A PIPELINE FIGHT AND AMERICA’S DARK PAST

[Spiritwind]

A PIPELINE FIGHT AND AMERICA’S DARK PAST
By Bill McKibben , SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-com ... -dark-past" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This week, thousands of Native Americans, from more than a hundred tribes, have camped out on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between the Dakotas, along the Missouri River. What began as a slow trickle of people a month ago is now an increasingly angry flood. They’re there to protest plans for a proposed oil pipeline that they say would contaminate the reservation’s water; in fact, they’re calling themselves protectors, not protesters.

Their foe, most directly, is the federal government, in particular the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has approved a path for the pipeline across the Missouri under a “fast track” option called Permit 12. That’s one reason the Dakota Access Pipeline, as it’s known, hasn’t received the attention that, say, the Keystone XL Pipeline did, even though the pipe is about the same length. Originally, the pipeline was supposed to cross the Missouri near Bismarck, but authorities worried that an oil spill there would have wrecked the state capital’s drinking water. So they moved the crossing to half a mile from the reservation, across land that was taken from the tribe in 1958, without their consent. The tribe says the government hasn’t done the required consultation with them—if it had, it would have learned that building the pipeline there would require digging up sacred spots and old burial grounds.

In fact, the blade of a bulldozer cut through some of those burial grounds on Saturday—during a holiday weekend, days before a federal judge is supposed to rule on an emergency petition filed by the tribe which would slow the project down, and immediately after the tribe identified the burial grounds’ locations in a filing to the court. The company building the pipe—Energy Transfer Partners—has already constructed more than half the pipeline, which, when completed, would stretch from Stanley, North Dakota, near the Canadian border, to Patoka, in southern Illinois. It apparently wanted to create facts on the ground in North Dakota—wanted to do so badly enough, it seems, that it was willing to employ a private security force, which used dogs to confront the Native Americans who tried to prevent the desecration of old graves. Tribal officials said that the dogs bit six protesters, including a small child. (The company did not respond to requests for comment, but had previously stated that demonstrators “attacked” their workers and the guard dogs. It has stressed in the past that it has been “constructing this pipeline in accordance with applicable laws, and the local, state and federal permits and approvals we have received.”)

Pictures from that confrontation recall pictures from Birmingham circa 1963. But the historical parallels here run much deeper—they run to the original sins of this nation. The reservation, of course, is where the Native Americans were told to live when the vast lands they ranged were taken by others. The Great Sioux Reservation, formed in the eighteen-sixties, shrunk again and again—in 1980, a federal court said, of the whole sad story, “a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.” In the nineteen-fifties and early sixties, the Army Corps of Engineers—the same Army Corps now approving the pipeline—built five large dams along the Missouri, forcing Indian villages to relocate. More than two hundred thousand acres disappeared beneath the water.

Sioux history, and Native American history, is filled with one massacre and battle after another. Most of us have never heard of some of those encounters—the Whitestone, or Inyan Ska, massacre, for instance, not far from the present encampment, where at least three hundred Sioux lost their lives when Brigadier General Alfred Sully attacked men, women, and children feasting after a buffalo hunt. Some we do remember, albeit differently: one man in the camp last week said it was the most diverse gathering of Native Americans “since the Battle of Greasy Grass,” known to the white world as Little Bighorn. In other words, America’s shameful history with its native inhabitants is echoing across these riverbanks this late summer.

“The U.S. government is wiping out our most important cultural and spiritual areas,” LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, whose great-great grandmother survived the Whitestone Massacre, wrote this week. “And as it erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as a people. These sites must be protected, or our world will end, it is that simple. Our young people have a right to know who they are. They have a right to language, to culture, to tradition. The way they learn these things is through connection to our lands and our history.”

The protests have been peaceful and nonviolent. (Some members of the climate advocacy group 350.org, which I founded, are working at the Dakota camp in supporting roles.) And yet the local sheriff told reporters that he’d heard rumors of pipe bombs; it turned out he’d heard rumors about ceremonial peace pipes. After Saturday’s encounter with the guard dogs, the same sheriff said that security personnel were reacting to demonstrators who had “crossed on to private property” and attacked them with “flag poles.” He did not respond to requests for further comment.

Young people on the reservation organized a run across the country this summer to deliver more than a hundred thousand petition signatures to the President asking him to stop the pipeline. They weren’t received at the White House—disappointing, since Obama had actually visited the reservation in 2014. “My Administration is determined to partner with tribes,” he told them then, but so far he’s made no public statement on the Dakota Access pipeline.

All of which is sad, because this case offers the U.S. government the chance to make at least small amends for some of the darkest parts of its official history—to demonstrate that it has absorbed at least a few small lessons from that past.

The events at Standing Rock also allow Americans to realize who some of the nation’s most important leaders really are. The fight for environmental sanity—against pipelines and coal ports and other fossil-fuel infrastructure—has increasingly been led by Native Americans, many of whom are in that Dakota camp today. They speak with real authority—no one else has lived on this continent for the longterm. They see the nation’s history more clearly than anyone else, and its possible future as well. For once, after all these centuries, it’s time to look through their eyes. History offers us no chances to completely erase our mistakes. Occasionally, though, we do get a chance to show we learned something.

Bill McKibben, a former New Yorker staff writer, is the founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College.

[Naga_Fireball]

Dear Spiritwind, these are my husband and son's people -- Tony's mom was part Sioux. They had lived in the Dakotas if I am not mistaken.

What a terrible outrage -- the white blight -- what other name could we call this?

Oil is black but the Corp is mostly white and apparently lacks any sense of loyalty or duty to protect the indigenous people and landmarks/sacred sites bordering their "projects" (crimes).

There's a fucking reason i got out of the military when i could. I was sick and tired of the pigs double and triple dipping, telling lies, screwing people over, infighting.. being pregnant was just the catalyst for leaving a place i hated.


Hugs for you. Good grief no wonder last spring i drew a butning oil train...

[Spiritwind]

This seems to be a timely message.

https://ravenredbone.com/2016/08/27/imp ... ing-horse/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Important Message from Keeper of Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe. – Chief Arvol Looking Horse
Posted on August 27, 2016 | 6 Comments


I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our own ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a very important message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.



Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills in South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness many more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of mankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these destructive developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more indigenous teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. Back then this was hard to believe, since the water was so plentiful, so pure, and so full of energy, nutrition and spirit. Today we have to buy pure water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just empty liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unite spiritually as a global nation, or be faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me on this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort, and remember to give thanks for the sacred food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the great myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You yourself are the one who must decide.

You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you yourself are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse is the author ofWhite Buffalo Teachings. A tireless advocate of maintaining traditional spiritual practices, Chief Looking Horse is a member of Big Foot Riders, which memorializes the massacre of Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee

[Naga_Fireball]

I think the news said a federal judge ruled against the natives who were petitioning against the pipeline. At this point if i am not mistaken they are petitioning the company subcontracted to build the sections in question.

What a terribly sad situation. And ironic that any "conservative " would opt to destroy heritage sites rather than delay an energy project that will be obsolete in 10 years.

[Naga_Fireball]

P.s. friends, please look back at Arab Spring and how it was very much related to the Nabucco pipeline project that failed...

[Christine]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/dakota- ... -1.3754964

Some straight news. intelligent and informed statements, especially the woman who founded "Honor the Earth". It ought to be obvious that the "government" (rulers of our mind and how we are suppose to perceive, thereby recreate our world.) will not honor the tribal representative or the PEOPLE, when have they ever?

This single event and standing to protect the Earth from the millions of rapes and attacks on Her and her people (all of humanity) has the potential, for ripping off the veils of the ruling cabal ... of course, Mr. Nicey-nice Obama administration would ask the company for temporary voluntary halt in construction. This means nothing, they know winter is coming and people that have come from around the world have homes and families. They are simply asking for time to let this slip into media oblivion and our interest to wane.

Will We The People finally make our stand to honor the Mother, our lives, this planet, our children's future.

[Naga_Fireball]

It made the local paper, the settlement in North Dakota where the protestors are living


Thank you media!

Unfortunately the paper had two or three articles regarding unethical FBI behavior.

They impersonated a journalist from AP to lure a teenager into downloading spyware.

Kind of like Bob n Charlott
Lol

[Naga_Fireball]

One reason to deny this stupid pipeline is the high price of iron.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands, wasn't the official excuse the high price of iron?

Because England disrupted the iron trade...

History repeats...

[Hermit]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NiauhOCfsk[/youtube]

[Naga_Fireball]

http://www.union-bulletin.com/news/nort ... -pipeline/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Protesters call for action against Jordan Cove gas pipeline

1 hr ago
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — Protesters are calling for unity and action against a proposed liquefied natural gas pipeline in Klamath Falls.