Pe'Sla meeting pits sovereign nations against state government

It’s not really South nor even really Dakota.

Nearly twenty years ago Congress passed the Tribal Forest Protection Act when this columnist was still living in the Black Hills. It authorized tribal nations to enter agreements with the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to protect public resources bordering or adjacent to reservations and trust lands that have biological, archaeological, historical, or cultural connections. 

So in 2010 Democratic former US Senator Tim Johnson introduced the Tony Dean Cheyenne River Valley Conservation Act that would have created a 48,000 acre wilderness in the nearly 600,000 acre Buffalo Gap National Grassland adjacent to the Oglala Lakota Nation. 

Then in 2012 the Sicangu Lakota Oyate or Rosebud Sioux Tribe raised some $10 million combined with contributions from the other members of the Oceti Sakowin the People of the Seven Council Fires purchased Pe'Sla, the property formerly called Reynold's Prairie by the descendants of white settlers.

In 2014 the Nations acquired the final 437 acres of the Heart of Everything That Is and in 2015 the Oyates began moving bison to the meadow with hopes to add many more after winning federal trust status but in 2020 the herd of sixty five was removed after whining from welfare ranchers who lease Forest Service land for domestic cattle grazing at pennies per head.

In 2023 $12 million was designated under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support co-stewardship under the TFPA and complete projects in mostly western states including some $700,000 for efforts blending Indigenous knowledge on the Black Hills National Forest and $100,000 to restore degraded habitats on the Fort Pierre National Grassland. The Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota are managed from Nebraska. The Grand River National Grassland in northwestern South Dakota is managed from Bismarck, North Dakota.

Proving irony is dead Kristi Noem’s political campaign has called for an audit of tribal communities from a state that’s an ethics black hole and where Republicans routinely raid the Future Fund while the governor peddles favors from South Dakota's executive branch like it was a $60 bible. 

Mrs. Noem photobombed Friday's quarterly meeting at the Pe'Sla Sacred Sites where she reliably continued to complain about co-stewardship with Tribal governments even as the Black Hills National Forest faces habitat degradation fraught with lead contamination from unregulated shooting plus off-highway vehicles, grazing, mining and logging. 

Preservation is a weak spot in the Republican agenda and if enough people believe forest and rangeland resilience is a bankable position the South Dakota Democratic Party needs to exploit it by fielding candidates who can convince voters to reject politicians like John Thune, Kristi Noem, Mike Rounds and Dusty Johnson who work for the grazing, mining and logging profiteers at the expense of public lands. 

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