Amelia Schafer
ICT
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Less than a week after successfully stopping a drilling project at Pe’ Sla, a sacred site in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Indigenous treaty defenders are gearing up for another fight against a drilling project in South Dakota – this time 500 feet away from a significant site.
From May 18-22, the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment will hear arguments regarding a proposed exploratory uranium drilling project near Craven Canyon, which houses historic petroglyphs and pictographs created over 7,000 years ago.
Craven Canyon is an archaeological site in the southern Black Hills, roughly 25 miles from Hot Springs, where the hearing will take place.
On May 8, the permit for a proposed exploratory graphite drilling project just over a half mile from Pe’ Sla, a sacred site for the Lakota people, was withdrawn by Pete Lien & Sons, the natural resource mining company that had originally obtained the permit. The decision came after a week of Indigenous-led occupation at two of the project drill pads.
The one-mile study area for the Chord Project, the uranium project in Craven Canyon, includes 12 “rock art,” or petroglyph and petrograph sites, and at least one suspected burial site, according to a February 2025 letter from South Dakota Historical Preservation Officer Garry Guan addressed to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
One drill pad, identified as Pad 33, is within the boundaries of a suspected burial site identified by the state’s Archaeological Center, Guan said in his letter.
“Given the nature of the site, this drill pad should be moved to another location or removed from the project entirely,” he wrote.
The Black Hills is a significant area for numerous tribes, including the Oceti Sakowin (Lakota, Dakota and Nakoda), Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and many more. Despite this, roughly 42 percent of the Black Hills is private property and less than one percent is tribal trust land.
If the Chord Project is approved, the Clean Nuclear Energy Corp. would build it.
Uranium drilling is becoming more common across the United States and Canada, largely as the result of a greater push to domesticate the United States’s supply of energy resources like uranium, graphite and lithium – all of which are major components in the creation of electric vehicles but also in computers and phones.
The domestic production of uranium has greatly decreased since the 1980s, and the U.S. largely gets its uranium from Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia and Australia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Following several tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump affecting the supply chains from these nations, more domestic companies are looking to get uranium from the United States. To meet the demand, more mining companies are requesting permits to identify uranium across the U.S., like in the Chord Project.
The proposed project near Craven Canyon would consist of 50 holes drilled 700 feet deep into state-owned land, and the drilling process would take two weeks, according to project documents.
Despite its close proximity to several archaeological sites, the South Dakota Archaeological Society determined the proposed project is not a risk to the historical sites in Craven Canyon, Guan said in his letter to state officials.
However, several nonprofit advocacy organizations, including Dakota Rural Action and the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, have spoken out against the proposed project. According to Dakota Rural Action, over 30 individuals, two tribal governments and two organizations have filed petitions opposing the project.
The two intervening tribes are the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Rosebud Sioux Tribe, according to a Dakota Rural Action spokesperson.
Project opponents have said it would physically harm the existing archaeological sites, cause drilling vibrations and irreparably damage the site.
In a May 14 statement, a Dakota Rural Action spokesperson said the project would require about 5,000-10,000 gallons per day to be completed, which could exacerbate ongoing drought conditions in the area. As of May 14, the southern Black Hills was experiencing extreme drought conditions, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. MT May 18 at the Mueller Center in Hot Springs, South Dakota.