Evan R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–
Deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota, known as He Sapa to the Oceti Sakowin (the Great Sioux Nation), organized Indigenous power has secured a vital victory in the ongoing struggle for national sovereignty. This triumph, while perhaps temporary, marks a significant milestone in the long-standing effort to reclaim ancestral lands and exercise self-determination.
The United States Federal District Court for the District of South Dakota in Rapid City ruled in favor of Oceti Sakowin tribes and activists by issuing a temporary restraining order against exploratory graphite drilling near the sacred Pe’ Sla, a site which holds high religious and cultural significance to the Oceti Sakowin people.
Pe’ Sla is a site in He Sapa that aligns with celestial patterns in traditional Lakota spirituality. It is a “bald spot” of prairie in the middle of the otherwise heavily forested mountain range. Used for prayer and sacred ceremonies, much of the land is now tribally owned, ensuring the Lakota can continue their cultural and spiritual practices there.
Spanning several thousand acres, the area is divided between land owned by the sovereign nations of the Oceti Sakowin and territory managed by the U.S. Forest Service. In a 2014 Memorandum of Understanding, the Forest Service formally recognized the site’s profound cultural and religious significance to the Oceti Sakowin, establishing a two-mile buffer zone and committing to the protection of that surrounding area.
This victory did not emerge from a vacuum, nor did it spring from the grace or goodwill of the state administration; it was seized through the disciplined, organized action of the Oceti Sakowin and their allies. When the Forest Service granted the local firm Pete Lein and Sons exploratory drilling rights within the two-mile buffer zone surrounding Pe’ Sla, Indigenous defenders and their supporters immediately mobilized, utilizing every available tactic to halt the encroachment.
Nine tribal nations, representing the entire Oceti Sakowin people, presentó una demanda. They were joined by allied organizations such as the Rapid City based NDN Collective, Black Hills Clean Water Alliance y Earthworks in Washington D.C. The lawsuit alleges that the Forest Service misapplied a “categorical exclusion” to circumvent required evaluations of the project’s environmental and cultural impacts.
Beyond just legal action, activists from the NDN Collective launched an active campaign of civil disobedience, physically stopping the drilling by occupying the site. Starting on Apr. 30, activists set up camps and began religious ceremonies in Pe’ Sla, and several members of the Oglala Lakota Youth Council locked themselves to the drilling machinery to prevent its operation.
Many of those involved in the struggle at Pe’ Sla are also involved in a mobilization against uranium mining in southern He Sapa, where the Canadian-based company Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation plans to begin exploratory drilling seven miles north of Edgemont, SD.
According to its application, the company intends to drill holes up to 700 feet deep at 50 different locations on state land, with each project lasting roughly two weeks. Similar drilling proposals for federal land are currently being evaluated by the U.S. Forest Service. Court hearings for this are scheduled for the May 20 and 21.
This project is proceeding under a “fast-track” permit issued by the Trump regime, part of a broader mandate to open publicly-managed lands for private exploitation.
As the administration accelerates the opening of federal lands and systematically guts the Forest Service budget, it has become clear that there is an intentional effort to dismantle long-standing protections for over 193 million acres of American wilderness. The ultimate objective is the complete privatization of these lands, handing them over to extractive industries. Due to the fact that Indigenous peoples represent a fundamental barrier to this project, the state has resorted to forced displacement.
The provocations by state and federal authorities here are merely the latest in a relentless history of attacks against the Oceti Sakowin and Indigenous nations at large.
After the long, drawn out wars of conquest during the late 1800s, the United States government signed the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, which recognized He Sapa and all lands west of the Missouri river in present-day South Dakota as part of lands “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Oceti Sakowin as a “permanent home.”
Known as Wamaka Og’naka I’cante (“the heart of everything that is”) in Lakota, the entire mountain range is considered sacred to the Oceti Sakowin, not just Pe’ Sla.
Following the 1874 Custer expedition’s discovery of gold, which triggered a massive influx of illegal settlers, the U.S. government attempted to purchase He Sapa in 1876. The Oceti Sakowin refused. In response, the U.S. launched an unprovoked war of aggression that same year. Despite heroic resistance, the Oceti Sakowin were eventually defeated, and their land was unilaterally seized in 1877.
The illegality of this seizure was so absolute that in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Oceti Sakowin, ordering the U.S. government to pay $106 million in compensation. The tribes refused the settlement. Their position remains steadfast: the land was never ceded by tribal authorities, and their continued resistance declares with firmness that it is still not for sale
En un testimony to Congress in 2023, Oglala tribal president Frank Star Comes Out said:
“The United States broke its treaty promises when it invaded our territory to make war. After the defeat of the United States and the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876, Congress attached a ‘Sell or Starve’ rider to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876, 19 Stat. 176, which cut off rations to our people in an attempt to coerce us to sell the Black Hills to the United States. Yet, we stood firm, and the United States was unable to secure our consent to the sale of the Black Hills. We said then — and we have repeated for generations — that the Black Hills are not for sale.”
The victory at Pe’ Sla is a testament to the fact that the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty is inseparable from the global fight against extractive capital. We Marxist-Leninists recognize here that, the state is not a neutral arbiter of law but an instrument of the ruling class. The “fast-track” permits and the gutting of the Forest Service are not mere policy shifts; they are the machinery of primitive accumulation, where the remaining commons are seized to offset the falling rate of profit in the metropole.
The Oceti Sakowin’s refusal of the 1980 settlement is a profound rejection of the commodification of the earth. It asserts that land is not capital to be bought and sold, but the material basis for national existence. By physically occupying Pe’ Sla and locking themselves to the machinery of production, the Oglala Lakota youth have engaged in the highest form of class struggle: direct confrontation with the forces of private property.
However, as long as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie remains intact, these victories will remain temporary. The state’s drive toward privatization and environmental degradation is an existential necessity for the capitalist mode of production. True liberation for the Oceti Sakowin,and the protection of Wamaka Og’naka I’cante, requires a unified revolutionary front that recognizes the Indigenous struggle as a vital part of the struggle against imperialism. The land is not for sale because the future of the working class and the survival of the planet depend on its liberation from the hands of the exploiters.
This struggle demands more than passive observation; it requires the active mobilization of the international working class. We must move beyond “solidarity” in name only and do our utmost to organize the Indigenous Nations and integrate their struggle for self-determination as an integral part of our eventual socialist revolution.
We can support the front-line defenders at Pe’ Sla and those resisting uranium mining in the southern Hills by contributing to the NDN Collective and the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance. We must organize within our own communities to disrupt the flow of capital to the extractive industries that seek to desecrate Indigenous land. The fight for He Sapa is a fight for the future, not just for the Oceti Sakowin, but for all who wish to preserve a home on this Earth.
As the Lakota say, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ: we are all related. The Indigenous struggle is inseparable from the movement for a truly free, democratic, and progressive society; one that finally represents the collective will of the people rather than the insatiable greed of the bourgeoisie.