Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) Camp
Iŋyaŋ Wakháŋagapi Othí (Sacred Stone) Camp
Mni wicon (Water is life)
This is personal. My wife and I met working on a liberal do-good project in 1976 in Cannon Ball ND. We were married at the Memorial Congregational Church that overlooks Lake Oahe, the part of the Missouri River that the US Army Corps of Engineers dammed and the section of the river where the Dakota Access Pipeline will cross the Missouri River.
The river is narrower northward, but the fine white people of Bismarck-Mandan did not want the Bakken oil that has brought boom-and-bust to their state sullying the waters that they use; the pipeline was aligned southward onto Indian [cough, US Government] land.
Oceti Sakowin is setting up a winter camp for a protracted protest and non-violent direct action to delay the pipeline while seeking the federal government’s intervention to stop the pipeline from, contrary to President Obama’s wishes or order, crossing the corner of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. More importantly is the 1851 treaty land on which there are sacred sites and the graves of ancestors of the people who now live just south of the Cannon Ball River.
The construction crew for DAPL has already bulldozed through some of those sites prior to a court’s refusal after the fact to enjoin them not to. What rural white community would tolerate the federal gummint bulldozing through a church cemetery or family cemeteries without proper and ceremonial relocation of graves?
Today, militarized national guard and sheriff’s units from seven states began the attempt to shut down the Winter Camp at Oceti Sakowin Camp.
Meanwhile white jury nullification in Oregon set the Bundy wildlife refuge occupiers free. It is clear the federal government, under Obama’s Presidency, is afraid of doing anything to set off the crazies before the election. And it is equally clear that DAPL is being rushed through before that period of extortion ends.
And so Hillary Clinton issues an infuriating statement today seeking preservation of the right to protest and the ability of the pipeline workers to work safely. And may we be able to burn oil for ever and ever. Amen.
This does not bode well for the future. (Yes, worse if Trump gets anywhere near any political power.)
It’s not just the water for the people of Cannon Ball that will be spoiled by the inevitable spill, it is the water all downstream from there. Oh, wait, except for around Pierre and Chamberlain SD, most of the land is in ranch land, and the communities mostly are on a series of reservations between Standing Rock and Rosebud. And then along the Nebraska border and into Iowa, where farmers are still protesting the seizure of their property by eminent domain for what they see as a private venture and not a public good.
Unfortunately, the response of the state of North Dakota is just the same as that of Missouri in Ferguson MO — the discrimination is just Dakota Territory style.
Which is a reminder that how the West was won was through a genocidal war that killed off the primary food source by the millions.
The folks who organized this are from Cannon Ball. La Donna Brave Bull Allard was in school we my wife and I were there. Her father was on the Tribal Council then. She says that this started when as the historic preservation officer for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, she saw that the proposed DAPL pipeline was going to threaten the water and go directly through sacred sites and grave sites. Federal projects are required to halt and either relocate the alignment or relocate the sacred sites and graves. But of course this was a public-private partnership and the US Corps of Engineers was only issuing a permit for DAPL to cross Lake Oahe. The federal government minimized the impact because it was only issuing a crossing permit, just like a certain other oil pipeline.
Write whatever political critters you think might actually rein in the militarized policing tactics of the multi-jurisdiction task force currently working to suppress the protests. And ask that they not allow the pipeline to carry out a fait accompli around the election campaign timing.
