FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 21, 2026
Rapid City, SD – Yesterday, community members and Craven Canyon intervenors filed a federal lawsuit against the SD Board of Minerals and Environment, adjourning the hearing around Craven Canyon until further notice.
The lawsuit was filed against SD Board of Minerals and Environment in response to lack of due process around the board’s treatment of Lakota people during the Chord Project public hearing. Clean Nuclear Energy Corp., a Canadian mining company that proposed the Chord Project, seeks to drill 38 holes up to 750 feet deep near Craven Canyon in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Indigenous communities and environmental justice advocates in the area have been fighting attempts to drill at Craven Canyon since 1979, as this is sacred land that has been utilized for Lakota ceremony for thousands of years. The site contains ancient petroglyphs and other sites which would be disturbed or destroyed by drilling activity. Further, drilling in the area could contaminate groundwater.
“This Canadian company is coming from thousands of miles away to destroy our earth and threaten our water, with no consequence to their own homelands – we need to keep them out of our sacred Black Hills,” said Alex White Plume, Grandfather and former vice president and president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. “The Black Hills legally belong to the Sioux through a treaty that has never been respected because they thought they could buy us off. Well, we’re here to say the Black Hills are not for sale. We will continue to fight for Craven Canyon and all our land so we can practice the ceremonies we’ve had since time immemorial.”
“There are 256,000 acres of the Black Hills that are under active mining claims – any one of those claims could become a mine, but we intend to stop that process, and encourage all community members who care about our shared water and land to join us,” said Dr. Lilias Jarding, Executive Director of the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance. “We have kept uranium mining out of the Black Hills since the 1970s, and we cannot allow uranium mining to return to this area today.”
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