"The first Tribal National Park is a welcome and real possibility.

We want to encourage that initiative, a separate proposal to create a National Historical Park in the Panhandle and another to rename the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice.

The National Park Service has opened for comment its preferred management option for the South Unit of Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota: that is, for Congress to designate it as the first Tribal National Park, managed and administered by the Oglala Sioux Tribe and closely associated with the national park system.

It is fitting and just for this land to be managed by the Oglala Sioux.

In 1942, the U.S. government's War Department took what is now the South Unit from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to establish a practice bombing range that was used until the 1960s. The land was later returned to the tribe as government-held trust land to be managed by the Park Service as part of Badlands National Park.

There have been some conflicts with the Oglala over the Park Service's management, particularly about palentological research."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Park proposals are welcome (The Lincoln Journal Star 9/16)