OGLALA SIOUX TRIBE ‘FIGHTING BACK’ TO PROTECT BLACK HILLS FROM URANIUM MINE – by Talli Nauman (Native Sun News – August 29, 2019)

https://intercontinentalcry.org/

Rapid City – With the Oglala Sioux Tribe set to argue Aug. 28-30 for its kind of protection of cultural resources from unprecedented uranium mining in the southern Black Hills, the tribal government and local groups urged members of the public to attend proceedings here and participate in a simultaneous outdoor cultural event to raise awareness about the issue.

A panel of administrative judges from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) is supposed to be in town on these dates to hear from the tribe, the commission staff and intervenors in the case, which is focusing on the “reasonableness” of their divergent approaches to surveying tribal cultural, religious, and historical properties at the proposed 10,000-acre Dewey-Burdock in situ leach mine and mill.

“NRC staff is attempting to escape its obligation to consider cultural resources at the site, saying it is so expensive and they shouldn’t have to do a cultural survey,” the tribe’s lawyer Jeffrey Parsons told the Native Sun News Today. “The tribe is fighting back.”

The judges ordered the hearing on the evidence this April 29, in response to an NRC staff request based on its conclusion that “further negotiation as to a methodology to resolve this contention is unlikely to be successful,” according to court records.

“The staff selected a reasonable approach for obtaining the information on cultural resources that the board found to be missing (and) was precluded from fully implementing it by the tribe’s constructive rejection of the approach. It is not feasible for the staff to obtain the information from the tribe, as the board contemplated,” staff filings say.

For the rest of this article: https://intercontinentalcry.org/oglala-sioux-tribe-fighting-back-to-protect-black-hills-from-uranium-mine/