Charmaine White Face

Last updated

Charmaine White Face
Zumila Wobaga
Charmaine White Face (Zumila Wobaga) presenting "America's Chernobyl".jpg
Charmaine White Face presenting "America's Chernobyl" – the facts about the 3,272 abandoned open pit uranium mines in the Great Sioux Territory – on a 10-day tour on the East Coast, 2013
Oglala Tituwan elder
Personal details
Born Deadwood, SD
Awards2007 Nuclear Free Future Award, Salzburg, Austria
In April 2017, she received the 2017 Dakota Conference Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Northern Plains from the Center for Western Studies, Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD.

Charmaine White Face, or Zumila Wobaga, is an Oglala Tetuwan (Lakota language speaker) from the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) in North America.

Contents

She is known for her work in support of Native American rights, in particular as coordinator of the Defenders of the Black Hills, a volunteer environmental organization centered on efforts to encourage the United States government to honor the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. [1] [2]

She also works at the international level in support of recognition of human rights of indigenous peoples all over the world. She is the spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council established in 1894. She was a participant in the prayer fast/hunger strike held in December 2004 in Geneva, Switzerland at the final meeting of the Intersessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (WGDD). She has worked to preserve Bear Butte, [3] [4] on monitoring of abandoned uranium mines, on "environmental remediation of hazardous waste ponds," [5] and in the anti-nuclear power movement. [6] In Jan. 2013, she raised concerns about radiation exposure of South Dakota Army National Guard soldiers in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. [7]

Charmaine White Face is also a columnist and freelance writer who has written for Indian Country Today , the Rapid City Journal , the Sioux Falls Argus Leader , and The Lakota Journal, and is a grandmother. [4] [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lakota people</span> Indigenous people of the Great Plains

The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sioux</span> Native American and First Nations ethnic groups

The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription ("Nadouessioux") of the Ojibwe term "Nadowessi", can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sitting Bull</span> Hunkpapa Lakota leader (1831–1890)

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. Sitting Bull was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Rushmore</span> Mountain in the US featuring a sculpture of four presidents

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the sculpture, called Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 1,278 acres. The mountain's elevation is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Indian Movement</span> United States civil rights organization

The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against American Indians. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pine Ridge Indian Reservation</span> Indian reservation in United States, Oglala Sioux

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, also called Pine Ridge Agency, is an Oglala Lakota Indian reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota, with a small portion of it extending into Nebraska. Originally included within the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge was created by the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border. It consists of 3,468.85 sq mi (8,984 km2) of land area and is one of the largest reservations in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bear Butte</span> United States historic place

Bear Butte is a geological laccolith feature located near Sturgis, South Dakota, United States, that was established as a State Park in 1961. An important landmark and religious site for the Plains Indians tribes long before Europeans reached South Dakota, Bear Butte is called Matȟó Pahá, or Bear Mountain, by the Lakota, or Sioux. To the Cheyenne, it is known as Noahȧ-vose or Náhkȯhe-vose, and is the place where Ma'heo'o imparted to Sweet Medicine, a Cheyenne prophet, the knowledge from which the Cheyenne derive their religious, political, social, and economic customs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standing Rock Indian Reservation</span> Native American reservation in the United States

The Standing Rock Reservation lies across the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaksa bands of the Dakota Oyate," as well as the Hunkpatina Dakota. The Ihanktonwana Dakota are the Upper Yanktonai, part of the collective of Wiciyena. The sixth-largest Native American reservation in land area in the US, Standing Rock includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, and all of Corson County, South Dakota, plus slivers of northern Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota, along their northern county lines at Highway 20.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Sioux Reservation</span> Former Indian reservation in the United States

The Great Sioux Reservation initially set aside land west of the Missouri River in South Dakota and Nebraska for the use of the Sioux, who had dominated this territory. The reservation was established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. It included all of present-day western South Dakota and modern Boyd County, Nebraska. This area was established by the United States as a reservation for the Teton Sioux, also known as the Lakota: the seven western bands of the "Seven Council Fires".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheyenne River Indian Reservation</span> Indian reservation in South Dakota, United States

The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation was created by the United States in 1889 by breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation, following the attrition of the Lakota in a series of wars in the 1870s. The reservation covers almost all of Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota. In addition, many small parcels of off-reservation trust land are located in Stanley, Haakon, and Meade counties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uranium mining in the United States</span> Uranium mining industry in U.S.

Uranium mining in the United States produced 224,331 pounds (101.8 tonnes) of U3O8 in 2023, 15% of the 2018 production of 1,447,945 pounds (656.8 tonnes) of U3O8. The 2023 production represents 0.4% of the uranium fuel requirements of the US's nuclear power reactors for the year. Production came from five in-situ leaching plants, four in Wyoming (Nichols Ranch ISR Project, Lance Project, Lost Creek Project, and Smith Ranch-Highland Operation) and one in Nebraska (Crowe Butte Operation); and from the White Mesa conventional mill in Utah.

JoAnn Tall is an environmental activist of the Oglala Lakota tribe who has worked to ensure the people have a chance to approve major projects for energy development. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1993 for her protests against uranium mining and plans for testing nuclear weapons in the Black Hills area, near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where she lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crazy Horse Memorial</span> Mountain monument under construction in South Dakota

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing to his tribal land. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Hills</span> Mountain range in South Dakota and Wyoming, United States

The Black Hills is an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, United States. Black Elk Peak, which rises to 7,244 feet (2,208 m), is the range's highest summit. The Black Hills encompass the Black Hills National Forest. The name of the mountains in Lakota is Pahá Sápa. The Black Hills are considered a holy site. The hills are so called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they are covered in evergreen trees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seizure of the Black Hills</span> Land dispute between Native Americans and the US government

The United States government illegally seized the Black Hills – a mountain range in the US states of South Dakota and Wyoming – from the Sioux Nation in 1876. The land was pledged to the Sioux Nation in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, but a few years later the United States illegally seized the land and nullified the treaty with the Indian Appropriations Bill of 1876, without the tribe's consent. That bill "denied the Sioux all further appropriation and treaty-guaranteed annuities" until they gave up the Black Hills. A Supreme Court case was ruled in favor of the Sioux in 1980. As of 2011, the court's award was worth over $1 billion, but the Sioux have outstanding issues with the ruling and have not collected the funds.

Bismuth is a ghost town in the Black Hills of Custer County, South Dakota, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chase Iron Eyes</span> American lawyer

Chase Iron Eyes is a Native American activist, attorney, politician, and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. He is a member of the Lakota People's Law Project and a co-founder of the Native American news website Last Real Indians. In April 2016 he announced his candidacy for the United States House of Representatives for North Dakota's at-large congressional district. He lost to incumbent Kevin Cramer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LaDonna Brave Bull Allard</span> Lakota historian and activist (1956–2021)

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, known as Tamakawastewin, was a Native American Dakota and Lakota historian, genealogist, and a matriarch of the water protector movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration 2020</span>

A Fireworks Celebration at Mount Rushmore held on July 3, 2020, was the first and only use of fireworks at Mount Rushmore since 2008. President Donald Trump spoke at the event, which was also attended by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, host of Entertainment Tonight Mary Hart, First Lady Melania Trump and Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arvol Looking Horse</span> Lakota spiritual leader

Arvol Looking Horse is a Lakota Native American spiritual leader. He is the 19th keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and Bundle.

References

  1. Defenders of the Black Hills
  2. "Interview with Charmaine White Face". Quiet Mountain Essays. VI (II). Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  3. Charmaine White Face. "Sacred Bear Butte Threatened". Native Voice. Archived from the original on July 15, 2018. Retrieved July 15, 2018.
  4. 1 2 Bommersbach, Jana (November 3, 2009). "Defender of the Black Hills : Charmaine White Face is helping protect a sacred Sioux landmark". True West, Preserving the American West. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  5. "Charmaine White Face and the Defenders of the Black Hills, 2007 Nuclear-Free Future Award Preisträger". Franz Moll Foundation. 2011. Archived from the original on April 10, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
  6. Kulbokas, Maggie (February 22, 2013). "Charmaine White Face to walk, speak about a nuclear free future in Plymouth". Plymouth Daily News. Archived from the original on March 6, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  7. "Charmaine White Face: Deadly dose of uranium for soldiers". Indianz.Com. January 28, 2013. Archived from the original on February 1, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  8. "Dakota Wesleyan University Press Release". March 12, 2008. Archived from the original on June 4, 2010. Retrieved March 26, 2013.