Forest Service throws a bone to the Great Sioux Nation

The Black Hills are broken because the white race steals the ground, plunders the resources, pollutes waterways, depletes watersheds, and encourages ponderosa pine to infest lands once dominated by aspen and sage.

Issued in 2021, Joint Secretarial Order 3403 directed the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to increase tribal co-stewardship agreements and memoranda of understanding (MOUs). Co-stewardship focuses on collaboration where tribal nations provide input, share traditional ecological knowledge, and look after lands alongside federal agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service but the Feds retain final decision-making power. Co-management focuses on joint authority and represents a legal partnership where decision-making power is shared mutually between the tribal nation and the federal government.

“This MOU recognizes and encourages the tribal perspectives, voices and understanding as an essential part of what wilderness value brings,” said Shawn Cochran, forest supervisor for the Black Hills National Forest. “For the Lakota, Black Elk Wilderness is not only a cathedral that provides connection to the creator but an intimate human connection with the creator’s natural environment.” This agreement provides a structure for co-stewardship of the Black Elk Wilderness of Black Hills National Forest. On paper, it’s about cooperative planning, land and water preservation, cultural protection, habitat for wildlife, stewardship of wilderness, recreation and workforce. In practice, it is about working together to care for the land now and for future generations. “Signing the MOU today is a step in the right direction and allows us to get the funds to hire our own people to take care of this place,” according to Chairman Ryman LeBeau, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. [press release, US Forest Service]

Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people. But, according to some estimates there is nearly $2billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so some day tribes will buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in occupied South Dakota and Wyoming.

All nine South Dakota Tribes have voted to move forward on developing legislation to return federal lands in the Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation – a historic display of Tribal unity and momentum around efforts to protect the Black Hills. At a recent tribal council meeting, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe passed a resolution to move forward on working together to protect sacred sites, clean drinking water, and ensure better land management through the development of legislation to return federal lands in the Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation. [NDN Collective]

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 recognized over 38 million acres of land as official Crow or Apsáalooke territory, stretching across parts of modern-day Wyoming and Montana. This vast expanse included areas surrounding the Yellowstone River, the Three Forks region, and the Bighorn Mountain range. Negotiated on May 7, 1868. The Crow agreed to cede a large portion of their traditional 1851 territory, establishing a smaller reservation in Montana than aligned with the US Army. 

Also known as the Sahnish, the Arikara (along with the Mandan and Hidatsa) signed agreements and were included in the broader peace treaties at Fort Laramie and Fort Berthold. Their lands in North Dakota were affirmed to allow for a combined joint territory, though they faced successive land losses shortly after.

Under the General Mining Act of 1872 Canadian miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are.

Copper in the northern and central Hills is typically found in Paleoproterozoic schist and quartzite formations, often appearing alongside iron sulfides like pyrite and pyrrhotite.

Jungle Copper Mine (Custer Peak Copper Mine): Located near Roubaix and Rochford in Lawrence County, this mine saw its peak activity around 1900. It featured surface and underground workings before its primary operations were destroyed by a fire in 1942. 

Dakota Calumet Group: Situated near Keystone in the Hill City Mining District. Discovered in 1875, it produced chalcopyrite (copper iron sulfide) from an underground shaft extending 259 meters deep. 

Bee Mine (Black Hills Copper Co.): Located in Pennington County near Rochford, this historic underground past-producer extracted copper and silver ore. The site features malachite and azurite alterations in the native schist rock. 

Mineral Hill: Located on the Wyoming side of the Black Hills province. While traditionally known for gold, modern exploration projects target its alkalic porphyry systems for dual gold-copper mineralization.

IYKYK

Lifted from Faceberg and signed @blackmailillustrations image can seen at 1309 Arenal SW in Albuquerque.

Sunday morning rez erection

After my gruesome execution and resurrection I return to heaven and continue to create new souls in a state of Original Sin which requires baptism to get into heaven. And to round things off there's also three of me.

Tribal nation trapped in South Dakota growing cannabis industry

Washington and Nevada are the best states for cooperating with tribal communities planting the seeds of cannabis economic development but South Dakota not so much.  

White people in South Dakota are clearly too stupid to manage the industry and if the Neanderthal South Dakota Legislature had any integrity or ethics (they don’t) they would empower the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota to be the sole cannabis producers, inspectors and distributors in the state (they won't).

Today, the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s marijuana industry brings in about $700,000 per year through fees and taxes; currently across Pine Ridge Reservation there are 11 dispensaries, 11 processors and nine cultivators according to the most recent executive director for the Marijuana Commission, Justin Pourier. Today, our cultivators still travel to Flandreau to have their crops tested, added Pourier, we’ve looked at having someone set up a testing lab here on the reservation or bringing in a mobile lab but that hasn’t worked and to build our own lab here would cost $700,000 to $1 million for the equipment so our cultivators make that trip regularly to Flandreau – there is an agreement that as long as they are carrying a correct manifest, SD State Patrol will not bother them. [Lakota Times]

The State of South Dakota receives revenue from the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe through a compact with the 423 member Isanti Dakota Oyate but disputes over cannabis, liquor and gaming have been ongoing for decades.

Christianic white supremacist Earth hater Ismay popped for Class 6 felony

With short, fat, white Travis Ismay stalking county commissioners and patrolling Butte County for aliens it’s a wonder whether Belle Fourche can protect its own residents. But sure, migrants fleeing oppression and seeking asylum in the United States are criminals according to Butte County Sheriff Fred Lamphere who also accompanied Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson at a State of the Union address. Western South Dakota is a de facto portion of the American Redoubt where white christianic Republicans are holed up for the End Times.

An arrest warrant was issued Tuesday for recently re-elected Rep. Travis Ismay, R-Newell, on the felony charge of intentional damage to a highway. Around the same time as the indictment alleges Ismay damaged the highway, an individual allegedly used a road grader, without authorization, to grade a portion of Wilson Road, near Belle Fourche, Dwayne Heidrich, who was Butte County highway supervisor at the time of the incident, said. Fred Lamphere, Butte County sheriff, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Under South Dakota law, “a sentence of imprisonment in a state correctional facility for any term suspends the right of the person so sentenced to hold public office” However, if found guilty and fined, state law would not prevent Ismay from serving in office. Ismay won the District 28B house seat June 2 with 55% of the vote. He beat Larry Schmoltz in the race. [Felony arrest warrant issued for state Rep. Travis Ismay]

Earth hater Salamun wants gubernatorial debate

Fact is: the South Dakota Republican Party thrives on violence and Rapid City's law enforcement industry is run by a bunch of racists.

It would be cool to see a head-to-head debate between @TobyForSD and @LarryRhodenSD right here in Rapid City ahead of the July 28 runoff.

The people deserve to hear their visions for South Dakota and plans on public safety, property taxes, the economy, and more.

Gentlemen,…

— Jason Salamun (@JasonSalamun) June 9, 2026

SD Earth haters introducing invasive species into Black Hills streams

South Dakota's Earth hating congressional delegation obstructs attempts by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to streamline the agency as it weans support from a hatchery notorious for introducing invasive species to Black Hills watersheds and into the waters of the United States. And with the Trump Organization supporting the release of hybrid non-native trout by South Dakota's Department of Game, Fish & Plunder native species are being threatened in the Missouri River basin.

Larry Rhoden and his other white meat supporters purport to be small-government conservatives but they're really just helping themselves instead of finding a way for communities to finance rearing for private ponds and begging the feds for more moral hazard money while pretending to be self-reliant.

Earth haters like Rhoden believe America is only great when Republican presidents are in power and revere an executive who is gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, promising to clearcut the Black Hills National Forest, pledging to mine public lands sacred to Indigenous peoples, erasing the workforce and putting septic systems in sensitive habitats all in the name of making white America great again. 

Finescale dace was the only fish identified in Black Hills streams by the Custer Expedition in 1874 but the creek chub and white sucker are also native. Brown trout are not native to the Missouri River either but recently, GF&P fisheries staffers electrofished for them in Spearditch Creek.

To do this, a net was placed in a shallow area of the creek to prevent fish from escaping downstream. The team starts 100 yards downstream and walks upstream. Every fish is netted and a fin is clipped so that in the future, people know that it had previously been caught and migrated to other areas of the study zone. All the fish in the first 2 transplants he participated in recently swam away on their own. A sampling of Rapid Creek fish later this summer will help determine how many fish have survived. [GF&P transplanting brown trout from Spearfish to Rapid Creek]

NM Earth haters now supporting government buyouts of private land

Over a half million wildfires are started by arsonists every year in the US and if you live in the wildland-urban interface government can't always protect you from your own stupidity. 

Southern and southeastern New Mexico is home to many descendants of the Confederacy who back a convicted Republican felon as unitary executive and are quick to point fingers at the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for wildfires. So, Earth haters funded by the Koch and DeVos cabals through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund and scattered in the American West derailed President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful Initiative. Herr Trump's Interior secretaries blame wildfires in the West on “radical environmentalists” despite most acres burn on private ranch land in Republican counties. 

Today, the Seven Cabins Fire in the Capitan Mountain Wilderness has burned some 32,000 acres and is still growing but the fire itself isn't the only hazard because flooding can compound the threats to recovery.

With help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lincoln County is offering to purchase at-risk properties at pre-damage rates and demolish or relocate the houses, permanently converting the land into open space to act as a buffer against future floods. With $235 million in funding secured, officials hope to buy some 400 properties from willing sellers — a proposal that could dramatically reshape the 8,000-person town. Ruidoso is a conservative place, not one where you’d expect leaders to welcome what some Facebook commenters have deemed a government “land grab.” Now, Ruidoso’s mayor estimates that recovery could cost a billion dollars. Even with tens of millions promised in federal aid, it didn’t seem responsible, fiscally or otherwise, to keep rebuilding in areas that would flood again and again. [Lincoln County, New Mexico, wants to turn flood-prone properties into public land]

Joe in Sioux Falls

Amen

Exactly. Either convince Julian Beaudion to suspend his campaign to be the nominee for PUC, Commissioner of Schools and Public Lands or some other statewide post or urge Brian Bengs to suspend his campaign and seek the Democratic nomination for the South Dakota Attorney General race. Since Julian will come in third in the Senate race if all three stay in how is that even a choice?

Trump Organization gifts Neiman with Black Hills logging bonanza

Until recently there haven’t been enough litigators to sue the Forest Service allowing Republicans to infiltrate management of the Black Hills National Forest and there is no evidence to support the claim that logging is effective insect control. Some imaginary war with the bark beetle on the BHNF is really more a fight for clean water because after all dead trees don't suck aquifers dry. Until forest managers and South Dakota's Earth hating congressional delegation get that they are being preyed upon by the Neimans to take legacy trees and leave the doghair for someone else to deal with because they aren't focused on hardwood release, prescribed fire and restoring the Hills bioregion to what it was 150 years ago.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and the State of South Dakota’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) have signed a 5-year shared stewardship agreement that expands cross-boundary forest management and strengthens South Dakota’s forest products industry. Following the initial 5-year term of the agreement, parties may then consider extension in increments of three years. [press release]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.