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Unicorn Riot/Vimeo
Officers liberally douse water protectors with pepper spray at the front lines of the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Trigger Warning: Disturbing Video of DAPL Confrontation.
This video, taken directly from the front lines of the October 27 police crackdown on the camp established in the pipeline’s path on treaty-protected indigenous land, contains disturbing images. Police douse protectors with mace as if squirting water from a hose, shoot them with tasers and throw them to the ground, all in the name of building a pipeline. Those against the project say they are there solely to protect the water.
My name is David Archambault II, and I’m the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has long opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This proposed pipeline presents a threat to our lands, our sacred sites, and our water. Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live.
Yesterday, militarized law enforcement agencies moved in with tanks and riot gear on water protectors who stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline—a massive pipeline project that would cut through four states, impact the water to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and violate sacred sites and ancient grounds. While native elders prayed in peace, they were attacked with pepper spray, rubber bullets, as well as sound and concussion cannons. By the end of the day, more than 140 people were arrested.1 Please, add your name and demand that President Obama reject this pipeline once and for all.
[…]
While we engage in the long legal process to curtail construction of the pipeline, Dakota Access is still poised to begin construction. Halting the construction was an unprecedented step in response to our powerful movement—and now President Obama must reject the pipeline’s permit outright.
Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live. The Dakota Access pipeline jeopardizes the heath of our water and could affect our people, as well as countless communities who live downstream, as the pipeline would cross four states. The pipeline, as designed, would destroy ancient burial grounds, which is a violation of federal law.
Please, please, sign, and pass this on to as many people as possible. Lila wopila to all you who do so (very great thanks). If enough people do, we can get millions on this petition.
Courtesy Bucky Harjo
Sunset at the new water protectors’ camp in the path of the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL).
While Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier sat down with President Barack Obama at a private roundtable in Los Angeles on Tuesday, October 25, Morton County, N.D. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier was calling in police reinforcements from six states to enforce Energy Transfer Partners’ demands that “trespassers” be removed from the path of the pipeline.
Authorities implied they may forcibly remove the water protectors from the new camp, which is on land recently purchased by Dakota Access LLC, the subsidiary that is building the pipeline.
“We have the resources. We could go down there at any time,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said, according to the Associated Press. “We’re trying not to.”
“We are here to enforce the law as needed,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said. “It’s private property.”
The so-called trespassers are Lakota citizens and their allies determined to stand their ground to prevent further destruction of burial grounds and cultural sites, and to protect their water supply from the pipeline. As DAPL moves forward with aggressive construction even on weekends and at night, water protectors took the bold action to declare eminent domain over their homelands last week and set up a new camp directly in the pipeline’s path.
What began with prayers and a single tipi alongside Highway 1806 quickly grew to more than a dozen tipis surrounded by tents, buses, cars and hundreds of water protectors. Some are calling it the “1851 Treaty Camp” to acknowledge their Treaty rights.
Across the road is the encroaching pipeline and a heavily militarized police force with armored vehicles, helicopters, planes, ATVs and busloads of officers. Tensions are growing as unarmed citizens worry that police will use unnecessarily harsh tactics.
In recent weeks, nearly 300 unarmed water protectors who were arrested have been subjected to pepper spray, strip-searches, delayed bail, exaggerated charges and physical violence, according to interviews with several who were taken into custody. The ACLU and National Lawyers Guild recently sent attorneys to Standing Rock to help the Red Owl Collective, a team of volunteer lawyers headed by attorney Bruce Ellison, who are representing many of those arrested.
On Wednesday, October 26, civil rights leader and Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Standing Rock to speak out against the multiple human and civil rights violations being perpetrated against water protectors.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to water protectors standing against the Dakota Access oil pipeline on Wednesday October 26. (Photo: Courtesy KILI Radio)
“When will the taking stop? When will we start treating the first peoples of these lands with the respect and honor they deserve?”
The decision to change the pipeline route from north of Bismarck to its current route is “the ripest case of environmental racism I’ve seen in a long time,” Jackson said. “Bismarck residents don’t want their water threatened, so why is it okay for North Dakota to react with guns and tanks when Native Americans ask for the same right?”
Full story at ICTMN. Related news:
Mark Ruffalo in Standing Rock; Leo DiCaprio, Jesse Jackson Head to Standing Rock.
Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context.
DAPL: Former Vice President Al Gore Supports the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Protestors face off with the Riot Police across the fenceline near a Dakota Access construction site. CREDIT: Facebook/Rob Wilson.
Concerned and angered by the use of dogs, pepper spray, military tactics and strip searches against unarmed water protectors at the construction sites of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in.
“I am seeking a Justice Department investigation because I am concerned about the safety of the people,” Archambault said in a statement. “Too often these kinds of investigations take place only after some use of excessive force by the police creates a tragedy. I hope and pray that the Department will see the wisdom of acting now to prevent such an outcome.”
In a formal letter, Archambault called on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the alleged civil rights violations, outlining the ways in which the protectors’ safety is being compromised and their First Amendment rights jeopardized.
[…]
Archambault said protesters and tribal members have told him that “the militarization of law enforcement agencies has escalated violence at the campsite,” even as the tribe’s lawful efforts to keep the 1,172-mile-long pipeline from being routed through sacred burial sites and underneath the Missouri River a half mile from its reservation have drawn worldwide support.
“Firsthand accounts and videos filmed by participants reveal a pattern of strong-arm tactics targeting Native Americans and peaceful protestors,” the Standing Rock Sioux said in the statement. “The abuses include strip searches, violent security dog attacks, pepper-spraying of youth and intimidation by law enforcement.”
Archambault’s letter went further, describing roadblocks, checkpoints and unwarranted stops, all of which “are clearly targeted at Indian people, and are designed to intimidate free speech.”
Add to that the “constant surveillance, with low-flying planes and helicopters constantly overhead at the camps of the water protectors,” the confiscation of at least one drone and the shooting down of another, even those being used by journalists, plus the actual arrests of journalists such as Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, add up to a “larger effort by local law enforcement to intimidate the press and to prevent the full and fair reporting of the activities of law enforcement on this matter,” Archambault’s letter said.
“Rather than seeking to keep the peace, law enforcement personnel are clearly working in tandem with private security of Dakota Access,” the chairman wrote, adding that the tactics not only evoke the civil rights movement of 50 years ago but also bring up the collective memory of the U.S. government’s “long and sad history of using military force against indigenous people.”
Via ICTMN. In related news: Justice Dept Reaffirms It Will Not Grant DAPL River-Crossing Permits Anytime Soon.
Courtesy Rob Wilson Photography.
Sarah Sunshine Manning highlights and details the need for more water protectors to make their way to the camps.
On October 18, water protectors called for reinforcements as the Dakota Access construction is quickly closing in on the Missouri River in North Dakota.
Water protectors, skilled in non-violent direct action, should plan to make their way to Standing Rock as quickly as you can get here.
This massive call-to-action is endorsed by more than 10 groups, including the Indigenous Peoples Power Project (IP3), The Ruckus Society, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor The Earth, the Oceti Sakowin Camp, the Sacred Stone Camp, West Coast Women Warriors Media Cooperative, Ancestral Pride, Digital Smoke Signals, Greenpeace USA, and The Other98.
“If we’re going to beat the pipeline, we’re going to need more people,” Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota, and co-founder of the Indigenous Peoples Power Project, told me.
An informational video was released in accompaniment with the joint-statement made by the groups with the title, “Warriors Wanted.”
“We’re asking for reinforcements to come stand with us, to pray, and to protect,” Tilsen said. “Of all the times to take action, the time is now.”
On October 22, water protectors in the camps reported that Dakota Access construction was just a few miles from the camp, and approximately 5 miles from the Missouri River.
[…]
In another Facebook video posted by Mark K. Tilsen, Oglala Lakota from Porcupine, South Dakota, Tilsen delivered a poignant message to allies across the globe:
“I’m asking you to come to Standing Rock,” he said. “Follow local leadership, but you will be given autonomy to choose your actions, and how you choose to creatively stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Please. Come to Standing Rock.”
Mark Tilsen has been stationed at the Oceti Sakowin camp for the past two months, also assisting in non-violent direct action trainings.
“We need help. We need bodies on the ground,” said Tilsen. “We need people here who are dedicated and willing. This is not a tourist action. This is not a party. We’re here to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thank you.”
There’s much more here, including a video about strip searching protesters who were arrested for disorderly conduct. This is an obvious tactic on the part of the Keystone cops here to humiliate those who dare to protect the earth and water. Even Chairman Archambault was subjected to this.
In other NO DAPL news:
Militarization of Morton County Sheriff’s Office: No DAPL. © Marty Two Bulls.
Courtesy University of Nebraska Press
Plans for cultural genocide as well as the stories of courage and oppression at the famous/infamous residential Carlisle Indian Industrial School appear in an unprecedented collection of essays, poems and photos entitled “Carlisle Indian Industrial School/Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” recently published.
Plans for cultural genocide as well as the stories of courage and oppression at the famous/infamous residential Carlisle Indian Industrial School appear in an unprecedented collection of essays, poems and photos entitled “Carlisle Indian Industrial School/Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” recently published by University of Nebraska Press and edited by Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Susan D. Rose.
This compelling gathering of work examines the legacy of the Carlisle experience through verse by noted poets N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) and Maurice Kenney (Mohawk) along with essays by distinguished historians and scholars such as Fear-Segal, Rose, Barbara Landis and Louellyn White (Mohawk). It also includes the recollections and reflections of some descendants of the more than 10,000 Native children who attended the school between 1879 and 1918.
The book is divided into six parts—1) A Sacred and Storied Space; 2) Student Lives and Losses; 3) Carlisle Indian School Cemetery; 4) Reclamations; 5) Revisioning the Past; and 6) Reflections and Responses—and provides a panoramic view of the experience, including many poignant and heartbreaking stories.
The anthology starts out with a comprehensive introduction to the school, the historical context of Manifest Destiny, Native dispossession and a compelling re-imagining of how the Native children must have felt after being seized and sent far away to be forcibly “assimilated” into white culture. The removal of children, in effect the tearing apart of families and communities, was part of the attempt to “Kill the Indian, and save the man,” a seminal quote from the school’s founder and superintendent, Richard Henry Pratt who sought to change the children, beginning with their names.
One of the many themes in the book involves names, the white names given to Native children and the names on tombstones in the school’s cemetery.
“Names are especially important in Native American culture,” Momaday wrote in “The Stones at Carlisle.” “Names and being are thought to be indivisible. One who bears no name cannot truly be said to exist, for one has being in his name… In this context we see how serious is the loss of one’s name. In the case of the tombstones at Carlisle we are talking about the crime of neglect and negation. We are talking not only about the theft of identity, but the theft of essential being.”
The full article is at ICTMN. This goes right to the top of my reading list. The book is available from the University of Nebraska Press, and an excerpt can be read here.
Courtesy Louis Magriel/Reno Gazette-Journal.
The 18-year-old man who drove through a crowd of 40 protestors was charged Friday with provoking assault and released on a $1,000 bond, police said.
Five people were injured when Nick Mahaffey rammed his white Nissan pickup truck into a group of Columbus Day protestors in Reno, Nevada, last week.
Police also charged two protesters involved in the incident. James Fletcher and Samuel Harry were both charged with simple battery, CBS News reported.
Facebook / Twitter
Via ICTMN.
Major General Donald Jackson. Mary Annette Pember.
As with most issues between Indian country and the federal government, the important bits are steeped in legalese and long numerical references to laws and regulations. The very stuff of life and its protection, however, is referenced and hidden within these dryly-worded documents.
A set of regulations created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) called Appendix C is one such example, and it may determine the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline project as well as other projects for which the Army Corps is responsible for issuing federal permits.
It turns out that tribes have been complaining about the legality of Appendix C for a very long time, and with good reason. Appendix C spells out how the Corps will meet its obligation to fulfill Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), created to protect places of historic, architectural and/or cultural significance.
Part of the NPHA’s Section 106 requires that agencies carry out the process in consultation with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPO) and identify and assess impacts to properties of traditional religious and cultural significance to tribes. Although all federal agencies are allowed to create their own means by which they fulfill the requirements of Section 106, the Army Corps chose to streamline the process by creating its own regulations that tribes and other federal agencies argue not only fail to meet the requirement of the NHPA’s Section 106, but are also in direct conflict with the law.
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) is an independent federal agency charged by Congress with overseeing implementation of the NHPA. The Corps contradicts several of ACHP’s regulations through use of its own process spelled out under Appendix C.
The differences between Section 106 regulations and Appendix C are substantial. Chief among these differences includes the Corps’ decision in the Standing Rock case to review each river crossing of the Dakota Access pipeline as a separate project rather than consider the entire pipeline as one project.
“This allows the Corps to dismiss the potential for effects to historic properties that may be located within the broader project area of an undertaking,” according to an August 2, 2016 letter from the ACHP to the Corps.
Measuring, marking, cutting. Bleagh.
© C. Ford.
Oct 14, 2016 — Winter is approaching fast here in North Dakota – and we’re not going anywhere. Dakota Access may think that they can simply wait us out, but we are here for the long haul.
That being said, we need supplies and support to survive here at camp. Dakota winters are no joke! We have created an Amazon wishlist with all sorts of gear for sleeping, staying warm, lighting our camp, and organizing our group. We’re hoping for tents, lanterns, phones for communicating between groups, and more. Take a look and see if there’s anything you can purchase and send to help us out: http://amzn.to/2dLiG1G
Thank you as always for your generosity!
Anna, Bobbi, and the Oceti Sakowin Youth.
Via Change.org. I will add my thank you thank you thank you to anyone who can help out. As usual, I’ll say that you don’t need money to help – spreading the word and signal boosting is incredibly important, so if you’re a social media person, please, pass this on, with all my gratitude.