PRESENCE OF RACISM
Environmental Injustices on the Lakota People
This section is dedicated to the Lakota People, amongst other Native Tribes, that have had their rights stripped of them for no reason other than their ancestry. Laws where ignored and environmental and health issues were disregarded in order to make this pipeline. People, including those peacefully protesting and innocent residents have been assaulted and harmed due to the power imbalance that Energy Transfer Company holds.
Evidence of environmental racism: Vetoed Pipeline Reroute
"A previously proposed route for the 1,172-mile pipeline had it crossing the Missouri River north of Bismarck, North Dakota, according to a document filed as part of the permitting process. The eventual route that was decided on, and is currently in construction, moved the water crossing of the crude oil pipeline south of the North Dakota capital, to just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's reservation. 'This pipeline was rerouted towards our tribal nations when other citizens of North Dakota rightfully rejected it in the interests of protecting their communities and water. We seek the same consideration as those citizens,' Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, said in a statement on Sunday"
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: A HISTORY REPEATED
Below shows some of the social and cultural injustices towards Standing Rock Sioux Tribe seen through DAPL. To the left, there are quotes from articles that show the land rights being ignored leading to the disrespect of the Standing Rock Sioux's spirituality. To the right, there is a discussion on the potential threat to the Standing Rock Sioux's safety based on a pattern of racism towards Native Americans on construction sites.
MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN
Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other race with 1 in 3 women being sexually assaulted.
"These crimes are particularly likely in remote settings where transient workers - oil workers, for example - live in temporary housing units called 'man camps' on and near Tribal lands. Their crimes fall between jurisdictional cracks, leaving victims and their families without recourse. As Nick Martin summarized, these are 'Patterns of violent men and extractive industries breezing through land they do not own to take lives that do not belong to them. Patterns of Tribal sovereignty being undermined and jurisdictional borders being crossed. Patterns of police dismissing concerned mothers and fathers and aunties and grandparents with the excuse that ‘runaways always come back.’ Patterns of coroners dodging paperwork and scrawling 'other' next to the line titled ‘Race’ and 'accidental death' next to ‘C.O.D.’ Patterns of government officials, top to bottom, ignoring practical, so sovereignty-first reforms and instead hoarding the kind of power that keeps the crisis alive.'"
"State level legislative responses have also emerged, such as in Washington, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and task forces have been created in many more states.,, Legislative reform to support Tribal law enforcement and governments is critical to resolving the MMIW crisis. Failure to pass pending legislation in 2020 would represent a failure of the many MMIW task forces to capitalize on this recent momentum
SPIRITUALITY AND LAND RIGHTS IGNORED
Field Notes From Standing Rock
"Lakota spiritual leaders at Standing Rock expressed a sense of kinship between life‐kinds, prayer as resistance to corrupt and desecrating forces, and active relationships with guiding ancestors and with an inspirited world—including the Missouri River, endangered by the pipeline route, spoken of as a relative. However, indigenous thinkers have been stating for decades that it is a problem for white settlers to make claim to native spiritual teachings, having already made claim to everything else.”
New Republic Article
“In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898. This order mandated federal agencies to consider environmental justice when reviewing any potential infrastructure projects or public or tribal land grabs. Six years later, Clinton signed Executive Order 13175, which required these same agencies to engage in a process known as tribal consultation. The process is one in which government regulators must reach out to any affected tribal nations along the proposed route and see if the construction will affect any culturally or environmentally significant areas. Tribal consultation rarely happens in any meaningful form. A report from the Government Accountability Office in April 2019 made clear that this is not a problem specific to any one project. Based on interviews and comments from 100 tribes in 2016, the report concluded that the federal agencies tasked with consulting with tribal nations for infrastructure projects have repeatedly failed to contact tribes, either at the appropriate time or at all, when completing these reviews.”
"Faith says the protests sent a message to the world that Native Americans were standing up for themselves, encouraging indigenous people from around the world to join the demonstrations...Divisions between the tribe and local residents, who are mostly white, intensified because of the protests."
NPR - Jeff Brady
“As resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, N.D., concludes its seventh month, two narratives have emerged:
We have never seen anything like this before.
This has been happening for hundreds of years.
Both are true. The scope of the resistance at Standing Rock exceeds just about every protest in Native American history. But that history itself, of indigenous people fighting to protect not just their land, but the land, is centuries old.”
NPR- Leah Donella
TEDWOMEN 2017: TARA HOUSKA
The Standing Rock Resistance and Our Fight for Indigenous Rights