Most of the South Unit lies inside the former Pine Ridge gunnery and bombing range, taken from the reservation during World War II. Nothing of it shows from Highway 240. Clearing leftover ordnance is the work of a program the Oglala Sioux Tribe set up itself.
We will not take back land that is not clean. The head of the Oglala Sioux Tribe's bombing range program said that. His own family was among those forced out. There's nothing to look at here. It's out past the Wall, beyond what you can see from this road. In nineteen forty-two the War Department took more than a third of a million acres of the Pine Ridge Reservation for a gunnery and bombing range. The government's own account puts it in two lines. The land was seen as useless and empty. This, however, was not true. There were farms and ranches out there, and families. The records put them anywhere from one hundred twenty-five to eight hundred ninety. The first director of the tribe's own project remembered ten days to leave. The tribe was offered a penny an acre a year, and it settled for three cents. Landowners, Indian and non-Indian alike, averaged under three dollars an acre. The range itself drove up everything nearby, so the money wouldn't buy new land. Many couldn't afford to buy their land back. One estimate says descendants reoccupied only about a quarter of it. Unexploded bombs are still reported out there. Since nineteen ninety-three the tribe has run its own program to clear them. As of the last report, the Air Force still holds two thousand four hundred eighty-six acres. Returning them has been the stated goal on both sides, on paper since two thousand eight. The law has no direct way to do it, and the one agency it passes through declined, over the liability. When the money comes, the tribe's crews go back out, on their own land.
Photo: NPS Photo / Serena Rosales, public domain · Public domain