Black Hills

And the

second thing is how tightly or aggressively does it need to be controlled? I mean, if you live in the Black Hills of South Dakota, like the western part of my state, which is also at high altitude, and you take testosterone and you're one of those people after a year, you're like sitting at 55.

I mean, it's hard to control.

I mean, and so sometimes it's just not possible and you have to accept that that's the way it's going to be.

So now we're going into the native sort of miscellaneous here, okay? People emerging from underground.

Let's begin in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is close to where Robert's living.

He's in the north end of Dakota, but it is in the Dakota area where this is happening here.

The Lakota have an emergency tradition, emergence tradition, connected with Wind Cave, a real underground cave system.

We're about 45 minutes south of downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul.

to people who drive cross-country on Interstate 90 heading out to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

One time we had a gentleman who was such a big fan of our brand, he came over from Germany on his way to San Francisco, flew into Minneapolis, stopped, rented a car, drove down to the mill just so he could see the place in action.

So it's fascinating.

Now I'm going to start by talking about a time I heard a pop song that I like, and I'm going to recommend the pop song to you, which is rare for me, but it's going to happen.

I was driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I live, and as I was driving along, I was on this road where there's this one really interesting spot.

You got this craggy cliff on one side, and there's this weird, interesting, this architectural anomaly, this Airbnb that's built on top of this cliff on one side of the road.

And then on the other side of the road, you got beautiful Clearwater Rapid Creek.

between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal.

The same way Mr.

Electric Blue is in my head every time I drive around that bend in the Black Hills, so much more so, God wanted his people, every time they walked past or envisioned Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and the valley in between, he wanted them to be reminded of the covenant.

That gets spelled out first in Deuteronomy 11.26.

On February 27th, the U.S. Forest Service approved exploratory drilling in search of graphite, which is the lead in your pencils, despite opposition from local officials, tribal nations, and the general public.

The NDN Collective, Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, and Earthworks filed suit against the Forest Service, demanding they vacate the permit.

The plaintiffs argued that the Forest Service unlawfully relied on a NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act, categorical exclusion, but pointed to a 2014 Memorandum of Understanding that protects PSHA and argues that the work would take longer than the one year required to complete.

Most of the tribal nations in South Dakota also filed suit.

Mining has a long and contentious history in the Black Hills.

Pishla was part of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which established the Great Sioux Reservation and granted the right to live unhindered by white settlement.

Gold was discovered six years later.

As a result, in 1877, the government passed the Black Hills Act and confiscated territory where gold was found, another injustice.

Yeah, there are some articles or people claiming that certain springs now have been contaminated because of that.

Not all of them, but I do know just because I was there in South Dakota, the Black Hills Springs, They claim, the Native Americans on the land claim it's like one of the healthiest springs left in the country, essentially.

I don't know if that's true, you know, but it's definitely healthy and they're very proud of their spring water up there.

and the Black Hills, which is a very safe

He and I both grew up urban, you know, kind of big city, rapid movement, and people who live in farming areas, they have a slower pace of life, they're more involved with their neighbors and community, and yet we assimilated right in, which again goes to show that the work of local Catholic apostles, like Real Presence Radio, is so powerful precisely because of that, that the Catholic family has an ethos that the world just doesn't have and that the world needs and the Catholic Church offers.

Yes, and what a wonderful thing, too, that we have Real Presence Radio in our area, too, because here in the Black Hills, you know, we have Rapid City, Spearfish, Belfou, Sturgis, you know, we're a little bit closer together in proximity, but we do, north and south of us, have some some distance between us and a lot of our listeners are ranchers and they're farmers and they're out working their fields and their livestock and they're listening from their tractors and their pickup trucks and they maybe are an hour or more from town and they're able to receive formation because of Rural Presence Radio and EWTN.

So I know that that is also our reach is important for those reasons as well.

I couldn't agree more.

No, you can't make this stuff up.

So the idea of trying to share truths that are uncomfortable to Americans, I mean, they go into the Black Hills and they carve four faces on what they call Mount Rushmore.

And all four of those faces have a legacy of atrocities against Native people.

George Washington died.