"All across South Dakota meetings are being held this week and next on the various Lakota Indian reservations to try and raise enough money to make a bid on the purchase of lands in Paha Sapa, the Black Hills of South Dakota, considered sacred to the Lakota people. The site is called Oceti Sakowin, Pe’ Sla (The Heart of Everything) in the Lakota language and is considered the place where the Morning Star fell and killed seven Lakota girls/women who were later put into the sky to become the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, or Wincinchala Sakowi (the Seven Little Girls).

The area up for sale this coming Saturday, August 25 is in the shadow of a mountain the Wasicu (white people or, literally: ‘takers of the fat’) call Old Baldy, which figures into Lakota mythology and has been sacred to the Lakota since the Before Time. Pe’sla is part of a complex of sacred sites which include Devil’s Tower in Wyoming and various other sites in the Black Hills, all of which link to Lakota mythology of the union of earth and sky, and many are still used for ceremonies and prayer."

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Johnny Flynn: ‘A Slice of Heaven’: Lakota Look to Buy Back Stolen Sacred Lands (Religion Dispatches 8/21)