Ten-minute video via Charmaine White Face, of Defenders of the Black Hills, where the Great Sioux Nation, local residents, and environmentalists are working to stop a uranium fracking permit and to make uranium mining companies take responsibility for spills, leaks; and to guarantee protections and restoration of any land or water they have contaminated.
The Black Hills arise in the Great Plains to a height of 7,000 feet. Charmaine White Face describes their historical and spiritual significance: "They cover a vast expanse of land from South Dakota, northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana, forming a sacred landscape for members of the Great Sioux Nation... More than 60 indigenous nations had been traveling to the Black Hills for millennia to conduct spiritual ceremonies, gather medicines and lodge poles.
Since the 1950's, uranium mining companies, seeking quick profits, have created thousands of uranium mining sites on both public and private land throughout the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Now the Black Hills are pockmarked with abandoned open pit uranium mines that contaminate the eco-region's air and water.
Now South Dakota is under siege by a Canadian mining company called PowerTech that wants to build hundreds of injection-recovery wells in Edgemont to extract uranium from ore formations hundreds of feet under the ground. This method could deplete and contaminate aquifers.
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