Over the past few weeks, thousands of Native Americans from 200 tribes across the country traveled to North Dakota to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux as human shields. They were determined to prevent bulldozers from excavating near tribal lands for passage of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline, which they feared would not only damage ancestral cultural sites but also endanger drinking water.
But the governor seemed no less determined to ensure the Dakota Access; so much so that he dispatched the National Guard to help local police remove the Native Americans – by force if necessary.
Sure enough, the local sheriff telegraphed ominous signs of things to come. He had his police sic dogs on these Native Americans last weekend, aping the infamous way Birmingham Commissioner Bull Connor had his police sic dogs on blacks civil rights marchers in 1963.
Evidently, this governor clearly couldn’t care less about the shameful and untenable comparisons to the infamous “Trail of Tears” this removal would have triggered.
But these Native Americans telegraphed ominous signs of their own. They made clear that they’d rather fight and shed blood than flee and shed tears, making comparisons to the Battle of Bighorn more apropos.
Luckily, for both sides, when high noon on the prairie fields was at hand, President Obama intervened. He ordered all federal agencies involved in the pipeline to bring construction to a halt.
The federal government on Friday temporarily blocked construction on part of a North Dakota oil pipeline, an unusual intervention in a prairie battle that has drawn thousands of Native Americans and activists to camp and demonstrate…
The Justice Department and other agencies called for ‘serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects.’
The tribe in a statement called the federal order ‘a game changer.’
(New York Times, September 9, 2016)
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.”
When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) Dakota Access pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada, directly to the U.S. Gulf.
It would carry oil from just north of land owned by the tribe to Illinois, where it would connect with an existing pipeline.
(Reuters, September 9, 2016)
But the money at stake is such that the coalition of oil barons and labor leaders will get it done. This might mean digging a semi-roundabout to avoid the tribal lands at issue, or waiting for a more business-friendly Hillary Clinton (or Donald Trump) to give the go ahead (on this and the XL) … come what may.
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