Cowboys and Indians

Marv Kammerer looks like the iconic cowboy: worn-out hat, neckerchief, the swagger that comes from years of hard work in the saddle. Just another South Dakota cattle rancher, you might think -- until you notice the button pinned to his chest: "Impeach Bush and Cheney." Kammerer's family ranch lies adjacent to Ellsworth Air Force Base. A longtime environmental and social justice activist, Kammerer has never made peace with the war machines that fly over his property.

Few things are more important to the 70-year-old rancher than his land, which was first homesteaded by his grandfather, a German immigrant, in the 1880s. Holding on to that land was not always easy. As a child, Kammerer listened to stories of farmers struggling through the Great Depression, when new rural cooperatives and FDR's Soil Conservation Service helped them survive and brought basic amenities -- like electricity -- to even the most remote areas.

Kammerer grew up alongside the Lakota,  Dakota, and Nakota Sioux, whose cultures were formed by their attachment to the same land, and who survived the illegal seizure of their territories after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in the 1870s. Through most of their shared history, ranchers and Native Americans have been  adversaries, but 30 years ago Kammerer forged an unlikely trust between the two groups when he helped found the Black Hills Alliance to protest uranium mining on land sacred to the Great Sioux Nation. (The group was more familiarly known as the Cowboy-Indian Alliance, or CIA.)

 In 1980, Kammerer hosted the Black Hills International Survival Gathering on his 2,200-acre ranch; 12,000 people camped out on his land -- the largest protest in South Dakota's history -- and succeeded in scuttling industry plans to mine uranium in the Black Hills. The victory inspired a new generation of environmental justice advocates, including the celebrated activist Winona LaDuke, who is part Ojibwa. "Ever since I was 18 or 19," she says, "Marv has been one of my heroes."

More recently, Kammerer has helped organize ranchers and Native Americans to save another sacred site: Bear Butte, an extinct volcano that rises from the prairie near his property. Named for its silhouette's resemblance to a sleeping bear, the butte is sacred not only to the Lakota people but also to the Cheyenne, Mandan, and several other Great Plains tribes, which have long revered the site as a place for their vision quests and other spiritual practices.

The threat this time comes not from gold prospectors or uranium miners, but from swarms of bikers and land developers. Half a million motorcyclists from across the country converge annually on the town of Sturgis, at the base of the mountain, erecting tent cities and flooding into biker bars blaring heavy metal music. Out-of-state developers have followed, lured by profits from the motorcycle rally and a modern-day gold rush fueled by the fierce demand for new subdivisions and vacation and retirement homes. As a result, land values and property taxes have skyrocketed, and local ranchers are once again struggling to pay the bills.

Kammerer is urging his neighbors to resist the pressure to sell. "We're being pushed off our land just as the Native Americans were," he says with disgust. "It's a way to make a lot of money quickly, with total disregard for the Native American culture and total disregard for the rancher." Then he adds, "But we don't have to sell out to the next carpetbagger that comes up to the door. That's not what we're made of."