The Obama admin is halting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline under its current route. This is an incredible victory for the Standing Rock water protectors and all their allies worldwide.
The Dakota Access Pipeline has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada.
Senator Bernie Sanders raises his voice again and joins the many who oppose the construction of this pipeline and stand with the Native Americans of this land.
Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, Bernie was the younger of two sons in a modest-income family. After graduation from the University of Chicago in 1964, he moved to Vermont.
Early in his career, Sanders was director of the American People’s Historical Society. Elected Mayor of Burlington by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms.
Before his 1990 election as Vermont’s at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
He recently ran one of the most successful presidential campaigns.
Rose from the bottom and activated a people’s base.
The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation was originally established as part of the Great Sioux Reservation.
Article 2 of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of April 29, 1868 described the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation, as commencing on the 46th parallel of north latitude to the east bank of Missouri River, south along the east bank to the Nebraska line, then west to the 104th parallel of west longitude.
The Great Sioux Reservation comprised all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the sacred Black Hills and the life-giving Missouri River. Under article 11 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the Great Sioux Nation retained off-reservation hunting rights to a much larger area, south to the Republican and Platte Rivers, and east to the Big Horn Mountains.
Under article 12, no cession of land would be valid unless approved by three-fourths of the adult males. Nevertheless, the Congress unilaterally passed the Act of February 28, 1877 (19 stat. 254), removing the Sacred Black Hills from the Great Sioux Reservation.
The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is situated in North and South Dakota.
The people of Standing Rock, often called Sioux, are members of the Dakota and Lakota nations.
“Dakota” and “Lakota” mean “friends” or “allies.”
The people of these nations are often called “Sioux”, a term that dates back to the seventeenth century when the people were living in the Great Lakes area.
The Ojibwa called the Lakota and Dakota “Nadouwesou” meaning “adders.”
This term, shortened and corrupted by French traders, resulted in retention of the last syllable as “Sioux.” There are various Sioux divisions and each has important cultural, linguistic, territorial and political distinctions.
Lawrence O’Donnell presented an excellent explanation on his weekly show about the struggle, protection, protest taking place in the Dakotas.
I found the video of his presentation and would like to share it with you.
Add to that, the fact that yesterday, the pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray.
This is something that needs to be shared because other stories in the media are overshadowing the fact that special interests are trying to ‘step out’ on complying with promises/treaties made to the Native Americans of this country.
On September 3, the Dakota Access Pipeline Company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they protested against the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction.
Democracy Now!
‘This Nation Was Founded on Genocide’
From the start of colonial intrusion, the free and original peoples of this hemisphere “have been treated as enemies and dealt with more harshly than any other enemy in any other war.”
While this in itself is not news, the source of this statement is.
This quote comes not from an activist, a historian or a researcher squirreled away in an obscure academic corner, but from a high-profile commentator speaking on MSNBC.
“After all our other wars we signed treaties and lived by those treaties,” noted Lawrence O’Donnell at the segment at the end of the August 25 edition of his nightly news show The Last Word.
“After World War 2 we then did everything we possibly could to help rebuild Germany.”
In other words, “no Native American tribe has ever been treated as well as we treated Germans after World War 2.”
O’Donnell issues this scathing indictment by way of explaining the peaceful protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. He talks of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump’s fear of foreign invaders “who want to change our way of life” and notes that it’s “a fear that Native Americans have lived with every day for over five hundred years.”
“The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American we could, and making treaties with the rest,” he says.
“This country was founded on genocide before the word genocide was invented, before there was a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.”
Nor does he end there. He explains how “Every. Single. Treaty.” has been broken; how only a few generations have passed since the “business of killing Indians” has ceased. He cites the camps near Standing Rock as potent reminders of despicable acts most Americans would rather forget … and on and on.
It’s a statement worth watching more than a few times, and he ends with a statement that resonates, a paying of respect to the resilience and strength of Natives:
“The people who have always known what is truly sacred in this world.”
This week, an impassioned fight over a 1,170-mile oil pipeline moved from the prairies of North Dakota to a federal courtroom in Washington. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation lies just south of the pipeline’s charted path across ranches and under the Missouri River, has asked a judge to halt construction.
The American Indian tribe argues that a leak or spill could be ruinous
It may take until Sept. 9 for a federal judge to decide whether to allow the Dakota Access pipeline to move ahead, or grant an injunction that would press the pause button on construction.
What is happening in North Dakota?
American Indians have been gathering since April outside Cannon Ball, a town in south central North Dakota near the South Dakota border, to protest the Dakota Access pipeline as construction commences. Starting with members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the protest has since grown to several hundred people — estimates vary — most of them from tribes across the country.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
Marty Two Bulls
I do not own these images.
No intention of taking credit.
If anyone knows the owner of any, please advise and it will be corrected immediately.
What does each side want?
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.7 billion project that would carry 470,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields of western North Dakota to Illinois, where it would be linked with other pipelines. Energy Transfer says the pipeline will pump millions of dollars into local economies and create 8,000 to 12,000 construction jobs — though far fewer permanent jobs to maintain and monitor the pipeline.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe see the pipeline as a major environmental and cultural threat. They say its route traverses ancestral lands — which are not part of the reservation — where their forebears hunted, fished and were buried.
They say historical and cultural reviews of the land where the pipeline will be buried were inadequate. They also worry about catastrophic environmental damage if the pipeline were to break near where it crosses under the Missouri River.
It Is What It Is 