Lakota
AID
Registered
Charity No: 1097444
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Hi Everyone I am back from my trip to South Dakota and this trip was very different from the others.
The Mining companies still want to do more open uranium pits and have already started.
A real eye opener of a trip and I felt more involved than I have ever done. Defenders of the Black Hills does an amazing job, with little reward, to get all this info out and try to stop further pollution and get the companies to clean up their act instead and I feel so proud to be working with them on this. I had the honour or taking part in a prayer ceremony with Charmaine, Garvard and Vincent at a very heavily polluted area in SD called Cave Hills. This area once had ancient petroglyphs drawn onto these hills and there are burials there. There is an ancient stone circle that has been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years for ceremony by many Tribes. The petroglyphs have almost all been destroyed by Uranium spoils just pushed over the top of this hill from the open mine, covering and destroying them. The caves that once also held sacred ceremonies have all been dug out and destroyed. This all happened in the 50's. thousands of years of history destroyed with no thought to the people or the meaning of the sacred significance to this area!! Where we stood, radioactive dust is all around, yet there are no warning signs to alert people to this? WHY???
There is an area in ND, where the battle of Killdeer was fought, called Cotteau, and there is an Indian burial site there that the coal mining company wants to do strip mining over. The gravesite contains 1,700 bodies, but the mining company have told the people that they will bulldose the gravesite to one site and the people can just collect the bones if they want!!!! Can you believe that!! This has been staved off for a few years, but the plan is for this summer to start the mining. It just makes me so mad and again, the world does not know about this and there is no respect at all from the Mining companies! As I said, this was a totally different trip , but one that gives me much more incite as to the problems faced by the Lakota people. Besides the poverty, health problems and predujice they face, they also face ill heath and death from unseen pollutions. This is going to affect the white people now invading the Black Hills, so why is it that a handful of dedicated, Lakota people are actually fighting for them too, as to health issues that will affect them also, and yet most white people, and especially the Mining companies and the US government do not give a damn about them!!!!!!!! Got to be a moral to this story somewhere!! I am also appealing for anyone out there that would be willing to sponsor me with help for my airfares to South Dakota? I really feel that I need to spend more time researching with the people so as to be able to be there first hand so to speak when things happen. There are many meetings and events going on that I have missed because of lack of money (alas always the same story!!), and to be able to get out there more often would be very productive. The only way to be able to understand the situation is to be there. This is the way to spread the word as I am trying to do and working very closely with Defenders of the Black Hills. If anyone can help, please contact me via my website and thank you. Take care and hope you are all and looking forwards to the spring and summer as I am. Best Wishes Brenda |
I spent a lot of time with Charmaine White Face and Garvard Good Plume and went with them ,and an Elderly Holy Man named Vincent Brings Plenty, to quite a few meetings (including a 2 day trip to North Dakota), with Water and Mining companies all to do with the Uranium pollution, plus other nasties that already heavily pollute huge areas in the South Dakota, including the Sacred Black Hills. 
Studies have been done , via water and soil samples, that show the Cheyenne river is heavily polluted, and that the trees in the Black Hills are slowly dying from the pollution, wildlife is affected, and in the areas where the Lakota people live near the river there have been high percentages of still births, deformities and rare cancers , yet nothing is being done to try and clean up the pollution .
www.defendblackhills.org
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