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On 8/25/16 9:45 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote:
Glad he took a dig at localist "solutions."
But - even though he mentioned the Bolshevik Revolution - he's not
willing to go further than pressuring the state to rein in capital, and
so does a huge disservice to the movement.
Meanwhile what's the latest on the Native peoples taking on the state
over that pipeline?
NY Times Op-Ed, August 25 2016
Taking a Stand at Standing Rock
By DAVID ARCHAMBAULT II
Near Cannon Ball, N.D. — It is a spectacular sight: thousands of Indians
camped on the banks of the Cannonball River, on the edge of the Standing
Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Our elders of the Seven Council
Fires, as the Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation, is known, sit in
deliberation and prayer, awaiting a federal court decision on whether
construction of a $3.7 billion oil pipeline from the Bakken region to
Southern Illinois will be halted.
The Sioux tribes have come together to oppose this project, which was
approved by the State of North Dakota and the United States Army Corps
of Engineers. The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline, owned by a Texas oil
company named Energy Transfer Partners, would snake across our treaty
lands and through our ancestral burial grounds. Just a half-mile from
our reservation boundary, the proposed route crosses the Missouri River,
which provides drinking water for millions of Americans and irrigation
water for thousands of acres of farming and ranching lands.
Our tribe has opposed the Dakota Access pipeline since we first learned
about it in 2014. Although federal law requires the Corps of Engineers
to consult with the tribe about its sovereign interests, permits for the
project were approved and construction began without meaningful
consultation. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the
Interior and the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
supported more protection of the tribe’s cultural heritage, but the
Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer Partners turned a blind eye to
our rights. The first draft of the company’s assessment of the planned
route through our treaty and ancestral lands did not even mention our tribe.
The Dakota Access pipeline was fast-tracked from Day 1 using the
Nationwide Permit No. 12 process, which grants exemption from
environmental reviews required by the Clean Water Act and the National
Environmental Policy Act by treating the pipeline as a series of small
construction sites. And unlike the better-known Keystone XL project,
which was finally canceled by the Obama administration last year, the
Dakota Access project does not cross an international border — the
condition that mandated the more rigorous federal assessment of the
Keystone pipeline’s economic justification and environmental impacts.
The Dakota Access route is only a few miles shorter than what was
proposed for the Keystone project, yet the government’s environmental
assessment addressed only the portion of the pipeline route that
traverses federal land. Domestic projects of this magnitude should
clearly be evaluated in their totality — but without closer scrutiny,
the proposal breezed through the four state processes.
Perhaps only in North Dakota, where oil tycoons wine and dine elected
officials, and where the governor, Jack Dalrymple, serves as an adviser
to the Trump campaign, would state and county governments act as the
armed enforcement for corporate interests. In recent weeks, the state
has militarized my reservation, with road blocks and license-plate
checks, low-flying aircraft and racial profiling of Indians. The local
sheriff and the pipeline company have both called our protest
“unlawful,” and Gov. Dalrymple has declared a state of emergency.
It’s a familiar story in Indian Country. This is the third time that the
Sioux Nation’s lands and resources have been taken without regard for
tribal interests. The Sioux peoples signed treaties in 1851 and 1868.
The government broke them before the ink was dry.
When the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River in 1958, it
took our riverfront forests, fruit orchards and most fertile farmland to
create Lake Oahe. Now the Corps is taking our clean water and sacred
places by approving this river crossing. Whether it’s gold from the
Black Hills or hydropower from the Missouri or oil pipelines that
threaten our ancestral inheritance, the tribes have always paid the
price for America’s prosperity.
Protecting water and our sacred places has always been at the center of
our cause. The Indian encampment on the Cannonball grows daily, with
nearly 90 tribes now represented. Many of us have been here before,
facing the destruction of homelands and waters, as time and time again
tribes were ignored when we opposed projects like the Dakota Access
pipeline.
Our hand continues to be open to cooperation, and our cause is just.
This fight is not just for the interests of the Standing Rock Sioux
tribe, but also for those of our neighbors on the Missouri River: The
ranchers and farmers and small towns who depend on the river have shown
overwhelming support for our protest.
As American citizens, we all have a responsibility to speak for a vision
of the future that is safe and productive for our grandchildren. We are
a peaceful people and our tribal council is committed to nonviolence; it
is our constitutional right to express our views and take this stand at
the Cannonball camp. Yet the lieutenant governor of North Dakota, Drew
Wrigley, has threatened to use his power to end this historic, peaceful
gathering.
We are also a resilient people who have survived unspeakable hardships
in the past, so we know what is at stake now. As our songs and prayers
echo across the prairie, we need the public to see that in standing up
for our rights, we do so on behalf of the millions of Americans who will
be affected by this pipeline.
As one of our greatest leaders, Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa
Lakota, once said: “Let us put our minds together and see what life we
can make for our children.” That appeal is as relevant today as it was
more than a century ago.
David Archambault II is the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
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