Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas is the big oil company behind the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline. It was so certain of its power and influence, it had no reservations about drilling its pipeline right through sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe of North Dakota.
Of course, given the way whites have systematically dispossessed, displaced, and destroyed native tribes throughout U.S. history, Energy Transfer Partners could be forgiven their perverse presumption of “eminent domain.”
But the Sioux protested, beginning in hopeless obscurity, dispiritingly enough, on April 1, 2016 (aka April Fools’ Day). However, neither the oil company nor the tribe could have anticipated Native Americans from across the country joining this protest.
In fact, given the way it unfolded, one could argue that all tribes saw this oil company as the second coming of Andrew Jackson (of Trail of Tears infamy). This would explain their existential determination that “never again” will the white man be allowed to even disrespect any Native American tribe.
Still, nothing proved more formidable than A-list celebrities turning this protest into an international cause celebre. For only then (around September) did the media deem it worthy of coverage, which in turn forced the White House to get involved.
This coverage also led to my original commentary on September 10. I wrote it after reading background material and realizing that this was easily the most sympathetic protest since those that occasioned the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (with all due respect to the LGBT, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matters, and other protests since then). It includes the following prediction:
Trust me, given the cause celebre this pipeline has become, it will not be built as planned … so long as Obama is president. After all, his administration has been so loath to approve the more infamous XL Keystone pipeline because doing so would betray his celebrated campaign promise to ‘be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.’
(“Hail to the Chief: Obama Halts North Dakota Pipeline on Native Lands,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 10, 2016)
Sure enough:
Federal officials announced on Sunday that they would not approve permits for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites.
The decision is a victory for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters camped near the construction site who have opposed the project because they said would it threaten a water source and cultural sites…
Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, expressed gratitude for ‘the courage it took on the part of President Obama, the Army Corps, the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior to take steps to correct the course of history and to do the right thing.’
(New York Times, December 4, 2016)
Frankly, all that’s left is for Energy Transfer Partners to eat their defiant words about not rerouting the pipeline. They really have no choice; not least because even President-elect Trump would not dare take up their neo-colonial cause to enforce a latter-day “Indian Removal Act.”
The Army Corps of Engineers said it will not grant a permit to allow the proposed pipeline to cross under the lake…
‘The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing,’ the corps’ assistant secretary for civil works, Jo-Ellen Darcy, said in a statement.
(CNN, December 4, 2016)
So here’s to this victory for the vanquished.
Related commentaries:
Hail to the chief…