CPTnet
12 July 2006

BEAR BUTTE, SD: Sacred in America

by Jill Foster

"Would you put a toilet in a cathedral?" "Would you put a biker bar on Mount
Sinai?" "It's my land; I paid for it. Can't I do what I want with it?"
These were some the questions that reverberated around the Meade County
Courthouse on 7 July 2006, during a public hearing. The Meade County
commissioners were debating whether to grant beer licenses to two new biker
venues within three miles of Bear Butte.

Bear Butte--as Ann White Hat from the Alliance to Protect Bear Butte
explained during time for public testimony--was from the beginning a place
of worship and prayer for the Lakota, Cheyenne and other Native American
communities. Carter Camp, and others from the Coalition to Defend Bear
Butte, testified that the mountain was the birthplace of the Lakota people
and necessary for their continued existence. Many said that the toilets and
bars adjacent to the Butte are a desecration. More of the same, which would
inevitably arrive with the new partying sites, would destroy its holiness.

Earlier in the week, two CPTers, John Spragge and Jill Foster, patrolled
Hagger's Grocery parking lot, joining the effort to get enough voter
signatures to require the county to hold a referendum on the granting of new
liquor licenses. A member of the National Guard, while signing the Bear
Butte petition, mentioned that his duties entailed protecting the national
monument at Mount Rushmore. Another woman wanted to know why the defense of
the Gettysburg historic area against a casino had made the national news,
but not Bear Butte.

For Ulysses Riley, the owner of Free Spirit Campground two miles from Bear
Butte, something else was at stake--his ownership of the land and his right
to use it. The Meade County commissioners agreed the Butte was sacred, but
shut off further public discussion and granted Riley the beer licenses.