Stay or go? Tribe gives conflicting messages to protest camp

While shouts of jubilation filled the air at Standing Rock during the initial euphoria in response to the announcement from the USCAE, the timing of the announcement (with an avowed supporter of the pipeline about to take control of the White House) and the spectre of a court challenge requesting the USCAE permits be ignored and the pipeline be allowed to be completed still pending, have left some cynical at the news. In fact, it would parallel an existing gas pipeline tunneling below Lake Oahe. When Standing Rock developed, Chao texted Goudy with the message, “Just tell me what they need”. Well, we met some guys who came all the way from Berkeley, California-KPFA-let’s give them a call. In the meantime, Archambault II remains grateful for those who came out to fight.

But while Moana’s people are saved through a feminist take on the Great Man narrative, to say Standing Rock was spared by a single person’s heroics is more than problematic.

Throughout the effort, Archambault stressed the importance of acting at all times in a peaceful and prayerful manner, and that is how they will respond to the decision, he said. Some people want to leave, some can’t, some don’t. While the decision is a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose land the pipeline crosses, it is also a temporary one. On Sept. 3, a small group of people who had traveled to one of the destroyed burial sites were stopped by ETP’s private security forces, who unleashed mace and attack dogs on the group in an assault well documented by independent media on-site but totally unreported by the mainstream media.

Going to Standing Rock forced them and others to step out of their “ordinary” modern lives and travel to a remote rural area of the US with few amenities including no cellphone coverage. “Everybody’s getting ready to march and stand up”. We had a tremendous amount of old AIMsters, people who had experienced Wounded Knee, and also young people that had only heard about it. “We talked to the principal at Espanola High School about doing something at the school, but there wasn’t enough time to do something there because there is so much going on at this time of the year”. She told us, “Until we know for sure that this black snake is dead”. We trust no one. With the help (and hindrance) of Maui, a marooned demigod whose bro-dawg antics triggered the crisis in the first place, she learns to sail the seas and navigate the stars. Opponents of the project have gathered for months at the Oceti Sakowin camp, about 40 miles south of Bismarck.The pipeline plan is the latest in a centuries-old history of many Americans forgetting who was here first, a history dark with betrayal, violence and death for the indigenous peoples of North America.In the November 30 issue of Berks Country, retired Boyertown police Officer Darius Puff speaks proudly of his Native American heritage. Energy Transfer Partners have been in court and effectively gained support from the Army Corps of Engineers to finish the last section of the pipe- which will dip under the drinking water supply of the Sioux Tribe: the Missouri River.

ETP is furious about the corps’s decision, which it claims was “just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favour of currying favour with a narrow and extreme political constituency”.

In the midst of being facing water cannons and rubber bullets, protesters in North Dakota were still thinking about the almost 100,000 residents in Flint who have been exposed to toxic water for more than a year. “We’ve been talking about this with the Corps of Engineers for nearly two years now, and we’ve been letting them know that we had problems with this pipeline, because it not only threatens our water, it threatens our heritage, it threatens our culture, it threatens our environment”. It would be detrimental to their food and water, the Natives argued.

Because the planned Pilgrim Pipelines along the Thruway will carry the same Bakken crude that is obtained through fracking as the Dakota Access Pipeline, many protestors consider them part of the same problem. The North Dakota Public Service Commission says a new intake will “effectively reduce concerns” over any water impacts from the DAPL.

And it has, according to Allard. “For all of us who stood in support of the leadership that was shown by the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of other tribes, we know there are more challenges ahead”.

Allard’s been on the ground for more then eight months now. “There’s a lot still in the air”, she said. The camp community will remain, and their lead organizer has asked supporters to continue to put pressure on the federal government. “They are our leaders”, Allard stated.

A friend at Standing Rock – who prefers not to be identified -texted me at around 5:30 pm Dakota time, saying “Wonderful day in many ways, bigger victories than just the Corps”.