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Edited on Sat Jan-15-05 07:28 PM by sarahlee
To: Tribal people and their friends concerned about environmental justice
Midnight, Friday, January 14 was the deadline for comment on the Black Hills National Forest Plan Phase 2 Amendment but they may take comments submitted before Monday am. . Below is one comment which makes excellent points about how tribal people were not properly consulted in this comment process which will affect the future of land which tribal people claim under the Fort Laramie Treaty.
Please send the Forest Service an email which backs up the Nancy's comment or makes points of your own. Your message can be quite brief.
· Criticize them for not properly consulting the people with an unextinguished treaty claim to the land they are deciding about
· Request that they remedy the problem by giving a reasonable extension of the comment period for tribal people to comment
· Request that they do effective and proper outreach to tribal people at the outset of the extended time period
The point is that Forest Service needs a lot of flack for neglecting the obvious -- consultation with the actual OWNERS of the Black Hills. A Clinton Administration Executive Order, which remains in effect, requires them to do proper consultation with tribal people. Forest Service is legally bound to remedy their failure (or they can be sued).
The email address is bhnf-phase2@saic.com
Head your message as follows:
Black Hills National Forest Plan
PO Box 27090
Littleton, CO 80127
RE: Black Hills National Forest Phase II Amendments DEIS
Be sure to give your own name, address, and other pertinent conact information at the end of your message
============
BHNF Phase II Amendment
PO Box 270990
Littleton, CO 80127
bhnf-phase2@saic.com
RE: Black Hills National Forest Phase II Amendments DEIS
This is our SECOND COMMENT LETTER and it is on Environmental Justice.
Please accept the following comments on the Black Hills National Forest Phase II Amendment DEIS, in addition to those we have already sent. We will be sending in our comments in in installments, so please expect additional comment letters.
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To our knowledge, open houses on the DEIS where held in October 2004, in Caucasian communities of the Black Hills. To our knowledge no open houses were held on reservation communities.
We request that the FEIS fully delineate all efforts to outreach to Native American Community members. While federal policy requires the Forest Service (FS) to engage in nation to nation consultation with tribes, this does not preclude the FS from attempting to educate and involve average, Native American tribal members (tribal members not elected or appointed as government representatives) in the NEPA process. With Caucasian communities the federal government communicates with both elected/appointed county and state governments, but it also attempts outreach with average citizens who live in Caucasian dominated communities.
.
What public meetings were held on the reservations; what public notice was given for those meetings and what announcements on radio or press were made about DEIS and its availability in media that targeted Native American communities? If no public meetings were held on reservations, why did this happen?
Were any specific efforts made to communicate with the Treaty Council?
In the PHASE II Amendment DEIS’s section on Environmental Justice on page 3-306 it says:
“None of the counties in the project area contains low-income or minority
populations as defined by executive Order 12898.”
Further discussion on 3-292-293 avoids environmental justice concerns by excluding reservation counties from study.
The Executive Order is general and we don’t believe that the Executive Order delineates affected communities, to be those communities that occur in the same counties as any federal public land being managed by federal government. Past actions of Caucasian dominated government has removed tribes from the Black Hills and placed their populations in communities on reservations outside of the Black Hills. The Forest Service choice to limit the affected local counties (Black Hills Study Area) to Fall River, Custer, Lawrence, Meade, Pennington , Crook and Weston and thus to exclude reservation counties, has a racist effect on your analysis. (see page 3-289)
Pennington county is long and narrow; extending out to the east, if Fall River were shaped in a similar long narrow form, then Fall River would include the Pine Ridge Reservation. Weston County extends far out to the west away from the Hills. County boundaries can be considered like reverse “gerrymandering”; as an old fashioned way to “red line” tribal voters to their own counties. It is arbitrary and capricious to use these County boundaries to define local populations, and such arbitrary boundaries exclude the reservation communities from analysis as local affected communities..
We believe that the Black Hills is sacred to various Native American tribes. Native American tribes (Sioux Tribes) claim ownership of the Black Hills and have refused to accept the Supreme Court financial settlement for the illegal taking of the Black Hills
by the federal government. Thus the ownership is in dispute.
Given the concern by Native American who claim ownership of the Hills, the local affected communities, used in any NEPA document on the Black Hills National Forest should be expanded to include reservation communities at least of western SD and possibly also those of eastern SD, ND, Wyoming and Montana. The native people in these counties have spiritual, historical and/or legal ties to the lands in question and are affected communities.
We believe that many Native American’s don’t own computers. The choice to release this 1,000 page, 2 volume cross referenced text only by CDs or by the Web is a violation of environmental justice directives, as it limits access to the DEIS by many Native American tribal persons.
The FS alleges that it had a policy to only release CDs to agencies and libraries. We further believe that the Forest Service, did in fact release “hard copy” texts to non-agency individuals, such as the National Forest Service Advisory Board, and general public who walked into the Rapid City District office and thus its policy about not releasing printed copies , except to agencies and libraries was not followed. I eventually got a “hard copy” during the December month extension, following my complaint on the process. Thus a not level playing field was created, with some individuals having greater access to the documents..
Sincerely,
Nancy Hilding
President
Prairie Hills Audubon Society
These comments are also submitted on behalf of the Society and myself as an individual.
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