I stand with my Lakota and Dakota brothers and sisters because I believe the central question of the creation story is at the heart of their lament and their protest:
What will we do with the blessing of power God has given us?
This is a particularly poignant God-question for those of us who have the power of privilege in our country and the world.
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.
Bundy Brothers Acquitted in Takeover of Oregon Wildlife Refuge
By COURTNEY SHERWOOD and KIRK JOHNSON
Armed anti-government protesters led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy were acquitted Thursday, October 27, of federal conspiracy and weapons charges stemming from the takeover of a federally owned wildlife sanctuary in Oregon last winter.
The surprise acquittals of all seven defendants in Federal District Court were a blow to government prosecutors, who had argued that the Bundys and five of their followers used force and threats of violence to occupy the reserve.
But the jury appeared swayed by the defendants’ contention that they were protesting government overreach and posed no threat to the public.
Native American tribe takes oil fight to the United Nations
Dave Archambault, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, waits to speak against the Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline during the Human Rights Council session at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 20, 2016.
CANNON BALL, NORTH DAKOTA
The simmering showdown here between the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the company building the Dakota Access crude-oil pipeline began as a legal battle.
It has turned into a movement.
We are ALL connected through NATURE!!
Over the past few weeks, thousands of Native Americans representing tribes from all over the country have traveled to this central North Dakota reservation to camp in a nearby meadow and show solidarity with a tribe they think is once again receiving a raw deal at the hands of commercial interests and the U.S. government.
That river is the source of water for the reservation’s 8,000 residents.
Any leak, tribal leaders argue, would cause immediate and irreparable harm. And tribal leaders point to what they consider a double standard, saying that the pipeline was originally going to cross the Missouri north of Bismarck, the state capital, but was rerouted because of powerful opposition that did not want a threat to the water supply there.
The tribe says it also is fighting the pipeline’s path because, even though it does not cross the reservation, it traverses sacred territory taken away from the tribe in a series of treaties that have been forced upon it over the past 150 years.
I’m 13 years-old and as an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, I’ve lived my whole life by the Missouri River. It runs by my home in Fort Yates North Dakota and my great grandparents original home was along the Missouri River in Cannon Ball. The river is a crucial part of our lives here on the Standing Rock Reservation.
But now a private oil company wants to build a pipeline that would cross the Missouri River less than a mile away from the Standing Rock Reservation and if we don’t stop it, it will poison our river and threaten the health of my community when it leaks.
In Dakota/Lakota we say “mni Wiconi.” Water is life.
Native American people know that water is the first medicine not just for us, but for all human beings living on this earth.
We, the Standing Rock Youth, oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through the Missouri and Cannon Ball River because it poses a serious threat to our water and our land. This campaign echoes our belief that together, we can protect our water and our future.
Join our mission for clean safe water by signing our petition urging the Army Corps of Engineer NOT to sign off on a construction permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline. With YOUR help we can work to maintain and protect this sacred land.
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 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.
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! producers were on the ground Saturday, September 3, when the pipeline company attacked Native American protesters with dogs and pepper spray.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed evidence Friday that the proposed Dakota Access pipeline route falls directly on sacred Sioux sites.
Hours later, Goodman and Democracy Now! producers witnessed unexpected construction at one of the sites.
“This was a Labor Day weekend.
The bulldozers don’t work on the weekend,” Goodman tells Joy-Ann Reid.
“But this weekend, the day after they gave over that information, they’re there bulldozing over those sites.”
Armed men, led by Bundy brothers, take over federal building in rural Oregon
A group of armed anti-government activists remained encamped at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon one evening in January 2016, vowing to occupy the outpost for years to protest the federal government’s treatment of a pair of local ranchers set to report to prison on a Monday.
The occupation of a portion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, Ore., began after a small group of men broke off from a much larger march and rally held one Saturday evening.
Oregon standoff ends after 41 days with dramatic surrender
The four holdouts in the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon surrendered on Thursday, with the last protester repeatedly threatening suicide in a dramatic final phone call with mediators before he gave up, ending the 41-day standoff.
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.
2,500 Native Americans Successfully Block Oil Pipeline Construction
State of Emergency Declared
“This pipeline’s construction is being carried out without the Tribe’s free, prior and informed consent in direct contradiction to their clearly expressed wishes.”
Last week, a few dozen Native Americans showed up to protest the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile-long pipeline that would cross right through their sacred land. As word spread, however, the few dozen turned into more than 2,500 native Americans. Because of the large turnout, a brief victory ensued for the people after the developers of the four-state oil pipeline agreed to halt construction until after a federal hearing in the coming week.
In spite of both the company building the pipeline, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, and the federal government applying pressure, the Native Americans from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have remained resilient.
On Tuesday, August 23, the government placed a restraining order on the protesters prohibiting them “from interfering with its (Energy Transfer Partners’) right to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline (the “Pipeline”) in accordance with all local, state, and federal approvals it has obtained.”
However, the protestors remained steadfast — and peaceful.
“As we have said from the beginning, demonstrations regarding the Dakota Access pipeline must be peaceful,” Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II said in a statement to reporters on August 17.
“There is no place for threats, violence or criminal activity. That is simply not our way. So, the Tribe will do all it can to see that participants comply with the law and maintain the peace.
That was our position before the injunction, and that is our position now.”
“The pipeline presents a threat to our lands, our sacred sites and our waters, and the people who will be affected must be heard,” Archambault told reporters. “Peaceful demonstration can be very powerful and effective.
But the power of peaceful demonstration is only diminished by those who would turn to violence or illegality. We cannot let that happen. The Tribe is committed to doing all it can to make sure that the demonstrations are conducted in the right way.”
In spite of the threat to the sacred land and the unscrupulous action of the state in taking that land on behalf of big oil, government officials maintain their justification.
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