UN body says Sioux should have say in pipeline project

It’s a big world out there and things that happen beyond our local and state borders can – and do – impact our lives.

One of the men was cut free and taken into custody, but Preskey said she didn’t have his information yet.

In this August 26, 2016, photo, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II poses for a photo near Cannon Ball., N.D., on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation overlooking an encampment where Native Americans from across North America have gathered to join his tribe’s growing protest against a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline.

This proposed route is within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Reservation and crosses over hundreds of sacred locations, including ancestral burial sites.

Jan Hasselman, a Seattle-based attorney with Earthjustice, which is representing the Standing Rock Sioux, said he was surprised to learn at a court hearing last week that almost all of the clearing and grading required for the pipeline has been completed.

The tribe’s request coincided with a declaration of emergency across several counties by North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, as well as unsubstantiated claims by a local sheriff that pipe bombs, molotov cocktails and other potentially risky implements had been spotted.

North Dakota sits on vast oil reserves, but this oil is a long way from major refineries located along the USA coasts.

Now, he’s dealing with added pressure of the pipeline, which he has called yet another “historic wrong” involving tribal sovereignty and land rights.

“We’re at the headwaters”, he says. “If you look at the people that we came from, we come from such strong, resilient people and by doing this, we’re continuing on that tradition”.

What she has found most moving were the generations uniting for a common cause. “As far as we’re concerned, they’re trespassing”. The Tribe is asking for the protection of cultural lands, waters used by the community, and area wildlife.

“Natural resources being commercialized, harmful drinking water, oil, coal, trains, pipelines, toxic waste, nuclear plants, air quality and mining are some of the environmental justice issues various tribes across Indian country face today”, he wrote.

Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota disputes the tribe’s chief complaint that the Army Corps did not properly consult it. “And people really need to care [because] these are not just tribal issues, they are global issues”.

People like Winona Nicola, Dana said, are living up to the teachings of his people, and he could not be more proud.

Hovland said the case revolves around a “multitude of complex issues”, and that there appears to be no existing precedence.

Going there, as I would be prone to do since I grew up in that vast and attractive part of out country, is not the best solution. At the end of the hearing the same day, the U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said he would issue ruling on September 9.

The forum argues the pipeline construction threatens Article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the USA endorsed in 2010, and mandates that “states shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous people concerned in order to obtain their fair, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measure that may affect them”.

On the ground, deputies created a perimeter around the equipment and tried to keep protesters from getting too close as they heckled the officers, sang songs and chanted slogans such as “Stand by Iowa, shut down DAPL”.