I invite you to pause for a moment and think about the most sacred place you know. Maybe it is a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. Perhaps it is a river, a mountain, or a small altar in your home. Take a breath and reflect on how that place holds you—how it grounds your spirit, offers healing, and welcomes you into relationship with others. Sacred places are where we gather in community, not only with those who stand beside us today, but with the ancestors who walked before us. Now imagine hearing that a mining company plans to tear into that sacred place—to drill into the earth for graphite. Imagine knowing that the sanctity of that place could be permanently scarred, sacrificed for profit rather than protected for the generations to come.
This is the reality facing Indigenous Peoples near the He Sapa (Black Hills) who have worshiped at the sacred site of Pe’Sla since time immemorial. Pe’Sla is a high elevation meadow that sits among the rolling forests of the He Sapa, where wildflowers burst from the earth every summer, a herd of buffalo roams freely, and birds sing as they dance on the mountain wind. This sacred site has been used for ceremonial gatherings of the Lakota, Dakota, and other nations for thousands of years.
Due to the cultural importance of this site, in 2012, four tribes raised $9 million to purchase an almost 2,000-acre parcel of Pe’Sla. Then two years later, tribes worked with the US Department of the Interior, the State of South Dakota, and Pennington County to place the central ceremonial site and a 2-mile buffer zone into a federal trust. These actions were meant to recognize the religious and cultural significance of the area and protect it for future generations.
The Threat
In 2024, Pete Lien & Sons, a Rapid City-based mining company, submitted a proposal for what they are calling the “Rochford Mineral Exploratory Drilling Project.” And at the end of last month, the U.S. Forest Service Black Hills Regional Office issued them a permit to drill at Pe’Sla. In their plan, Pete Lien & Sons would drill holes up to 1,000 ft into Mother Earth directly next to and inside the protected area of this sacred ceremonial site. Threats to Pe’Sla from this project include:
- 18 drill pads, 10 drill holes each, with each hole up to 1,000 feet deep.
- Clear-cutting forests to create wider roads for equipment transfer and drill pads.
- Toxic drilling results in mud pits, wildlife harm, and loss of all other land uses.
- High risk of contaminating the Rapid Creek watershed (including the Ellsworth Airforce Base), both surface and underground, due to drill locations extremely close to streams and drilling depth into the aquifer.
This harmful project is a clear violation of Tribal treaty rights and of the federal trust agreement between multiple tribes, the state, and the federal government. Additionally, we know there isn’t even a solid financial excuse for this drilling project. Mining graphite has never been profitable in the United States, and the deposits under the ground at Pe’Sla are too small and low-grade to be worth much. Therefore, this project would destroy a sacred site, clear-cut pristine forests, and even risk contaminating the local watershed – all for what?
There has been lots of opposition to this project from the local community. During the public commenting period from April to May of 2025, over 2,000 comments were submitted regarding the project, with the overwhelming majority of them opposing the Rochford Mineral Exploratory Drilling Project. But despite all the opposition and concerns, in tandem with the exploratory drilling permit, the US Forest Service granted the project a Categorical Exclusion – which means no environmental review, no environmental impact study, and no further public involvement in the process. About a week after the US Forest Service’s decision, Pete Lien & Sons filed a notice of intent to drill – meaning they could start destroying Pe’Sla any day.
/Take Action
As Indigenous Peoples, we know that when this country talks about respecting religious freedom, they are not including Indigenous religions and spiritual practices. If our spiritualities, lifeways, treaties, and sovereignties were respected, then the Rochford Mineral Exploratory Drilling Project would be unthinkable. As land defenders, we refuse to allow our sacred sites – the very land that holds our stories, our histories, and the prayers of our ancestors – to become a sacrifice zone. Our culture and our land are not disposable.
The land at Pe’Sla has taken care of us for generations, and now she needs us to show up and take care of her now more than ever. You can join us in this fight to save Pe’Sla by taking action in the following ways:
- Call the Forest Service at (605) 343-1567 to demand they rescind the permit for Pe’sla drilling and the decision to grant a Categorical Exclusion (CE) for their exploratory drilling permit. They have no right to violate treaty rights, declare Indigenous culture an acceptable loss, cut us out of the process, or endanger the drinking water of thousands of people and Ellsworth Air Force Base.
- Text “SAVEPESLA” to 50302 to stay up to date on the latest developments and future calls to action.
- Sign our petition: https://ndnco.cc/protectpesla.
- Learn more about the threat to Pes’La on our latest LANDBACK For the People podcast episode: Sacred Site Under Attack: Pe’sla or find on your preferred podcast platform.
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
