On this Labor Day all people with a conscience and with love and interest in preserving the planet and its sacred waters should be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Lakota people, who are being bullied once again by federal agencies and the Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners oil company bent on ramming the Dakota Access Pipeline across their lands.
The $3.8B, 1200-mile pipeline, which violates both historic treaties and federal law, is slated to transport nearly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oil fields, crossing the underground aquifer of the Great Sioux Reservation and the Missouri River, and threatening the water supply of millions of people, both Indian and non-Indian.
In an ongoing effort to stop the pipeline - deemed "unlawful" by the local sheriff and Energy Transfer - thousands of unarmed water protectors have assembled in peaceful prayer camps, in the largest gathering of tribes in more than 100 years. They are joined by environmental attorneys; activists representing movements and churches including Black Lives Matter; Amnesty International; the Anglican Church of Canada and the U.S.-based Episcopal Church; pagans of several traditions; and celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosario Dawson, and Shailene Woodley. Politicians including Bernie Sanders and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have spoken up in support from Washington, D.C.
The Standing Rock Nation filed papers challenging the Army Corps of Engineers' permits for the DAPL on September 2, and the fate of the pipeline is now up to a federal judge who will rule on its legality on September 9. Nevertheless, on September 4, in a premature "fait accompli" action described as "psychological warfare," mercenaries employed by Energy Transfer attacked unarmed men, women and children of the Lakota tribes while bulldozing their sacred burial grounds and ceremonial sites. Ecologist/activist Linda Black Elk described the scene in a public Facebook post:
In a recent survey of the area, the tribe (had) found many incredibly sacred sites, including burial sites, directly in the path of the proposed pipeline. The tribe had never been allowed to survey these areas before, so they hadn't been able to document these sites.
Today, barely 24 hours after those papers were filed, Dakota Access used bulldozers to destroy those sites. It was absolute destruction. They literally bulldozed the ancestors right out of the ground, along with destroying tipi rings and cairns. They did all of this while assaulting peaceful resistors using vicious dogs, tear gas, and pepper spray.
There's only one conclusion: they are attempting to provoke us to violence. They learned exactly how to hurt us the most and then they threw it all in our faces. They were smiling and laughing the whole time...evil grins on their faces as their dogs tore in to peaceful water protectors. It is one of the saddest and most shocking things I have ever seen. Please tell the world what is happening.
Meanwhile, President Obama - who visited the Standing Rock Reservation in June, 2014 with promises of federal help - has been silent in the face of this injustice, despite a video plea from the youth of the tribe and a rebuke from the U.N. Permanent Council calling on the U.S. government "to comply with the provisions recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ensure the right of the Sioux to participate in decision-making, considering that the construction of this pipeline will affect their rights, lives and territory.".
When will these atrocities stop? When will a sense of the sacred--the sacred waters and earth, the human rights of all people, the sacredness of ancestral lands -- return to our value system to supplant the idolatrous faux sacred bottom line of corporations? We are talking about rank idol worship here and it has profound consequences for the future of Mother Earth and all her children. Let us stand with the Lakota people in this holy struggle. "All our relations." All are sacred.
The Standing Rock Sioux Nation asks those who feel called to support, to write to their legislators and the Obama administration. A more comprehensive list of ways to help is posted on a number of Facebook pages.