Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We can celebrate a genuine victory with the end of the KXL and it is appropriate to be grateful for the indigenous guidance responsible for this victory. Nevertheless, the struggle continues and it is our struggle, not just someone else’s. Stay rooted in real stories. Never give up. Standing Rock is everywhere.
As the Standing Rock Sioux Nation prepared for services April 16-19 honoring late water protector LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Native youth carried on the crusade to defend treaty land from pipeline construction
On March 25, a federal judge tossed out federal permits for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), built to carry over half a million barrels of Bakken crude oil a day from North Dakota, and ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental review of the pipeline project.
The company behind the Dakota Access pipeline and many other damaging fossil fuel projects — Energy Transfer Partners — was the focus of nearly 20 actions spanning 10 U.S. states last week. The #StopETP protests, which took place on Friday and Saturday, included a flotilla on a Louisiana bayou, a blockade of pipeline construction equipment in Pennsylvania and a demonstration outside the Texas home of CEO Kelcy Warren.
On July 27, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers for authorizing the construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline. Just over a year later, the project has been completed and carries crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to an export terminal in Illinois. The case is still pending, and continues to be the tribe’s last hope to protect its water and land.
A new resistance camp, called L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life), opened over the weekend, on June 24. Based in southern Louisiana, the camp is against the 163-mile long Bayou Bridge Pipeline. The camp, according to a press release emailed to Colorlines, is made up of indigenous and environmental justice communities. Described as a “floating camp,” it sits among Louisiana’s wetlands and contains numerous indigenous art structures that are on rafts.
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s approval of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline violated federal law in certain critical respects and has ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider parts of its environmental analysis. The decision marks the first legal victory of the Trump presidency for the Standing Rock Sioux, which have been fighting the pipeline for nearly a year.
Like the call and response in Lakota ceremonial prayer songs, tribes are answering the Standing Rock’s Sioux plea for all of Indian Country to move its money out of banks that have invested in the Dakota Access pipeline and help further destabilize the pipeline’s already shaky financing.
It’s 2016 and the weight of American corporate interests has come to the Missouri River, the Mother River. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry or the Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, it is Enbridge and Dakota Access Pipeline.
