Note: TarheelDem lived on the Standing Rock Rez some decades ago, and will be feeling all this very personally.
Democracy Now: ‘Standing Rock Sioux Chairman: Dakota Access Pipeline “Is Threatening the Lives of My Tribe”, August 23, 2016 video and transcript
“In North Dakota, indigenous activists are continuing to protest the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which they say would threaten to contaminate the Missouri River. More than a thousand indigenous activists from dozens of different tribes across the country have traveled to the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp, which was launched on April 1 by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The protests have so far shut down construction along parts of the pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has also sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its approval of the pipeline. For more, we’re joined by Dave Archambault, chairperson of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He’s in Washington, D.C., where there is a hearing in the tribe’s lawsuit on Wednesday”.
from Aug. 23
(transcript of Winona’s interview)
(transcript of the video above)
No Comment. He knew about it when he was kissin’ babbies in Window Rock (Dineh capital), years ago,
‘Winona LaDuke on the Dakota Access Pipeline: What Would Sitting Bull Do?’‘I am not sure how badly North Dakota wants this pipeline. If there is to be a battle over the Dakota Access, I would not bet against a people with nothing else left but a land and a river.’; yesmagazine.org
Judge Boasberg will issue his ruling on a temporary injunction barring further construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Seen on the hashtag: ‘Make America Turtle Island Again’
(Santee Sioux John Trudell (Rest In Power) would be there Rockin the Rez.)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
sleep well, dream well if you can. g’ night.
It’s not breech-loading rifles and wholesale slaughter
It’s kickbacks and thugs and diverted water
Treaties get signed and the papers change hands
But they might as well draft these agreements in sand
Noble Savage on the cinema screen
An Indian’s good when he cannot be seen
And the so-called white so-called race
Digs for itself a pit of disgrace
You thought it was over but it’s just like before
Will there never be an end to the Indian wars?
~ Bruce Cockburn
Wendy,
Is it possible to create an Open Menu and if so, I can post a three-part series and titled, Causa de Pendejadas, and relative to immigration and Trump’s deportation proclivity?
BTW, this three-part effort is being originally posted on the web site for the Chicano Veterans Organization and available to Café-Babylon.
And my thanks to you for your apt consideration in extending this subject matter.
Jaango
hey, jaango. (i’m just wd here, shorter, and it works for me.) well, there’s always an open menu, but what you seem to want is a guest post, and sure, if that’s the title, i’ll stick one up for you in a few minutes.
but i’ll add that i’m pretty surprised that as an indigenous and chicano (no that’s not the term you use, sorry, i’ve forgotten), you didn’t comment on the travesties afoot in the standing rock rez area. i’d also like you to know that you might get a bit of the same sort of pushback as was in evidence just above midway down this long comment stream w/ reality checker. or maybe we’ll have burned out a bit, lol. but if that’s col w/ you, we’ll go ahead, okay?
Thanks for the forgotten cockburn.
Funny how we kill off those few remaining people who just might teach us how to survive eco collapse? (Btw w.d. computer not fixed :(
welcome, amigo, and i hope you liked the trudell. such an echo of winona’s essay, my stars.
to say the truth, i’m not sure how far the plains warrior tribes ever adapted to being stuffed onto reservations and told to ‘farm’ for subsistence, but they sure as hell do know that Water = Life, and that the earth is sacred, so that’s a magnificent start, isn’t it? such destruction, calumny, and evil has been foist upon their lands and people forever.
ach, i’m sorry to hear there’s been no joy on you computer. can’t they fix it, or are they just…stalled?
My comment was also in re your previous post and posts.
Others?!?! What others? Lol just lil ol me. And google. And a phone.
ach, what a great idjit i yam; i see now. ;-) hey, someone else might be by anon; it’s er…labor day. ya know, when they honor serfs for gettin’ paid crap wages, few bennies, stolen pensions, to help grow the gdp.
War on the native. See wsws.org on laos. I heard some of obomba’s viciously pious blather about the on going effects of US weapons in laos. Ugh. Of course increase in aid or “aid” to laos is really abt china per wsws. “Side with us vs. China or we wont fund removing landmines.” What can u say?
hmmm, sounds about right: carrots or sticks? dunno if i’ll have time to read it, but their piece on the g-20 is fascinating, including the war by other means of the ‘trade deals’. i keep getting further from that diary instead of closer. wierd RL fam’ly stuff today ain’t helpin’ a bit, either. (someone needs to simmer down, now, eh?…) ;-)
but will your laptop be fixed soon?
last night, woot!
@ajamubaraka this a.m.
Last week #BLM leaders met with #NoDAPL to share in support. This is the epiotme of solidarity. Excited to be in ND
Funny. Talking to my oldest bro last night about how *everyone* is bought off. Trying to suggest he not be quite so cynical…well here we go. Not quite everyone thank dawg. “The only thing that will redeem humanity is solidarity” b russell
sorry to have missed this, No. 9. you’ll love this example, then, and mebbe your bro will, too. woot!
‘When Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein joined in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, she may have gone too far. [????] Stein is accused of criminal trespass and criminal mischief, along with her vice presidential pick Ajamu Baraka.’ via RT
Morton County Police announced on Facebook on Tuesday that they have issued an arrest warrant for both Stein and Baraka. Both face charges of criminal trespass and mischief after Baraka spray painted “decolonization” on a bulldozer with Stein spray painting, “I approve this message” on another, according to court affidavits posted on Facebook.”
cnn has it, too. hoo-ray! and thanks so much for being the only commenter on this diary (bafflingly enough).
i saw this on RT. Good for them. on RT, J.S. said she’s spent 8 hours handcuffed to a chair after trying to “break into” one of the presidential “debates,” must have been in 2012. (having done that 8 hrs cuffed to a chair thing myself, not for anything so noble, making oinking noises at pigs or some such, i can say it’s no fun. “officer, i gotta pee.” “so who’s stopping you?”) Trump & HRC & certainly Bern are too respectable to do anything like this, though not too respectable to commit or enable the worse crimes imaginable (yes, bern too, based on things he voted for, and said, or didn’t say, in his campaign.)
can’t say why no one else commented. as the Dude said, strikes and gutters, man. i hate to say good on CNN…
lol; i reckon this one’s a gutter, then. indun stuff i wrote at my.fdl were usually…poorly attended as far as comments. ooof, even if not so noble, you went thru it yourownself? ay yi yi.
but yes, 2012 at the hofstra debate, for trying to talk to the debate commissioners, they were arrested by local police and secret service cochons, finally let out into the cold, no lawyers knew, yda, yada… well, cnn reported that stein and baraka were with ‘dozens of protestors’, way to damn with faux numbers, eh?
Just caught up with the news from Cannon Ball. Am interested to see if the media realizes that Jill Stein is a candidate for President of the United States.
The “I approve this message” sounds like the video of the transgression will be part of a campaign ad at some point.
The Morton County ND sheriff has been pretty badass about the protests in his jurisdicition. Can’t hurt him with white voters at all. Will the prosecutor pull the stunt of charging Stein and Baraka with a felony? Did either get detained?
Trying to moot the request for an injunction by destroying the property under contest is a common move for construction companies. Generally, courts look the other way because—bidness. Destruction of archaeological sites in the US has been epidemic with all of the development going on in areas of former indigenous habitation. And the Antiquities Act is pretty toothless a deterrent.
Sacred Stone camp (as I understand) refers to the spherical mostly 4-foot diameter or greater stone spheres that are the “cannon balls” in the Cannon Ball River, the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. North in Morton County, there are sacred sites on land traditionally claimed by the Sioux but long ago stolen. The pipeline goes through this area before crossing Standing Rock Sioux land and the Missouri River (US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Oahe).
News stories now point out that the route was moved south from and alignment near Bismarck (above the lake floodplain and where the river width is narrower) to this alignment because the City of Bismarck objected to the pipeline threatening its water supply.
If it’s not good for Bismarck, I think it’s not a good project….period.
And now the pipeline proponents have found to be hoping for profits from exports, not just US distribution of the refined shale oil. Meanwhile the companies drilling in the Bakken deposit are struggling to avoid bankruptcy at current oil prices.
sure they know, or will know soon; they’ll at lest borrow from cnn. nope, not detained, but if they’re spotted! (sheriff according to AP.) yeah, one of the tweets on the hashtag showed where the oil is said to be going.
thanks for the other news.
Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota is calling out the North Dakota National Guard to violate the sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Not good.
OFM. this could get dicey fast. ‘just to promote safety’; like occupy wall street encampments? wounded knee?
the global (elite) economy runs on native blood? w/a story like this & the bushmen earlier, apartheid palestine and apartheid s. africa before, we see in real time what the global economy is all about: dispossession of the native. (has it ever been different? probably not). laos? “we were on the right side of history against communism,” said obama. by saturation bombing of peasant rice farmers. and why? to maintain & increase, among other things, “market share.”
actually, we don’t see these things. like the nazis at the end of their days furiously burning the meticulous records of their crimes, the dispossession of the native (& the poor, and the rape of the earth) by which the “economy” functions, must always be consigned to oblivion’s flames. we can’t hear the story of the pipeline going thru native lands b/c it is the story of so much of our history & world today.
well, yes, jason. and isn’t that part of marxist thought? there needs to be an underclass to abuse and exploit, and in so many cases with the original sins of amerika, genocide and enslavement (see junipero sera, et.al.) of the first americans/first nations in CA, and slavery capitalism’s Manifest Destiny…
land grabs for uranium (the black hills), water stealing by kyle and mcCrankypants (the hopi and other tribes), dumping of uranium waste, industrial pollution galore, and yes: this shit is in plain sight; who cares? well, marx also said one day the underclass will have had enough…can’t come too soon.
someone put up (maybe stein) O’s rap response to all of this, but the text was too small 2 read. got something to read more closely before i say: “and fuck you, bill mcKibben!” but family communication stuff and dinner first. ;-)
but well said, amigo.
yeah, sure. the process of enforced forgetting, denial, erasure, etc. false consciousness, no doubt.
The management techniques that became the capitalism of Industrial Revolution Britain were worked out in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, especially Barbadoes and Jamaica for managing work gangs of slaves. The Barbadoes model of plantations was based on the Spanish model imported to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus himself based on the feudal model of indigenous slavery used in the Canary Islands.
Capitalism and settler colonialism and slave plantations were linked from the very beginning. The global economy as practiced by Western Europeans has indeed run on indigenous blood.
It is only the post-Victorian polite bourgeois values of human rights that were gradually socialized into international law the provides the notion that things changed in the 20th century. And briefly they appeared to have changed. Under the humanizing competition between the US and the Soviet Union, each put on their best show.
I’m sure that Fernand Braudel in his “The Perspective of the World” volume of Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Centuries covers some of this at a high level. There is a lot of recent historical work that covers the details. I haven’t read it yet, but Sven Beckert (editor) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development seems to pull some of those details together into a bit of an overview; it is a recent book; check your library.
And from the beginning, the idea was to enslave indigenous peoples. The Carolina colony in Charles Town soon was sparking Indian wars so that one group of towns enslaved and sold other groups of towns to the English traders in exchange for European goods and especially guns. The English traders sold them to slave traders who transported Southeastern indigenous to be slaves on Caribbean plantations where they could not run away. And a key element of the American frontier was formed. As it became more difficult to transport indigenous peoples from what is now the US, they were just push westward, then removed, then starved by killing their livestock, in ever more genocidal wars. When it was thought they were gone, they were revived through the romanticism of “Indian lore” in the early 1900s and forced into schools to assimilate them into proper Americans. That program only ended with the American Indian Movement in the 1970s (and maybe really has not ever ended). But there is now more pushback than there has been in 100 years. And more scholarship about how capitalism, slavery, the frontier, and racism all operated together.
profoundly disturbing. and cain the farmer killed abel the shepherd to build the city. an old story. the despoliation of the earth & the displacement & murder of its indigenous are two sides of the same coin, ain’t they?
this a.m.
they’re saying cell signals are being jammed, and folks have to go to a nearby casino for wifi. ironic, wot? it’s downright thrilling to see the solidarity protests in cities across the country.
how will those humvees & other road warriors get to their mission if the pipeline doesn’t go thru?????? ugh. the natives trying to do for all of us what we should be doing together.
kinda wonder how many of the guards are first american, yanno? yeah, this has turned into a movement w/ all the solidarity, as well. i used to think that idle no more might bring a revolution, but no. somehow this has caught on, blissfully. induns have largely been movie characters to most amerikans, and generally played by…italians. native cinema is by now a pretty big deal thankfully. they can tell their own stories, even the hard ones.
i checked, and boasberg is supposed to be issuing his ruling by the end of today, but it’s still not clear to me if the request was a permanent of temp injunction to the whole mess. accounts vary. one disgusting trend i saw looking for that answer was that many accounts of the violence w/ the dogs said first that ‘dogs and handlers received medical attention’ and kinda…’oh, by the way, seven protestors were bitten, X no. were maced’.
chief archambault is calling for a peaceful response to the ruling, and seems assured that the guard won’t enter the camp. but the gov’s saying that locals are claiming harassment by induns. doubtful in the extreme.
Apparently Boasberg denied the injunction. The Hill says he said that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had the opportunity to comment on the US Corps of Engineers siting, that the Corps rerouted the pipeline to avoid 149 cultural sites and … Anyone have a link to the actual text of the opinon?
He also said that the pipeline is half complete implying that it would go on anyway regardless of an injunction and restraining order.
Red Warrior Camp and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are calling for peaceful protest.
thank you, thd. i can only find versions of the cnn coverage, and for that apparent coverage, some download happened, but i can’t find it now nor say that it was a pdf of the decision. meanwhile, color me flabbergasted if this is so, after his apparent waffle-weasel words earlier on the protests of the project. ktla’s.
on edit: 44 mins ago: ‘Obama administration intervenes in Dakota pipeline project opposed by Standing Rock Sioux, halts construction’
o, i wish i hadn’t fallen asleep now. ;-)
ktla: “Boasberg said the tribe’s application, which took aim at permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, failed to show the injunction would protect the sacred sites the Sioux said where threatened by the project. Many of the burial and sacred sites identified by the Tribe sit on private land which are beyond the court’s scope in the case, said the judge.”
but from <a href="ktla: “Boasberg said the tribe’s application, which took aim at permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, failed to show the injunction would protect the sacred sites the Sioux said where threatened by the project. Many of the burial and sacred sites identified by the Tribe sit on private land which are beyond the court’s scope in the case, said the judge.”
from earth justice july 27: ‘Tribe files legal action against U.S. Army Corps’ misguided approval of Dakota Access Pipeline that threatens livelihoods, sacred sites, and water’. the text doesn’t match the title, but at least they did give the pdf of the original earth justice suit, and scanning, it does, with the clean water act provisions being trashed. so wth, judge?
people on the hashtag are elated, none noting that O’s injunction is temporary.
boasberg must have been under an insane amount of pressure to rule as he did. would have been interesting to have heard the conference call among the WH, army corps, and interior, eh? still, now that msm has it, none of the banners note anything but ‘o admin halted project’; depressing.
winona has it right, bless her heart. the video is a bit jerky, but short. what a warrior he is.
brenda norrell says that O’s intervention is misleading in voluntary pause of the pipeline, and that it’s only for the 20 miles east or west of lake oahe. she also shows repeats that when he’d come to standing rock in 2014, the pipeline purveyors were already filing for permits.
what a &$^%#$ weasel obama is.
ya gotta figure someone said: “hey, ya don’t want another Wounded Knee there”. but yes, what a creep, and oy, the love he’s gettin’ on the NoDAPL hashtag.
‘Who’s Banking On The Dakota Access Pipeline?’
thanks for the link. don’t know why i’m surprised about president bootlick. a few people have chimed in about how many whatever of ocean/wilderness he’s declared federally protected wilderness or nature preserve’s or whatever. yeah, and every sq. inch around that preserve has an oil/gas/coal/timber/etc. lease attached to it. missin’ w yet? yes! only b/c he wouldn’t have the gall to go make speeches to natives at the very same time he, his admin, is signing away their rights & land. bush would just say screw you natives. i know, it’s a small thing in the end, but it’s annoying.
‘prez bootlick’ won’t wanna ofend mr. market, would he. maine wilderness, what ocean? who remembers, after it’s ruined already.
if you can watch winona on cbc, she says it right. and sleep well if you can.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/north-dakota-pipeline-controversy-1.3756473
a warrant has been issued for amy goodman now, as well. she’s charged w/ ‘criminal trespassing’, a misdemeanor.
this is an in-depth look at both boasberg’s decision and the three federal entities’ temporary pause in the construction. i wish someone would put it up on the twit account. ‘Dakota Pipeline Will Proceed As Feds Undertake Smoke and Mirrors Policy Reconsideration’, September 10, 2016 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
the largest question is this:
“Well, if you thought that the federal government was looking out for the public interest here, you would be wrong. To quote from Judge Boasberg’s ruling (p.2):
‘A project of this magnitude often necessitates an extensive federal appraisal and permitting process. Not so here. Domestic oil pipelines, unlike natural-gas pipelines, require no general approval from the federal government. In fact, DAPL needs almost no federal permitting of any kind because 99% of its route traverses private land.’
Let’s just pause here to take that statement in. And remember, this comes directly from Judge Boasberg’s ruling. It’s stunning that this is true, given the potential environmental consequences of a DAPL failure. So please indulge me while I repeat the judge’s language: “Domestic oil pipelines, unlike natural-gas pipelines, require no general approval from the federal government. In fact, DAPL needs almost no federal permitting of any kind because 99% of its route traverses private land.”
Why is there no comprehensive federal oversight of DAPL? The answer, no doubt, is that the industry managed to slip in an exemption for itself from comprehensive upfront federal regulation in this area (although I will concede I have yet to delve further into what is undoubtedly a murky area to report on how such an exemption came to be in place).
Why no federal oversight? No federal funds. No environmental regulations to stop them if they have a “valid” environmental impact statement. No eminent domain if they are willing to pay enough to private owners for a 100-foot easement.
There are no laws to prevent global climate change.
well, NEPA, but didn’t she mention some other sort of permit? dunno about other states, but in iowa (iirc) the purveyors seem to have been granted eminent domain. a quick giggle brings these. sorry to be in such a hurry again…
your last sentence is the truest one i’ve ever seen.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/01/iowa-poll-bakken-wind-energy/24229261/
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/7/iowa_landowners_sue_to_stop_dakota
The permit was a US Army Corps of Engineers permit to to construct something over the Missouri River (Lake Oahe), a Corps-managed lake. If there was eminent domain granted, it was from the state of North Dakota and probably in Morton County instead of Sioux County (the rez). The Morton County property had sacred places and graves but is not on the current rez land. Thus the “historically Sioux” categorization.
ah; you’d just said ‘no eminent domain’, which wasn’t according to my (abeit lame memory, so…)
i’ll have to yield on the special permitting; i’d thought it was something close to ‘warrant ___’, but i went back and read her whole blessed piece, and nada. i must have read it elsewhere.but along the way i came across this interesting article:
‘Dakota Pipeline Was Approved by Army Corps Over Objections of Three Federal Agencies’; Sioux tribe’s concerns were echoed in official reports by the EPA and two other agencies, but Army Corps of Engineers brushed them aside.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30082016/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux-army-corps-engineers-approval-environment
t’other day i read at the NoBakken (iowa) coalition site that this and many other pipelines have been fast-tracked, but i don’t have the link now. not that it matters. i just don’t see any way they won’t ‘finish the bottleneck’ now.
military preempts civilian agencies? why is that not a surprise?
i must have missed that reference, jason. jeffrey st. clair says judge boasberg belonged to skull and bones, and links to a ‘it’s class’ exposé of his lovely lovely money. :-)
The EPA & the like did not approve the pipeline & the Army CoE overrode them? did i read that right?
may i cheat and give the wiki? there is some overlap on some projects with the the bureau of reclamation (BOR), but yes, you read it right as ar as i read and can tell. including asking for an actual EIS, not just a more casual ES’
been up since three a.m., and i’m pretty brain dead, or…more than usual. ;-)
US Army Corps of Engineers only has authority for the crossing of the lake as far as I know. EPA, Department of Interior (BIA), and other agencies have some piece or the whole thing as their jurisdiction. Authorizing a permit across a border or a river seems like a minor thing to permit until the whole project rides on that one crossing.
Corps of Engineers is the US Army, which has a long relationship with this part of the world. Some reflexes apparently come easier for them.
Just thought of an important point. The pipeline is goes underground under Lake Oahe. The alignment is upstream in the lakebed and river channel.
But all of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is downstream of the crossing and the first population centers to feel impact of any leaks. The water quality argument is indeed the sole point that the pipeline can be stopped on, but stopping it with that sort of a crossing will be hard to do because of all the other pipelines and crossings built to those standards.
My current reading is to punt the issue to the next administration.
It will take some serious realignment of Congress toward the environment to get a satisfactory solution then.
But at least the governments are consistent about not allowing direct action to provide a negotiating position.
thanks for amending ‘crossing lake oahe’ to ‘going under the lake’. i’d thought that was the plan, but didn’t trust my lame memory on it. but that was kinda the largest point from the ‘water is sacred’ protectors, i believe. ‘downstream’.
plus, it was hard to imagine ‘going under the lake’ with a pipeline, although…of course it’s likely done all the time. even: chunnels, lol.