National Park Service – Page 2

First Tribal National Park Proposed in the Badlands

April 26, 2012April 26, 2012Kate Fort

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis today announced the release of the final General Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement for the South Unit of Badlands National Park, recommending the establishment of the nation’s first tribal national park in partnership with the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

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The South Unit of Badlands National Park is entirely within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. The Park Service and the Tribe have worked together to manage the South Unit’s 133,000 acres for almost 40 years. If a tribal national park is enabled by Congress through legislation, the Oglala Sioux people could manage and operate their lands for the educational and recreational benefit of the general public, including a new Lakota Heritage and Education Center.

Drug Cartels on Washington Reservations

August 26, 2011August 26, 2011Adrea Korthase

An excerpt from The Seattle Times:

In the backcountry of the Yakama Indian Reservation, a handful of law-enforcement officers spent part of last summer searching for two things: marijuana and the people growing it.

Tribal police and officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were acting on a tip about a vast marijuana plantation in the forested highlands of the sprawling reservation. Such tips often yielded abandoned fields of cannabis, but none of the culprits.

But the team hit pay dirt last August by uncovering a grow operation with 8,850 marijuana plants, as well as the suspected grower, an armed Mexican national in camouflage clothing who federal prosecutors say had been tending the plot for almost four months.

Tribal reservations, some with hundreds of square miles of rugged backcountry, have become the front line for law-enforcement eradication of marijuana grow operations in Washington, says Rich Wiley, who heads the State Patrol’s Narcotics Division. Growers are targeting the outskirts of Indian country for their marijuana farms, knowing tribal lands are sparsely populated and less policed, he said. Continue reading →

NYTs Article on Mashantucket Battlefields

October 13, 2008Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the NYTs:

JUST a short stroll from the modern-day shops and restaurants of downtown Mystic, English settlers and their Indian allies attacked a fort of Pequot Indians in June 1637 and then set it on fire, killing 500 men, women and children. Battles continued throughout the day as Pequots from other villages counterattacked the English as they retreated to the west.

That battle and others across Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York marked some of the fiercest fighting in the 1636-38 Pequot War, a little-known conflict that allowed the English to defeat the mighty Pequot and set the stage for how the emerging nation would treat Indian tribes over the next three centuries.

Continue reading →

LA Times: Badlands Revert Back to Oglala Lakota?

June 8, 2008Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the LA Times:

BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. — The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see.

Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape. On a plateau, a solitary makeshift hut sits ringed by empty Coke cans and shaving cream canisters. It is the only remnant of a three-year occupation by militant tribal activists who had demanded that the land be returned.

Now the National Park Service is contemplating doing just that: giving the 133,000-acre southern half of Badlands National Park back to the tribe. The northern half, which has a paved road and a visitor center, would remain with the park system.

(H/T Patrick O’Donnell)