When President Barack Obama vetoed the Keystone XL oil pipeline Feb. 25, 2015, it signaled strong environmental opposition that sought to run oil shale from Hardisty, Canada over 1,500 miles to Port Arthur, Texas. Obama vetoed the bill over the objections of Republicans in Congress, believing a pipeline actually reduced environmental pollution over trucking or train transportation. Opponents to pipelines cite leaks that can lead to oil spills in environmentally sensitive land or waterways. Standing up to the 1,100 mile, $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline project, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe rejected the project because of environment concerns, but, more importantly, big oil trespassing on sovereign Indian lands. Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II expressed Native American objections to the Dakota Access project seeking an injunction in federal court.
Raising objections to the pipeline, Archambault signaled that Standing Rock Sioux tribe stood with some 200 tribes drawing a line in the sand over Dakota Access’s attempt to usurp Native American sovereignty on tribal lands. Thousands of protesters from 200 tribes gathered around the intersection of the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers, the closest spot to the proposed pipeline route. Going from North Dakota’s tar sands extraction industry to Illinois, the Dakota Access pipeline would link with existing pipelines, ferrying oil to the Gulf of Mexico. Native tribes concluded the risks of polluting local water resources were too great to allow Dakota Access to build its pipeline. “Our indigenous people have been warning for 500 years that the destruction of Mother Earth is going to come back and its going to harm us,” said Archambault, echoing objections of Native tribes.
Native American protesters were joined by Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, currently under investigation for spray painting Dakota Access pipeline equipment. “Now our voices are getting louder,” said Archambault, realizing that collective action could indeed stop Dakota Access. District of Columbia U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg granted Standing Rock Sioux a temporary restraining order Sept. 6 to stop the Army Corps of Engineers from moving ahead with permits. While only temporary, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners agreed to stop pending the final ruling. Mishaps involving oil tankers on derailed trains in Oregon prompted Dakota Access to argue it was environmentally safer to transport highly flammable shale oil from Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota, Canada and Montana in pipelines. Whether paid or not, Native American tribes object to the pipeline.
Native Americans have more issues than only environmental safety for the use of sovereign lands for oil pipelines. What’s left of the great Sioux nation, one of six reservations left in the Dakotas, rejects using sovereign Indian lands for commercial use, whether transporting oil or anything else. Since signing the Removal Act May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson made the Indian Wars, started in 1620, the official policy of the U.S. government, relocating tribes to barren lands in the Midwest and Southwest. With the silent history of genocide on indigenous peoples, today’s Native Americans draw a line in the sand about the Dakota Access pipeline. When Columbus discovered America in 1492, an estimated 112 million Native tribes lived in the Americas. By 1650, only 6.5 million were left. Today only 5.2 million Native Americans are left in the United States, including Alaska.
When it comes to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, about 15,000 members exist in the United States, with about 8,000 living in North and South Dakota. Today’s protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, about 10,000 strong, mirror the ancestral history of Native American abuse under the Removal Act, the official U.S. government policy under Jackson. Joined by Native American tribes from the U.S. and Aboriginal tribes from Canada, the protests reflect U.S. tribes finally making a stand against a well-documented history of genocide and abuse. “People are ready to stay through winter, said Allyson Two Bears, who’s part of the Standing Rock Sioux reservations emergency response team. Standing Rock Sioux reservation hired a political campaign director to fight Dakota Access pipeline’s attempt to run its pipes over-and- under sovereign Native lands.
Gathering over 250,000 signatures to take to the District Court in D.C., the Standing Rock Sioux reservation has raised awareness about Native Americans around the country. “They’ve been making really good use of social media as part of this and that has actually changed the way Native American activism takes place,” said Katherine Hayes, Chair of American Indian Studies at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Helped by Hollywood celebrities, like 70-year-old Susan Sarandon, the Standing Rock Sioux reservation has done more to expose the ongoing mistreatment of Native Americans, not only environmental issues. “These kind of things happen when people don’t have a voice,” said Sarandon, referring to Texas or North Dakota oil companies trampling on Native American lands. Standing up to the pipeline, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe raised awareness of forgotten Native Americans.
