Editor's note: Sam Clauson established the Black Hills Chapter of the Sierra Club in 1972 to stop a tramway to the top of then Harney Peak so long time member, Brian Brademeyer was already defending the Black Hills by the time this interested party returned to Deadwood in 1981. Brademeyer passed in November and the following tribute was penned by Charmaine White Face but a link has been added.
The word “Lakota” means “ally”. It doesn’t mean the people who speak the Lakota language. We are Tituwan. This tribute is to a person who was truly a Lakota and one of my good friends for nearly thirty (30) years. No, we were never romantically involved but were very committed in our endeavors to protect the environment of the 1868 Treaty Territory.
Brian Brademeyer was one of the original Defenders of the Black Hills. He was also our Treasurer since the beginning in 2002. For ten years before Defenders, he was the President of the Black Hills Sierra Club. Those members of the dominant society, including the U.S. Forest Service, constantly fought their barrage of well researched comments and legal documents he sent to them.
In 1997, the Oglala Sioux Tribe officially recognized the efforts that Brian made to protect and preserve the sacred Black Hills. They honored him with a star quilt that he has to this day. Their honoring really touched him. Brian went home a few weeks ago, probably from a heart attack from shoveling snow. He lived by himself in a cabin in the Hills. He was seventy-five (75).
Although Brian stated that he was an atheist, meaning he didn’t believe in god, he was always very respectful of our way of spirituality. (We don’t have a religion. The word ‘religion’ isn’t even in our language.) So one time when I asked if I could come to his place to offer and burn some prayer ties and flags, and he said yes, I was so surprised that he had built a special fireplace for my offerings. He even placed specially pointed stones in the proper directions, and filled the circle with dried pine cones as a fire starter. At our meetings and gatherings he always bowed his head when we aziliya (smudged) and prayed. When he told me his strange dreams, he would just shake his head when I told him the Spirits in the Hills liked him. So I’m glad they came after him at his home.
Brian volunteered his expertise for ten years for the Sierra Club. He was a civil Engineer and received his Masters degree from MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious colleges in the world. After college, he continued to work for MIT on special projects. He even developed the transportation system for the country of Egypt. But to see him, no one would even know. He was very humble and usually had on faded, sometimes torn, jeans and long sleeved shirts. Depending on the length of his hair, he would wear a bandanna around his head, looking like a typical hippie.
In the late 1990s, I worked for the Sierra Club to protect the Grasslands and learned of Brian’s work writing the documents to protect the Hills. He knew of my weekly editorials in the Rapid City Journal every Wednesday for nearly five years regarding the Treaty and the illegal environmental decisions made by different federal agencies. So we had a meeting of the minds.
When the Sierra Club made an erroneous decision to remove him from their group, it was to our benefit. That was in August, 2002, when we decided to form a group of environmentalists and Native people to protect the environment of the 1868 Treaty territory. The original founders of Defenders of the Black Hills were: Brian, Jake Kreilick from National Forest Protection Alliance out of Missoula, MT; Jeremy Nichols from Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Laramie, WY; Carter Camp, from Oklahoma, the nationally known Native activist; Madonna Thunder Hawk, another activist from Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe; Harley Eagle, a Dakota man who lived at Pine Ridge at the time; and me. The sacred number seven was important to me so I knew it was going to be a good group. As I had organized the meeting, they appointed me to be the Coordinator even though I’m a better worker bee.
Although we discontinued the very active projects of Defenders in 2016, after I was in a terrible car accident, we still had a few projects to continue. Brian always spearheaded any projects involving the Black Hills, especially with the U.S. Forest Service. I contributed to the sacred aspects in those documents. He was still working on a project regarding the building of a walking trail from Hill City to Mount Rushmore at the time he went home. We were against the project as it went through and disturbed the Black Elk Wilderness area.
Brian Brademeyer was defending the Black Hills long before there was an organization called Defenders of the Black Hills. He was an Original Defender. We have lost a long time advocate for the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and the sacred Black Hills. He was a true Lakota. He is and will be sorely missed.
