From Lakota People’s Law Project
April 19, 2026

This [US] administration has put two things on a fast track to destruction. The hot button war over Iran’s uranium destroys peace and prosperity. The rush to mine Black Hills uranium destroys people and the sacred. Both are based on manufactured crisis. Both bypass democratic oversight. Both are moving at the speed of executive commands because if either one slowed down long enough for the people to really weigh in, the answer would be no. 

Congress never authorized the war in Iran. They voted four times so far and failed to stop it. The Lakota people never consented to uranium extraction from treaty land. We’ve fought it for over 20 years and we’re still fighting. 

Today’s fresh Hell we are forced to face down: the Dewey-Burdock uranium project, 50 miles from Pine Ridge, in the aquifer above our reservation. It was just put on Trump’s emergency federal fast-track permitting dashboard with a mere thirty-day review period starting last week.

Watch my video and take action: send your message to Burgum: “Stop fast tracking mining on Native treaty lands.”

The BLM’s draft Environmental Assessment that is supposed to protect the public was prepared under executive pressure to compress review timelines from years to weeks. It defers most of its analysis to a 12-year-old study. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty is mentioned zero times. The Programmatic Agreement resolving cultural harm to Lakota sacred sites won’t even be executed until six weeks after the comment period closes. That is not environmental review, that is a forced march.

The fast track to war bypassed Congress. The fast track to extraction bypassed the treaty. In the end, the only force that can sideline this runaway train is the consent of the governed. Here is what you can do right now:

First: Tell Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum directly. We need him to reverse the Pe’ Sla drilling permit, pull Dewey-Burdock off the fast-track program, and suspend all extractive permits on treaty lands until real consultation and a full environmental review are done. Use our existing action page. It’s fast and easy to make all three demands in one customizable letter to Burgum online here.

Second: Submit a public comment to the BLM on the Dewey-Burdock Environmental Assessment before May 14. See below for a short template message based on our assessment of the real legal failures of this review. Customize it and add your comment to the public record to make a difference when this goes to court.

Remember, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty is the law of this land. Emergency orders don’t override it. Executive dashboards don’t override it. Your voice will have the final say. Use it.

Wopila tanka — In solidarity and struggle,
Chase Iron Eyes
Executive Director
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund

P.S. Here’s the boiled-down single paragraph template as a starting point to make your public comment submission to the BLM on Dewey-Burdock. It’s short enough for the online form field, and substantive enough to matter legally:

I oppose approval of the Dewey-Burdock Uranium ISR Plan of Operations (DOI-BLM-MT-C040-2026-0009-EA) and urge the BLM to withhold approval until a full, lawful review is completed. This draft Environmental Assessment is legally compromised on multiple grounds: it asks the public to comment before the Programmatic Agreement resolving cultural harm to Lakota sacred sites is executed, inverting the Section 106 process required by the National Historic Preservation Act; it analyzes only 4.2 acres while ignoring the 10,580-acre uranium operation those acres exist to enable, in violation of NEPA’s prohibition on project segmentation; it uses pre-existing groundwater contamination as a reason to minimize further harm to the same aquifer that flows toward Pine Ridge Reservation; and it contains no environmental justice analysis for the Native communities most at risk. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which governs the United States’ relationship to these lands, is mentioned zero times. I urge the BLM to extend the comment period, prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement, conduct meaningful government-to-government consultation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and withhold approval until all legal requirements are met.

https://action.lakotalaw.org/action/black-hills-mining

1868 Fort Laramie Treaty
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/fort-laramie-treaty