5/18/18

Expansion of Black Hills National Cemetery another slap to American Indians

An American president with a tenuous grip on legitimacy is poised to sign a bill into law that would double the size of the Black Hills National Cemetery.

South Dakota's earth hater congressional delegation is applauding a decision that honors one of the last outposts supporting the US Army's war against Native forces. Land seized from the Great Sioux Nation had been remanded to the tribes under the Treaty of Fort Laramie but Congress broke the agreement leading to the General Mining Law of 1872 to pay down Civil War debt and exploit the Custer Expedition's discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the affected lands would be withdrawn from mining and mineral leasing activities.
On April 7, 2017, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for S. 35, the Black Hills National Cemetery Boundary Expansion Act, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on March 30, 2017. The pieces of legislation are similar and CBO’s estimates of their budgetary effects are the same. [CBO]
The space currently warehouses over 20,000 headstones and 28,000 burials including some military spouses. National cemeteries in Hot Springs and Fort Meade are now closed to additional internment.

An entry in Wikipedia has Bill Janklow buried there. An exhumation would confirm that claim.

Samuel Sturgis and George Meade are both known for slaughtering American Indians.

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