Defenders of Black Hills disband after 14 years

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – Following 14 years of stalwart efforts to preserve Native American sacred sites from desecration and to protect natural resources from fracking, uranium mining and overharvesting of timber, the nonprofit Defenders of the Black Hills has decided to call it quits.

The organization’s final meeting was conducted Saturday at the Mother Butler Center in Rapid City, and with smiles, hugs and a few tears likely. At the farewell, supporters celebrated nearly a decade and a half of volunteer activism and partnerships developed, all in the name of protecting the environment.

The decision to disband was not made without careful thought, said Charmaine White Face, one of the group founders and its coordinator since its inception.

“I’m getting old and tired,” said White Face, who turns 70 in March. “There are other groups now but, when we started, there were hardly any. Others will take up the mantle, but we feel like it’s time now. It’s time to back out.”

Defenders of the Black Hills was founded in 2003 to counter federal legislation passed that opened up the last 3 percent of the Black Hills to logging, including a wilderness area and two roadless areas that were supposed to be preserved untouched for time immemorial.

In the ensuing years, the Defenders group has pestered those promoting mineral extraction and fracking, successfully promoted legislation funding the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines and worked to prevent water pollution in the region, the Rapid City Journal reported.

In January 2003, White Face said the Defenders had 32 issues on its docket, all intended to protect, preserve and restore the environment. Among those issues was a firing range proposed within sight of Bear Butte, a sacred site to several Native American tribes. So the newly formed group held a prayer gathering at Bear Butte, followed by a dinner at Sturgis Brown High School attended by 200, she said.

At that session, a local attorney stepped forward and offered his services pro bono to the Defenders. Further investigation of the planned firing range found it was going to be financed through a Community Development Block Grant, a federal funding mechanism designed to assist poor people, White Face explained.

“We pushed it hard and took it to court,” she said. “We discovered that 12 of the 16 CDBGs in South Dakota were illegal, the state and the businessmen backed out, and the firing range was dropped in the fall of 2003.”

A writer and scientist who holds a double major in biology and physical sciences from Black Hills State University, White Face also serves as a spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council, a lifetime position. Disbanding the Defenders, she said, would allow her to devote more time to the oldest treaty council in the region.

“Who am I?” the self-effacing woman asked rhetorically. “I’m just a little grandma.”

In fact, White Face is the mother of four biological and eight adopted children, as well as 13 grandkids and four great-grandchildren. But her friends and fellow environmental advocates say she is so much more.

“Charmaine deserves all the recognition she gets,” said Lilias Jarding of the Rapid City-based Clean Water Alliance. “She and the Defenders leave a legacy of the focused defense of the resources and the people of the Black Hills.”

Jarding said White Face and the Defenders were instrumental in the establishment of the Clean Water Alliance and have worked in tandem on issues involving “unwise projects” over the years. She said she worries about the group disbanding.

“I think we will lose the skills and talents that were brought to bear on defending the vision of what the Black Hills can be; Lakota values and a broad natural resources viewpoint,” said Jarding, who planned to attend Saturday’s final meeting of the Defenders.

Michelle May, director of the Oglala Lakota College Academic and Public Library and Archives at Kyle, lauded White Face for making monthly treks to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to make environmental presentations to students and interested community members.

“Charmaine and the information she conveys are so relevant to our world and, not just the reservation, but the world of humanity,” May said. “Personally she is such a blessing and such a good friend. She always goes the extra mile and shares her information. It’s incredible the generosity she has.”

May said the legacy of the Oglala Sioux scientist, environmentalist and activist, and the organization she helped establish, will live on through videos captured of White Face’s presentations, which have been archived in the tribal library.

Over the years, efforts by White Face and the Defenders have been recognized far and wide.

In 2007, the organization won the Nuclear Free Future Award, described as “the Nobel Prize for Environmentalists.” Last summer, White Face was named a Giraffe Hero by the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages people to “stick their necks out for the common good.”

White Face was chosen for the latter award due to her battles that have extended from her fight against corruption within tribal governments stretching back to the 1980s, as well as her more recent opposition to uranium mining in the Black Hills.

Her work has been met with threats as well as plaudits. White Face said that the brake lines on her car have been cut, and that people have told her to “watch out” or a bomb would be placed in her car.

But White Face doesn’t dwell on negatives and, despite the disbanding of the Defenders she said she’d continue to fight “the good fight” for as long as she can.

“Why was it all so important?” she asked last week. “I love the earth. They told me I’ve been like this since I was a tiny girl. I don’t like to see the earth ruined and I’m sorry, but I get a little choked up.”

Speaking of Mother Earth, she said: “Nothing can live if she’s sick.”

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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com