In 2014 two national forests based in Montana, one named for the Swiss guy who helped convince President Thomas Jefferson to use an executive order to buy land from a country that didn’t even own it and one named for a war criminal were merged into a single administrative unit.
Despite being sacred to the Apsáalooke the federal government has twice proposed the Awaxaawapìa Pìa or Crazy Woman Mountains sometimes called the Crazies as a location for a national park but half the land and every alternate section was owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad or was otherwise privately held. Today, most of the public land in the Crazies is shared by the Custer Gallatin and Lewis and Clark National Forests but even tribal access has been blocked by the descendants of European settlers.
Now, Mary Erickson is the Forest Supervisor for the Custer Gallatin National Forest based in Bozeman and she just signed the record of decision (ROD) for the Custer Gallatin National Forest Land Management Plan. The Sioux Ranger District in northwestern South Dakota is part of her purview; it’s where radioactive waste in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation because the Board of Minerals and Environment is an arm of the South Dakota Republican Party.
Not only is it some of the most spectacular landscape in sight and geology it’s also home to one of the largest populations of merlin falcons in North America in a district that’s heavily grazed and logged, most of it by none other than Neiman Enterprises.
The Sioux Geographic Area contains the highest concentration and most varied of precontact sites in the Northern Great Plains. This is due in part to the environmental diversity, excellent natural site preservation, and complexity of the many plains cultures that occupied the area for thousands of years. The North Cave Hills have several national register sites, including Lightning Springs prehistoric site and 43 petroglyph sites. The proposed North Cave Hills Archaeological and Traditional Use District is considered a tribal cultural landscape to the Tribes and their use of the unit showed that it qualified as a traditional cultural landscape. The proposed district contains 365 recorded archaeological sites of which 232 are either already listed or are considered contributing resources. Cultural material within the district range in age from Late Paleoindian period through the Historic Period. Traditional cultural use of the district is represented at Ludlow Cave, the petroglyph sites, several graves, and by at least two stone features. [2020 Land Management Plan, Custer Gallatin National Forest]
Today, land repatriation is the part of the roadmap to reconciliation and that Republican welfare ranchers are angry about rewilding means it's the right thing to do.
Plan Components–Areas of Tribal Interest (TRIBAL) Desired Conditions (SX-DC-TRIBAL)01 The North Cave Hills retains the characteristics, physical integrity, setting, cultural, archaeological and traditional resource values that qualify it as a traditional use area, National Register District, and sacred site.02 The Chalk Buttes embody a tribal cultural landscape significant to ongoing traditional cultural, spiritual, ceremonial and religious practices of the Northern Cheyenne, Sioux, and Assiniboine Tribes.Goals (SX-GO-TRIBAL) 01 The Custer Gallatin National Forest protects and honors ongoing traditional use and practices and the tribal cultural landscape in the North Cave Hills through continued consultation with the associated tribes. 02 The Custer Gallatin National Forest protects and honors ongoing traditional use and practices and the tribal cultural landscape in the Chalk Buttes through continued consultation with the associated tribes.Guidelines (SX-GDL-TRIBAL) 01 For the purpose of protecting religious or cultural sites of high importance to the tribes where standard mitigation is not a feasible option, management activities should avoid disrupting these values within the North Cave Hills Archaeological and Traditional Use District or sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the Prehistoric Rock Art of the South Dakota Multiple Site Listing.02 New spring development in the Chalk Buttes should avoid springs used for traditional cultural purposes to minimize conflicts with traditional cultural practices. [Plan]
It's time to move the US Forest Service into the Department of the Interior, dissolve the Black Hills National Forest and make it a national monument co-managed by the Park Service and the tribal nations signatory to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.
Rewild it and rename it Paha Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.
ip photo: Deer's Ears Butte in northwestern South Dakota.
Things totally normal in Bowman County, N.D. pic.twitter.com/Gnrd0mD4Rk
— Mike McFeely (@McFeely_Inforum) January 29, 2022
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