View from the Red Road

View from the Red Road

Protect Grand Mother Earth
and the Very Sacred Site, Bear Butte, NOW!

I will do my best to protect our most sacred Grand Mother Earth by defending the Very Sacred Site known as “Bear Butte”, located in the heart of 1851 Treaty of Long Meadow Homelands (now referred to as “occupied ‘western south dakota’”) and will continue to protect and preserve the most sacred Grand Mother Earth for our coming generations, by committing myself to email the following to:

TO: Meade County Commissioners meade@meadecounty.org

(please redo the following in your own words if possible prior to emailing!)

RE: The Very Sacred Site known as “Bear Butte”

This is to notify you that I support the effort to have a twenty (20) mile, spiritual, religious, and nature protection “buffer” zone around the Very Sacred Site known as “Bear Butte” which is located in the heart of 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie Territorial Homelands in what is now called “the Black Hills of western South Dakota.”

Bear Butte is a Very Sacred Site Sacred Place to many Indigenous Red “Indian” Nations and Peoples, such as the Lakota, Arapaho, Crow, Ponca, and Cheyenne Nations.

Bear Butte is a place of spirituality practices – a place an Indigenous individual goes to learn how to appreciate nature, their human existence, realize the dependency to and superiority of animals and natural beings to that of humans, and to be thankful for each night and day and even the tiniest drop of water and wisp of wind.

Many also go to Bear Butte to “pray” in the Christian manner to a “higher power”, etc. It is truly a special and sacred place for Indigenous Peoples and one of prayer (church), learning (school), and healing (hospital).

Laws exist in America to protect churches, schools, and hospitals and most governments have buffer zones around such places in order to protect the integrity of such places. Creating a twenty-mile protection “buffer” zone around Bear Butte is common sense and basic respect.

Bear Butte to Americans is a “National Historic Site”, a so-called “State Park.” Bear Butte Lake is a National Wildlife Refuge. With such designations, it is most beneficial to create the protection “buffer” zone to protect the special site from further destruction that would come with “development/desecration” through, bars, prostitution houses, lude conduct, more campgrounds, amphitheaters, and more roadways and highways that inevitably become part of such developments.

Since most of the existing and the proposed developments will house, seat, or provide services to as many as 30,000 to 70,000 people at a time, I feel this is a matter of urgency regarding the creation of a Protection “Buffer “ Zone around the historic and sacred “Bear Butte” – you can contribute to such an effort through your action to disapprove any future licensing of bars, saloons, liquor stores or pornographic establishments around Bear Butte (as there are already more than 50 businesses that sell alcoholic beverages in Meade County.

Bear Butte, as a State Park and National Historic Site, and Bear Butte Lake as a National Wildlife Refuge, are a concern to many American citizens, the attitude of wanting integrity for such places is not limited to the American Indian People who hold Bear Butte as sacred. It is a concern of many other people as well.

Thank you for taking time to read this. The vicinity of Bear Butte is the wrong location for the type of development that you will be considering at the hearing for Jay Allen’s liquor license on April 4, 2006.

Thank you Honorable Commissioners!

SPREADING THE WORD

We also support the protection of our most sacred sites by logging on to the www.1851Treaty.com website to sign our name to the Bear Butte Protection petition at the following link:

http://www.petitiononline.com/1851Site/petition.html

We the undersigned object to a proposed firearms, weapons shooting range located near the Very Sacred Site known as Bear Butte near present day “Sturgis, SD”. Bear Butte is utilized by the Lakota (misnomer “Sioux”) Indigenous Red “Indian” Nation and Peoples – as well as other Indigenous Nations and non-Indian people – for extremely spiritual purposes, i.e., ceremonies, prayers, spiritual contentment, reflection, etc. A firearms disruption center located near such a Very Sacred Site would be a violation of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, a site protected through Article VI of the U.S. Constitution which allows Indigenous Peoples to live and travel freely throughout the Black Mountain (“Black Hills”) Region. To attempt to build such a noisy, destructive weapons of mass destruction playground near such a pristine, beautiful and sacred site is blasphemy and sacrilegious. We demand the state of South Dakota take measures to stop their citizens from trying to build offensive, disruptive, obnoxious and detrimental enterprises near Bear Butte and all similar sites such as the Ho Coka (Center of the World, misnomer “Harney Peak”), Gray Horn Butte (misnomer “Devil’s Tower”) – much the same as the world’s people would not want to see a shooting gallery next to their ‘churches’, the ‘wailing wall’, ‘old faithful geyser’, etc. We encourage concerned American people to develop legislation in their states (twenty mile radius of peacefulness), which prohibits this flagrant violation of Article VI of the Constitution, the 1851 Treaty, and peoples right to gather, pray, seek solitude, and maintain their culture without disruption and annoyance.