Protect Bear Butte, our sacred ground is not their playground!

Bear Butte is a sacred mountain located in the Black Hills, just eight miles east of Sturgis, South Dakota.

Bear Butte is sacred to approximately thirty of the Plains Tribes, including Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho. The Tribes, have traveled to Bear Butte for thousands of years for their annual ceremonies, generally in the months of June through August.

When people come to the sacred mountain for their ceremonies, they prepare for this journey for one year. Bear Butte is where people go for healing, or to ask for guidance about any hardships and issues they may be faced with. The sacred mountain Bear Butte and Grandmother Earth are our church.

The blatant disregard for the spiritual beliefs and ceremonies of Native People and the sacredness of this mountain is evidenced by the increased presence of bars, clubs, strobe lights, campgrounds that sell alcohol, concert venues and helicopters over the mountain.

Instead of praying in peace, traditional people are forced to pray with loud music from bars, motorcycle noise, flashing strobe lights over the mountain, and intoxicated campers nearby.

In the past couple years, the rally has expanded and development is encroaching right toward Bear Butte. In 2006, Jay Allen owner of Broken Spoke developed at property one mile from Bear Butte called Sturgis County Line. He has been very disrespectful from the very beginning to the Native people in this issue, completely disregarding our concerns of his development.

Over the past two years, there has been an ongoing struggle to Protect Bear Butte against this development. Recently, this location has further expanded and developed, they also changed the name to Broken Spoke Campground. Some of their expansions include opening year round, hosting rally type events all summer long, hosting concerts each night and their latest attack, offering helicopter rides over the mountain during the rally. These expansions will virtually make it impossible, all summer to pray in peace at Bear Butte.

A campaign called "Bikers for Bear Butte" is in progress to educate bikers, in regards to the significance and protection for Bear Butte. This has been an on-going effort to create awareness over the past two years. People from across the nation have participated in reaching out to the bikers. It is through awareness that we can help make a difference with this issue. We have support from many people within the biker community but most people remain unaware of the struggle. Many bikers have stated they were not aware of the significance of Bear Butte previously, but will now support us and act accordingly.

We ask for respectful behavior from people who are near the mountain. We want to limit the noise, intrusive lighting, alcohol consumption and stop the helicopter rides over Bear Butte.

Today, Native people are struggling to protect sacred sites across the country. Protecting what is sacred, our identity, culture and spirituality. These sites have been sacred since the beginning of time. Tribes received their creation stories from these sites, their medicine and their way of life.

Our sacred sites represent who we are as a people, connect us to our ancestors and to the Creator. If these places vanish where we go to pray, to fast, to speak with our ancestors, where our ancestors are laid to rest, what will happen to tradition and spirituality?

The loss of sacred sites, or ability to have the natural serenity and tranquility needed for cultural and ceremonial use, ultimately affects the life of seven generations yet to come.

Protect Sacred Sites Indigenous People, One Nation is a grass roots organization, working towards the protection of sacred sites across the country. Our organization has been actively involved with the ongoing struggle to Protect Bear Butte for several years. We are continuing these efforts, our organization is currently leading the campaign regarding the new developments and further expansions at Bear Butte. Please visit our main website at www.ProtectSacredSites.org. We also have a dedicated website for the Bear Butte issue at www.protectbearbutte.com

The rally is two weeks away and the tents are already up and running in Sturgis. They say with the economy, the rally could be down by half this year. Don't get to excited about this, that is still potentially 250,000 people! Sturgis is normally a community of about 6,500 people, so this influx of people all at once is overwhelming.

With the new developments and issues with Broken Spoke Campground, we are dreading this upcoming rally. They will be offering concerts every night this year. The helicopter issue is still pending. Our organization Protect Sacred Sites and Parks, filed a complaint with FAA, they did make recommendations to BSC to not fly over Bear Butte, and gave them other suggested flight patterns. The challenge is all FAA can do is make suggestions and recommendations, what they say is not mandatory. This makes no sense, believe me I know! We have been working with NARF for legal assistance, they hopefully will be filing a legal letter to Broken Spoke in the next few days about this issue.

Our org submitted a Tribal Resolution to the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association for the protection of Bear Butte and the helicopter issue. They unanimously approved the resolution on July 10th, (Resolution 52-07-10-08) . This will also be submitted to NARF as additional documentation of support for the issue. I will post a copy of the resolution on our website and blog, as soon as I get a digital copy of it, within the next couple days.

We will be walking around each day during the Rally, reaching out to the Biker community about the Bear Butte issue. We are continuing the campaign "Bikers for Bear Butte" and will be passing out the fliers during the rally. Over the past couple months, our organization and volunteers have sent out approximately 5,000-6,000 emails and still counting, the Bikers for Bear Butte flier, to various biker websites, message boards, dealerships, organizations and clubs.

We will be documenting what transpires during the rally, sending out updates during that week.

On a good note, with all the rain we have had, Bear Butte Lake is actually full. It is actually a wildlife refuge, however it hasn't been at this level for about ten years. This is a good thing! I took the picture above last week. Enjoy......

Thank you to everyone that has helped us with getting this info and the fliers out there! Your help is greatly appreciated, we couldn't have gotten all this out without your help!

What's new on Protect Bear Butte website: Detailed timeline summary of Bear Butte issue from 2003 shooting range issue, to today's struggle with the bars, new design, new pages, new posts to the blog and more..

For up to date info about the ongoing efforts to Protect Bear Butte, visit us at www.protectbearbutte.com

Protect Sacred Sites Indigenous People, One Nation is a grass roots organization, working towards the protection of sacred sites across the country. Our organization has been actively involved with the ongoing struggle to Protect Bear Butte for several years. We are continuing these efforts, our organization is currently leading the campaign regarding the new developments and further expansions at Bear Butte. Please visit our main website at www.ProtectSacredSites.org . We have a dedicated website for the Bear Butte issue at www.protectbearbutte.com

In peace and solidarity,
Tamra Brennan
Founder/Director
Protect Sacred Sites Indigenous People, One Nation
Protect Sacred Sites
Protect Bear Butte
Bikers For Bear Butte

"Our sacred lands are all that remain keeping us connected to our place on Mother Earth, to our spirituality, our heritage and our lands; what's left of them. If they take it all away, what will remain except a vague memory of a past so forgotten?"

This letter is to all those well-meaning bikers who participate in the Sturgis Bike Rally in South Dakota, in August. We believe that the majority of you are not aware of the destruction the rally is causing to one of Indian peoples' most sacred sites, Bear Butte. Very few non-Indians know that for many centuries all the Tribes of the Great Plains worshipped and conducted sacred ceremonies at Bear Butte. It is a place for quiet prayers of thanksgiving and for seeking spiritual guidance with ancient ceremonies.

The spring and summer months through August, is when the Tribes travel to Bear Butte to conduct their annual ceremonies. These prayers and ceremonies do not stop simply because the rally has started. For the past few years there has been a continual encroachment of bars and venues heading towards the sacred mountain. Since the arrival of Sturgis County Line and other venues next to Bear Butte, traditional people are forced to pray with loud music from bars, mufflers and flashing strobe lights over the mountain, instead of praying in peace. In April 2008, Sturgis County Line announced they will be opening year-round and hosting many events throughout the summer. This will make it virtually impossible to pray in peace all summer long.

Most of you are probably unaware that returning Indian veterans of wars since before World War 1, have made their way to the sacred mountain to pray, fast and give thanks for their safe return. Most veterans wouldn't know that the Cheyenne Nation conducted ceremonies on Bear Butte during WW1, WW2, Korea and Viet Nam to insure the victory for American forces. Bear Butte is where our young men and women go to fast, to learn and to test themselves for adulthood. Bear Butte is where our holy men and women have gone to seek spiritual knowledge for as long as our tribal memories can see into the past. Even today in this new millennium, Bear Butte continues to be central to the spiritual and ceremonial lives of over thirty Indian Nations.

Indian people are becoming desperate to preserve even small portions of our once peaceful and remote, sacred places across America.

We ARE NOT trying to close or stop the Sturgis Bike Rally, or even interfere with all the various things that go on there. We are asking that the Federal, State and Local governments enact and enforce a buffer zone around Bear Butte, to restrict the sale of booze within the zone, make sure concerts and other extraneous noise, are kept away from the Mountain. To us that seems very minimal and reasonable, but our words have fallen on deaf ears once again and the county and state are allowing more and more destruction to happen--always closer to Bear Butte. It must be stopped.

It is now our hope that we can turn to the customers of the bike rally, the bikers themselves, to ask that they help us in our efforts. We ask all bikers to help us make attendees of the Sturgis Bike Rally, aware of our request and to help us encourage all the booze and concert venues too close to Bear Butte, to close down and move away. We are asking that all bikers boycott the "Broken Spoke Saloons" until they withdraw their bar away from Bear Butte!

We are asking that all "BIKERS FOR BEAR BUTTE" come together with Indian people to help us enact a buffer zone around Bear Butte and to help us inform all your brother and sister Bikers of the issue.

We pray there, we receive healing and learn our ancient ways of life there. We KNOW YOU respect Bear Butte and will stand by our side, in this struggle! We ask our biker brothers and sisters to help us PROTECT our SACRED MOUNTAIN.

HOW YOU CAN HELP AS A "BIKER FOR BEAR BUTTE"

For more information about our struggle, please visit us at

http://bikersforbearbutte.blogspot.com or www.ProtectBearButte.com

Click to download brochure!