South Dakota tribes drove a mining company off sacred land in one week

In May, South Dakota tribes achieved a rare win: driving a rapidly-advancing mining project out of their ancestral land within days. 

On Feb. 27, the U.S. Forest Service approved exploratory graphite drilling on Pe' Sla, which holds a sacred place in the world of the Great Sioux Nation. 

When the company, Pete Lien & Sons, began drilling, a coalition of tribe members and organizers went to the drill site. There, 40 organizers blocked the road to the drill site and stationed themselves on the drill pads so no work could be done. They remained for seven days, until Pete Lien & Sons wrote to the Forest Service rescinding its plan.

Native Americans' fight to protect ancestral land from mining is a common one, and the struggles are often lost, Shilpi Chhotray writes for Yahoo News. Tribes in Arizona and Minnesota are currently fighting legal battles to protect their land from the federal government. 

"We're just not used to winning," Dr. Valeriah Big Eagle, who directs the Black Hills work of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy nonprofit based in Rapid City, told Yahoo News. "We're people used to being screwed over by the government at every level."