2007 Nuclear-Free Future Resistance Award
Charmaine White Face
and the Defenders of the Black Hills, USA
The moment Charmaine White Face, an Oglala tribe
member enrolled at the Pine Ridge Reservation,
mentions the He Sapa, her voice becomes tender, as if
she were relating some story about her children. He
Sapa are the Black Hills, the rugged string of mountains ranging across South Dakota, Montana and
Wyoming in the region that is the traditional homeland
of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations (since
frontier days known to the white man collectively as
the ‘Sioux’ or ‘Great Sioux Nation’).
Wamakas og'naka i'cante – »the heart of
everything that is«, words that Charmaine White Face
feels most profoundly about her homeland. Five years
ago, together with some likeminded friends, she
founded the organization, »Defenders of the Black
Hills«. The group monitors abandoned uranium mines
on sacred lands and seeks the remediation of hazardous
waste ponds that contaminate the region with high
levels of radium-226, arsenic, lead and iron. In
performing this mission, Charmaine and the Defenders
not only work for the good health of Grandmother
Earth and all living things, but also towards upholding
Article VI of the Constitution of the United States,
which states that: »treaties are the supreme law of the
land.«
In 1868 the government in Washington entered
into a treaty with theGreat Sioux Nation, awarding
them custody of the Black Hills ‘so long as the sun
rises, so long as the grass grows, and so long as the
rivers flow.’ Then in 1870 gold was discovered and
the treaty was trampled beneath the feet of lawless
pros pectors. One hundred years later uranium was
discovered, and the U.S. government, while pretending
regret over the land grabs of the past, transferred the
1870-worth of the 5 million appropriated acres to a
bank account for the tribes. The idea was to give the
greedy mayhem of yesteryear some semblance of
judicial standing. The answer from the reservations:
‘The Black Hills are not for sale. You cannot put a
price on what is sacred.’ The tribes have never touched
the government money.
As Charmaine and the Defenders seek to increase
the public’s awareness of recent South Dakota
legislation that allows in situ leaching and nuclear
power plants anywhere in state, the group ’s central
message is that not just the Lakota, but all of us are in
trouble: aquifers cover massive areas of the continent,
rivers empty into one another, radioactive dust is
carried by the wind, and poisons in the soil nourish
grass and feed crops that eventually work their way
into the mainstream food chain. The equation of life for Charmaine, the Defenders,
and many of the Lakota living in the Black Hills:
Metakuye Oyasin – »we are all related.«
–Claus Biegert (English version, Craig Reishus)
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