place right in the location where there are burial grounds, tepee rings, prayer rings, fire pits and other sacred sites

With sharp reactions, traditional elders and young people, told Park Service officials that the memorandum of agreement, allowing them to operate the park here on Oglala tribal land, was null and void. 

At the time, Park Service officials, however, did little more than snicker. But 10 years later, Park Management is on the verge of being transferred to the Tribe.

 “We are camped on top of the Stronghold to protest what the National Park Service is planning to do and come what may we will protect the bones of our relatives, the Lakotas and our friends and allies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho.” 

Supporters of the encampment, including your blogger, brought vanloads of supplies to the remote, off-road location. Then Lakota youth rode horseback late into the night, bringing supplies to those who patrolled and watched with binoculars, for the unexplained helicopters, late into the night.

Since the late 1880s, the South Dakota School of Mines and U.S. government have taken millions of dollars worth of fossils off of the Reservation with no kind of benefit going to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which maintains a ‘third world’ standard of living within the United States, with one of the highest poverty and lowest life expectancy rates in the nation.

Today, “we are one step closer,” said Gerard Baker, interim executive director of the Oglala Sioux Parks and Recreation Authority. “We are at the final leg to make this a true tribal national park.”

[Photo: Blogger's daughter, TaSmoosa Tehi (Loves Horses), Lakota-Omaha]

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Lakota Grandmothers Stop Keystone Trucks

Ten years ago, this blogger had the honor of spending several weeks among the Oglala Lakota at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. At the time, the Tokala Oyate (or “Kit Fox Society,” which serve as contemporary tribal warriors) had physically occupied a section of Badlands National Park that ‘overlaps’ the Pine Ridge Reservation. The occupation occurred after the National Park Service proved unable to prevent the looting of bones from Lakota graves on a landform called the Stronghold Table. Through much of modern history, the Lakota people have displayed a willingness to put themselves at risk and physically intervene in instances of social injustice.

This week was no exception.

On Monday, residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation learned through social media contacts that enormous trucks loaded with oil pipeline components related to the Keystone Pipeline/Canadian Tar Sands Project were headed towards the reservation and set to pass through the Oglala Tribal lands. “We did not know where the equipment was going, but we knew that these trucks were too huge, too heavy, and too dangerous to pass our roads. We thought the equipment may be going to the Tarsands oil mine, or other oil mines in Canada,” Lakota matriarch Debra White Plume said.

The Lakota people have taken a very strong stand against the Keystone Pipeline, opposing both the pipeline (which is planned to skirt the northeast corner of the Reservation) as well as the controversial Tar Sands mining in Canada due to environmental concerns. The Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council (a coalition of area Sioux Tribes) have both passed legislation opposing the pipeline and have called for a moratorium on the tar sands oil mine as “destructive to water, Mother Earth, all animals and human beings.”

Accordingly, as word spread that the trucks were headed to the Reservation, some six dozen residents converged on the town of Wanblee to physically block the trucks passage with their bodies.

As it turns out, the two trucks were “Treater Vessels,” which are used in oil, gas and element separation in Tar Sands operations. Each truck weighed 115 tons, and they had not requested permission to utilize Reservation roads. The owner of the trucks, Totran, is a Canadian Corporation and claimed that they had been told to use this route by South Dakota state officials. Oglala Nation Vice-President Tom Poor Bear called state officials in Pierre, who confirmed that the State helped planned the route for the oversized vehicles.

The reason for using Pine Ridge roads?

To help Totran avoid $100,000 in oversize fees should they have to use South Dakota state roads. Instead, the state suggested that the heavy vehicles use the fragile BIA roads and avoid all fees – as well as responsibility for any damage to the poorly-funded Reservation roadways.

And so, on Monday afternoon, a confrontation was inevitable.

Many Americans remember a news image from 1989, where a lone protester in Tiananmen Square, Beijing (China) stood in defiance of a tank. No less heroic were two Lakota grandmothers, Renabelle Bad Cob Standing Bear – defiant in her wheelchair - and Marie Randal (age 92), standing on the roadway in Wanblee and bringing the two Tortran trucks and a dozen accompanying convoy vehicles to a dead stop.

[PHOTO: 92-year old Marie Randal stands against the front grill of a 115-ton Lotran Treater Vehicle]



The grandmothers were joined by more than 70 others, forming a human roadblock that rendered the trucks immobile for several hours. Others from Wanblee brought pots of soup, fry bread, cases of water, doughnuts, and coffee.

The trucks were too enormous to turn around. Tribal police eventually cleared most protesters, and arrested five who refused to leave; but they also escorted the trucks to the nearest reservation border, forcing the trucks out onto South Dakota state highways and refusing them access to additional reservation roads. The five arrested were bailed out of jail with money collected by the crowd.

Here's to hoping that the American people will find the same degree of inner courage that the Lakota exhibit when it comes to standing for what they believe is right.

Debra White Plume, Lakota matriarch: