by Amanda Pittman, Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, Coalition Organizer
This past week, I was in Hot Springs, South Dakota, attending state permitting hearings for uranium test-drilling near Craven Canyon, a site of prayer sacred to Lakota people and part of the treaty lands that are legally theirs. As in the multitude of other places where land and water–the sources of life itself–are under attack, Indigenous people are on the front lines. As our people have for centuries, the first peoples of the land continue to resist colonization–the forces that would make the land unlivable and the water both scarcer and unsafe to drink. They resist in prayer and ceremony, in song and in drumming. They resist both in direct action and in relentlessly holding to account the government boards and officials who, without their resistance, would be happy to rubber-stamp the permits and call it a day.
In that theater last week–yes, a literal theater with a stage–I also witnessed something else. I saw an Indigenous-led movement joined by intervenors and allies from the surrounding community. Public comment came from people across multiple Lakota tribes and reservations, and also from non-Indigenous ranchers, small business owners, educators, and people who have already been victims of radiation poisoning. In that place a community gathered together to fight for the land and water upon which we all depend, and also for future generations and the new world that does not yet exist.
The hearings this week, for this one permit request, ended in a victory. Following the filing of a federal lawsuit by intervenors, the board adjourned indefinitely. But the fight is not over. Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, are under siege from all sides from extractive industry–uranium, lithium, gold, graphite. Sacred lands all across the country have mining, oil, and gas projects being fast-tracked at an alarming rate.
In the time since those hearings, I have been reflecting on the strength of spirit I saw in the people, in the face of such forces of destruction. I feel the power moving through and rippling out to the broader community.
And I ask: what can we learn here about aligning with the spirit of life? How might this alignment halt and obstruct destruction of that which is most sacred? What are we called to do?
For Christians, now is the time of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends in wind and fire upon Jesus’ gathered-together friends and followers. The Spirit that descends is the breath that animates us from the dust of the earth, the breath of wind that rushed across the waters at the time of Creation. This Spirit gives the disciples breath to speak the Good News of liberation to the people from all nations gathered in Jerusalem, each in their own language.
Now is also the time of Shavuot, which marks the time when the Jewish people, the people of Yisrael (those who wrestle with the Divine), received Torah on Mt. Sinai–the Ten Commandments and the way of living well in the time after bondage. It is the time for shedding that which keeps us constricted, that which keeps us in bondage even as we seek the promised land.
These holy days mark liminal times with both gifts and invitations. Gifts of breath, life, and liberation. Gifts of the tools of right relationship. As the old world is crumbling and the old way of being is falling away, how do we live into the new world, a new way of being? A promised land that isn’t a place, isn’t ours to take by force, but is rather a world of relationship and love?
A call came this past month from our Lakota kin–pay attention, show up, stand alongside us in this fight.
May we continue to answer this call.
-Join our Coalition Coffee Hour this Wednesday, May 27 9am PT/12pm ET to hear reflections from Amanda and Doe
-Attend our Monthly Spiritual Gathering on Friday 5/29 at 1pm PT/4pm ET
-Follow the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance (on Facebook or Instagram) for on the ground updates
-Come back here for more updates and reflections from our witness in Paha Sapa
