News across Greater Rapid City
One in three tested wells high in arsenic
OYATE COMMUNITY CENTER – Black Hills Clean Water Alliance (BHCWA) held the second of five community forums they are sponsoring in communities across the Black Hills and West River to inform residents about active proposals for exploratory uranium drilling and uranium mining in…
Giago and Mickelson gave South Dakota a day worth honoring
RAPID CITY—Long before Indigenous Peoples Day became a national movement, two South Dakotans sat on opposite sides of a historical divide and decided they could do something meaningful together. One was Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota newspaperman from the Pine Ridge Reservation. The…
Dignity award honors five Indigenous women
RAPID CITY—Five women have been named the inaugural recipients of the Dignity of Earth & Sky Leadership Award, a new annual honor recognizing an outstanding South Dakota Indigenous woman for leadership, courage, perseverance and wisdom. Cecelia Fire Thunder, Gay Kingman, Tamara…
Bears Ears faces new tribal role and land protection fight
WASHINGTON—Five tribal nations spent years working to secure a place in the management of their ancestral homelands at Bears Ears. Now, with most of the monument removed from its protected boundaries and their commission terminated, the management plan they helped develop faces a…
All-State singers
Eight singers will represent Mobridge-Pollock High School at 2026 All-State Chorus and Orchestra to be held in Summit Arena at The Monument in Rapid City on Oct. 30 and 31. Quartet 1 is (back from left) soprano Tatum Silbernagel, alto Abigail Hollenbeck, tenor Tyler Roebuck and…
Our first line of defense
Men of ethics and strength look at a problem and they see the fix and work tirelessly to achieve it. Sometimes it takes decades to change the system, but once the change is in place, once the mechanism exists to directly address the problem, the work of the strong and ethical is…
How did discourse ever get this intractably polarized?
One of the curious things about an activist is the demand leveled almost immediately if you should disagree with their assertions, however hyperbolic and reality hostile these assertions. You realize such a mind is not opened to reasoned correction so you have learned the hard…
An encroachment on the right to vote
There is little significant debate over elections, executive power, and absolutely no debate about Project 2025 and its election goals. What we do hear is the Save Act and other election changes are about returning “balance:” the presidency against the bureaucracy, election…
Make things that express the source of your Indian pain
Hello Relatives. There is plenty to write about concerning the state of Northern Plains Indian art. So if you are a young Indian artist what are you moved to do with your dream? You have been filled with the spirit of creating things, a gift from the universe. So what do you do…
Red Feather Comix
(Red Feather Comix is a weekly strip focusing on a young married couple, Mary and John) Last week we saw John protesting Mary’s chain smoking. I talked about how I sketched out Mary and John and then had my AI buddy, Kola, do the drawing. I do not have the time or the energy…
STM looks like they are in top form
HOT SPRINGS—Even at 0-2, the Hot Springs Bison are a solid football team, and even more so at home at Woodward Field. Unfortunately, their opponent last Friday evening were the St Thomas More Cavaliers, down from Rapid City, and the defending state champions. STM has lost some…
Offensive scoring explosions mark opening week
Well, it is finally the moment we have been waiting eight months for; the beginning of the regular season. Real games in real time that actually count towards the standings and box scores. However, opening week was marred by some major injuries to their prospective teams. Seattle…