About Us

Native American Environmental, LLC (NAE) is a 100% Native American-owned emerging small-business focused in the area of ordnance and explosives remediation, demining, environmental cleanup, and restoration services with two locations; Rapid City and Pine Ridge, SD.

During World War II over 340,000 acres of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation located in Shannon County in southwestern South Dakota were utilized as a practice bombing range by the federal government. Thousands of pounds of ordnance were dropped by aircraft from nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

	In 1998, the Oglala Sioux Tribe with funding from the Department of Defense (DoD) Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program (NALEMP) formed the Badlands Bombing Range Program (BBRP) to begin to identify and map the ordnance previously dropped.
Under this program, employees were trained and certified as unexploded ordnance (UXO) Technician I’s and UXO Sweep Technicians. This unique civilian training opportunity provided the BBRP employees with the training and valuable work experience within the UXO clean-up business.

In 2002, DoD required the BBRP operations to convert from direct employment to a contract. Several former employees of the Program (all enrolled members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe living within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) set out to form a private company to utilize their training and work experience to provide UXO, de-mining, environmental cleanup and restoration services. Once established they could subcontract to clean up the former Badlands Range and other active and formerly used defense sites.

NAE has received several certifications recognized by the Federal government including:

• Small Business Administration 8(a)
• Small Disadvantaged Enterprise (SDB)
• Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE)
• Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUB Zone)
• Air Force Mentor Protege participant, together with Oglala Lakota College