A sacred meadow in the Black Hills of South Dakota — used by Lakota and Sioux peoples for prayer, ceremony, and youth gatherings for over 2,000 years — is under threat. Without notifying the tribes who hold this land as holy, the U.S. Forest Service quietly approved an exploratory drilling project just steps from Pe'Sla, a site so central to Indigenous spiritual life it is called "the heart of everything that is."

For Native tribes across South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska, Pe'Sla is not a historical landmark — it is a living place of worship, visited year-round for ceremony and prayer. Drilling near it is not a minor inconvenience. It is a direct intrusion on the religious life of thousands of people.

What makes this worse is how it happened. The Forest Service bypassed the environmental review process by claiming the project qualified for a special exemption. But the tribes — who have a formal buffer zone agreement with the Forest Service protecting public lands around Pe'Sla — were never consulted. That agreement exists for a reason. It was ignored.

Nine federally recognized tribes have now joined together in a rare show of unity to file a federal lawsuit, alleging the approval violates the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Some of the drilling pads are already operating inside that buffer zone. As Wizipan Garriott of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said, "We as Lakota people have been coming and praying and holding ceremony at these places for over 2,000 years."

Exploratory drilling is rarely the end of the story. It is the beginning of one. Once the ground is broken and samples are collected, the case for a full mine becomes easier to make. The Black Hills — sacred to Native peoples long before they became a tourist destination — deserve a full environmental review before any more damage is done.

We are calling on the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to immediately halt the drilling project near Pe'Sla, honor the existing buffer zone agreement with the tribes, and conduct the environmental and cultural review that should have happened before a single drill touched the ground.

Sacred places deserve protection. Federal law requires it.