{"id":435623,"date":"2026-05-11T03:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/435623\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T03:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:42:09","slug":"after-standing-rock-could-a-canceled-mine-project-offer-a-roadmap-for-opponents-of-a-new-oil-pipeline-in-south-dakota-south-dakota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/435623\/","title":{"rendered":"After Standing Rock, could a canceled mine project offer a roadmap for opponents of a new oil pipeline in South Dakota? | South Dakota"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost exactly a decade since the start of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline<\/a> gained national and international attention, new disputes are simmering over tribal rights in the Black Hills of South Dakota.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, an environmental organization and a Native American advocacy group sued the US Forest Service, claiming that an exploratory graphite drilling project on national forest land threatened a recognized ceremonial site on mountain meadows known as Pe\u2019 Sla, or Reynolds Prairie.<\/p>\n

But on Friday, Pete Lien and Sons, the company behind the project, abruptly withdrew, saying it would perform reclamation on the site and would not seek to file another plan. The decision came as a striking victory for Native American tribes and environmental groups that had opposed it \u2013 but other projects in the works may not meet the same conclusion.<\/p>\n

The project, claimed nine groups within the Sioux Nation, including the Standing Rock Sioux, would \u201cdirectly and significantly\u201d affect the use of Pe\u2019 Sla, which sits within \u021ee S\u00e1pa, the Lakota name for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota<\/a>, itself the locus of Lakota creation myths.<\/p>\n

A second exploratory project by a Canadian company looking to mine uranium on state-owned land could affect Craven Canyon, an area that contains 7,000-year-old sites of importance to Indigenous tribes, historians and archaeologists.<\/p>\n

Opposition to the twin projects \u2013 backed by Pete Lien, of Rapid City, and by Clean Nuclear Energy Corp \u2013 comes as a proposed Alberta-to-Wyoming pipeline for carrying Canadian crude oil to \u2060the US is close to securing commitments from oil \u2060companies after Donald Trump<\/a> granted permitting through an executive order.<\/p>\n

All the projects have at their heart issues of extraction, water safety and sacred sites, much as the Standing Rock dispute of 2016 that saw \u201cwater protesters\u201d gather in a standoff with law enforcement over concerns regarding water safety and sacred sites.<\/p>\n

That case began when the Standing Rock Sioux passed a resolution stating that \u201cthe Dakota Access Pipeline poses a serious risk to the very survival of our Tribe and … would destroy valuable cultural resources\u201d and was a violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteeing the \u201cundisturbed use and occupation\u201d of reservation lands surrounding the pipeline.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath, the environmental group Greenpeace was ordered to pay damages of $345m by a North Dakota<\/a> judge to pipeline company Energy Transfer and subsidiary Dakota Access in connection with the protests, an order that is set to go to appeal. Greenpeace claims the legal action is designed to silence activists.<\/p>\n

Most of the current disputes relate to energy, reflecting the Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s drive toward US energy independence and away from dependence on foreign sources, particularly China. Graphite, used in electric vehicle batteries, is almost exclusively imported. Roughly 95%\u201399% of uranium is purchased from foreign sources, including Russia and Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

The pipeline deal, meanwhile, is expected to help increase oil output from Canada<\/a>, the world\u2019s fourth-largest producer, to around 6.1m barrels a day, up from 5.5m now. Bridger, the company behind the Alberta-to-Wyoming pipeline, has said the project was being developed in response to identified market interest.<\/p>\n

Wizipan \u201cLittle Elk\u201d Garriott, a member of NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights group opposing the mining at Pe\u2019 Sla, says the entire process of approval for the planned mine \u201chappened in the dark\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no notice that they were proceeding provided to us, nor to the sovereign tribal nations,\u201d he says, in violation of environmental and cultural impact study requirements and consultations with the tribes.<\/p>\n

Lilias Jarding, director of the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, one of the parties in the victorious Pe\u2019 Sla action, says the decade since Standing Rock has seen a huge growth in projects attempting to mine tribal lands and areas of ceremonial significance.<\/p>\n

Since the start of the second Trump administration<\/a>, the push for both minerals extraction and energy has dramatically increased. \u201cThey\u2019re being more aggressive,\u201d Jarding says. In the case of Pe\u2019 Sla, he adds, the company didn\u2019t stop drilling when the lawsuits was filed: \u201cThey started drilling 24 hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The alliance, along with tribes, claim the graphite project violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and that the US Forest Service improperly used a process known as a \u201ccategorical exclusion\u201d to bypass reviews.<\/p>\n

Oglala Sioux president Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement that the Sioux tribes never ceded to the US the lands in the Black Hills, which, he said, \u201cremain the spiritual center of the Great Sioux Nation and they are not for sale, lease or exploitation\u201d and that the lawsuit is a \u201cunited tribal response to protect a sacred site from those who continue to desecrate our ancestral lands\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oglala activist Taylor Gunhammer said that drilling at Pe\u2019 Sla was akin to \u201cdrilling under the Vatican or at a sacred site in Jerusalem\u201d.<\/p>\n

A representative of Clean Nuclear Energy Corp, Mike Blady, said the company was \u201caware of the cultural significance and are doing everything in our power to ensure that there is no collateral damage\u201d.<\/p>\n

Will this amount to a populist action similar to Standing Rock?<\/p>\n

The Pe\u2019 Sla dispute did not provoke the kind of Indigenous-led, grassroots resistance to fossil-fuel infrastructure projects that accompanied the Dakota Access pipeline, which in some ways became a template for contemporary protests, powered by social media, celebrities and politicians.<\/p>\n

The tribes were not in favor of following in that direction, Jarding says: \u201cIt\u2019s a deeply sacred spiritual and ceremonial site, and elders have made it clear that it\u2019s not a good place for another Standing Rock with thousands of people. They say this is not the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the Biden administration<\/a>, the tribal groups felt they were entering into a period of co-management policy over federal lands that in many cases lie within treaty agreements. But under the Trump administration, that sense of co-operation has diminished.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a ramp-up of opening up federal lands for mineral and gas exploration, but as a planet we need to be moving away from fossil fuels and toward policies that are sustainable into the future,\u201d says NDN\u2019s Garriott.<\/p>\n

What was planned for Pe\u2019 Sla now, or was happening at Standing Rock a decade ago, or has indeed happened over a long history of disputes between sovereign tribal groups and the US government, he says, is \u201cprotecting our land and protecting our water, not only for ourselves but for the planet. We\u2019re not random protesters out there \u2013 we\u2019re protecting our own land\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost exactly a decade since the start of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline gained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-435623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}