WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The fight over South Dakota’s Black Hills was handed down to Nick Tilsen from his parents, part of what he says is the longest-running legal battle over indigenous lands in U.S. history, ongoing since the 1800s.
At issue is control of more than 1 million acres (404,700 hectares) of rolling hills – a place of origins for Tilsen’s Lakota tribe, dotted with sacred sites the community returns to regularly.
“Our people have been traveling in and around the Black Hills as part of our spiritual cycle for millennia,” Tilsen told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
Yet it is the federal government that ultimately makes decisions concerning most of the Black Hills, despite 19th-century treaties that included these lands – provisions that were broken once gold was found in the area, Tilsen said – and subsequent court rulings in the tribe’s favor.
Hoping that President Joe Biden’s administration will open the door to stronger indigenous land rights, Tilsen and others are focusing on a message being delivered to Washington, D.C. this week – in the form of a 25-foot-tall (7-m-tall) totem pole.
Over the past two weeks, the intricately carved and painted artwork, made from a 400-year-old cedar tree, has been traveling cross-country in the Red Road to DC caravan, stopping at 10 sacred sites, like the Black Hills, on its way to Washington.
Accompanied by a group of its creators, the Lummi Nation’s House of Tears Carvers, the totem pole is due to arrive in Washington for a rally Thursday.
After that, backers plan to meet with government officials to present policy demands on how to protect sacred sites across the country.
About 56 million acres across the United States are considered tribal lands, though these are all held in trust by the federal government.
Tilsen, who heads an advocacy and philanthropic group called NDN Collective, is optimistic, pointing to growing tribal action on indigenous land sovereignty and rising public recognition of the issue over recent years.
Indigenous advocates also see promise in the new Biden administration, which they say has hired more Native Americans than any other.
That includes Deb Haaland, who became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary when she was named head of the Interior Department, which manages tribal lands. Haaland will address the rally Thursday, organizers say.
Natural resource extraction, climate change and “unbridled development” are the main threats to indigenous land, said Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance (NOA) and an organizer of the Red Road to DC project.
“Although people have taken note of these struggles, the remedies are all very different – the common denominator is the role of the federal government and its policies,” she said by phone.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department declined to comment.
