Dakota Access Pipeline Protest: All We Want Is Clean Water.

Still Here. Still Standing. Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition. Dakota Access Pipeline Approval Disappoints by Dallas Goldtooth.

#Simon Moya-Smith. #NoDAPL. ICTMN.

Today’s favourite tweets:

Post-Racist. Right.

Colin Kaepernick -- via Facebook.

Colin Kaepernick — via Facebook.

I keep running into people who insist that Amerikka is post-sexist and post-racist. I have no idea how they keep this delusional illusion in their heads, because every day, we are drowning in evidence that’s not so. Rapists continue to receive slaps on the wrist, and racists continue to shout their bigotry to the skies. The latest example is the reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the anthem.

In a post-game interview on the NFL Network, Kaepernick explained that he was taking a different kind of stand, referencing Black Lives Matter in a roundabout way.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told reporters. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Criticism on Twitter ran from attacks on Kaepernick by questioning his patriotism in light of the millions he earns as an NFL star, to extensive use of the “N-word” from racists who are a source of many of the problems African Americans face in the U.S,.

Some of the tweets are below the fold, because they are explicit and vile.

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Lummi Totem Pole To Be at Sacred Stone Camp.

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The Lummi Nation of Washington held a blessing and send-off ceremony on Thursday for the 2016 Totem Pole Journey.

Master carver Jewell James created a 22-foot tall pole that will travel 5,000 miles to raise awareness of the impacts of fossil fuel development in Indian Country. One of the first stops will be the Camp of the Sacred Stones near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

“We need to be heard as many people and one voice,” James of the House of Tears Carvers said in a press release announcing this year’s journey. “We need to let them know they cannot in the name of profits do this to the people, the water, the land, and to the future generations. We will never give up. They must not pass!”

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe established the Camp of the Sacred Stones to protest the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, which comes within a half-mile of the reservation. The pole is expected to arrive at the site on Tuesday, August 30, before departing on Friday, September 1. This year marks the fourth Totem Pole Journey It comes after the Lummi Nation successfully defeated a coal export terminal on its treaty territory in Washington.

You can read more at Indianz.com, and the Journey’s route is here. Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

New Stories: Dakota Access: Stars From Hollywood to Washington Support Water Protectors.

Important Message from Keeper of Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe.

When Man Changes the Land, It Is Changed Forever.

Dakota Access: A Familiar Story.

Kim Ryu.

Kim Ryu.

David Archambault II, tribal chairman of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has a column up at the NYT, Taking A Stand at Standing Rock. Read, share, light those signal fires, get the word everywhere. Some mainstream media is finally starting to pay attention, but we need more. We need people to join us, to help us, because this issue affects every single one of us. People outside Indian country, and even a whole lot of them smack in the middle of it need to learn, need to educate themselves about the reality of this situation right now, and the workings of the past, because most people only know the white-washed “history” fed to them in school. We stand, not only for ourselves, but for all people. Please, don’t lapse back into resignation, don’t let weariness win. We have been fighting for hundreds of years. The camps in this one resistance have been standing for 5 months now, since April, and we are not going to stop now, so please, don’t you stop either. We must endure, and every voice, every signal boost, every supply, every donation, every person who comes to the camps, you hold us up, you brace the foundation of our obligation to and protection of our earth, our water.

Near Cannon Ball, N.D. — It is a spectacular sight: thousands of Indians camped on the banks of the Cannonball River, on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Our elders of the Seven Council Fires, as the Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation, is known, sit in deliberation and prayer, awaiting a federal court decision on whether construction of a $3.7 billion oil pipeline from the Bakken region to Southern Illinois will be halted.

The Sioux tribes have come together to oppose this project, which was approved by the State of North Dakota and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline, owned by a Texas oil company named Energy Transfer Partners, would snake across our treaty lands and through our ancestral burial grounds. Just a half-mile from our reservation boundary, the proposed route crosses the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of Americans and irrigation water for thousands of acres of farming and ranching lands.

Our tribe has opposed the Dakota Access pipeline since we first learned about it in 2014. Although federal law requires the Corps of Engineers to consult with the tribe about its sovereign interests, permits for the project were approved and construction began without meaningful consultation. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation supported more protection of the tribe’s cultural heritage, but the Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer Partners turned a blind eye to our rights. The first draft of the company’s assessment of the planned route through our treaty and ancestral lands did not even mention our tribe.

The Dakota Access pipeline was fast-tracked from Day 1 using the Nationwide Permit No. 12 process, which grants exemption from environmental reviews required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by treating the pipeline as a series of small construction sites. And unlike the better-known Keystone XL project, which was finally canceled by the Obama administration last year, the Dakota Access project does not cross an international border — the condition that mandated the more rigorous federal assessment of the Keystone pipeline’s economic justification and environmental impacts.

The Dakota Access route is only a few miles shorter than what was proposed for the Keystone project, yet the government’s environmental assessment addressed only the portion of the pipeline route that traverses federal land. Domestic projects of this magnitude should clearly be evaluated in their totality — but without closer scrutiny, the proposal breezed through the four state processes.

Perhaps only in North Dakota, where oil tycoons wine and dine elected officials, and where the governor, Jack Dalrymple, serves as an adviser to the Trump campaign, would state and county governments act as the armed enforcement for corporate interests. In recent weeks, the state has militarized my reservation, with road blocks and license-plate checks, low-flying aircraft and racial profiling of Indians. The local sheriff and the pipeline company have both called our protest “unlawful,” and Gov. Dalrymple has declared a state of emergency.

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The Last Word.

MSNBC. Via #NoDAPL.

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Transcript, copied from Daily Kos:

Dakota means friend…friendly. The people who gave that name to the Dakotas have, sadly, never been treated as friends. The people whose language was used to name the Dakotas and Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states, the Native American tribes, the people who were here before us… long before us, have never been treated as friends. They have been treated as enemies.. and dealt with more harshly than any other enemy. In any of this countrys’ wars.

After all of our major wars we signed peace treaties and live by those treaties. After world war II when we made peace with Germany we then did everything we possibly could to rebuild Germany. No Native American tribe has ever been treated as well as we treated Germans after World War II.

Donald Trump and his supporters now fear the country being invaded by foreigners who want to change our way of life.  A fear that Native Americans have lived with, every day,… for over five hundred years.

The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American that we could, and making treaties with the rest. This country was founded on genocide before the word genocide was invented. Before there was a War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

When we finally stopped actively killing Native Americans for the crime of living here before us, we then proceeded to violate every treaty we made with the Tribes. Every. Single. Treaty.

We piled crime on top of crime against a people whose offense against us was simply that they lived where we wanted to live.

We don’t feel the guilt of the crimes because we pretend they happened a very long time ago, in ancient history. And we actively suppress the memories of those crimes.. but there are people alive today whose grandparents were in the business of killing the Native Americans. That’s how recent these crimes are.

Every once in a while there is a painful and morally embarrassing reminder, as there is this week in North Dakota near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation where hundreds of people have gathered and camped out in opposition to an interstate pipeline being built from North Dakota to Illinois.

The protest being led by this countrys’ original environmentalists. Native Americans.

For hundreds of years they were our only environmentalists. The only people who thought that land and rivers should be preserved in their natural state. The only people who thought a mountain or a prairie or a river could be a sacred place.

Yesterday a federal judge heard arguments from the tribes against the federal governments approval of the pipeline and said he will deliver his decision on whether the pipeline can proceed next month.

There are now over ninety tribes gathered in protest of that pipeline. That protest will surely continue even if the judge allows construction to proceed.

And so we face the prospect next month of the descendants of the first people to ever set foot on that land,.. being arrested by the descendants of the invaders who seized that land.

Arrested for trespassing.

That we still have Native Americans left in this country to be arrested for trespassing on their own land is testament, not to the mercy of the genocidal invaders who seized and occupied their land, but to the stunning strength and the five hundred years of endurance and the undying dignity of the people who were here long before us. The people who have always known; what is truly sacred in this world.

A Universal Income Plan.

Euros (AFP).

Euros (AFP).

Switzerland may have voted against the controversial idea of paying all its citizens a guaranteed income, but Finland indicated Thursday it plans to try out a monthly basic payment of 560 euros ($600).

The government said it had chosen the figure for an unconditional basic income in line with a manifesto pledge by centrist Prime Minister Juha Sipila, who took office 15 months ago.

Former businessman Sipila wants to see if the measure can boost employment and simplify the welfare benefits system, and plans to test the idea on a 2,000-strong sample of randomly selected working-age residents.

“The primary goal of the basic income experiment is related to promoting employment,” said the health and social affairs ministry, adding that it also aimed to simplify the complicated benefits system in a sustainable way regarding public finances.

Amid a growing debate on the subject, Finland now wants to be the first European country to test the idea nationwide.

In June, voters in Switzerland decisively rejected a far more generous proposal to pay a monthly 2,500 Swiss francs (2,300 euros/$2,500) to each adult and 625 francs for each child.

The idea has support on the political left and right with the former wanting a guaranteed safety net while some liberal voices feel that money for nothing can dissuade some jobless people from seeking work.

I am seriously envious of any country socialized enough and stable enough to give this a try. I think of how great this would be here in uStates, how it would not only help a vast amount of people, but it would go a very long way in stabilizing people mentally and emotionally, allowing people to ease up on feeling a constancy of anxiety, stress, and anger. That said, I don’t even want to imagine this being proposed in good ol’ Amerikka, we’d all go deaf from the screaming.

Via Raw Story.

Camp Story.

Mother and child at the frontlines on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota on August 16, 2016. Courtesy John Heminger.

Mother and child at the frontlines on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota on August 16, 2016. Courtesy John Heminger.

Sarah Sunshine Manning (Shoshone-Paiute, Chippewa-Cree) has a wonderful story up at ICTMN. I agree that in many ways, we have already won. This is a historical time, this is history in the making, and the tribes have not been this united since Victory Day (that would be the Battle at the Greasy Grass, aka Custer’s final fuck up). That is also the foundation of the government’s fear, and all the intimidation games they keep playing, not that many would admit to that, but the grudge runs deep. When we are together, we are strong. When all people unite, we are strong, and our voices are powerful enough to be heard.

We woke up to sounds of joy- laughter, conversation, and warm greetings of “Good Morning.” We woke up to lingering fragrances of camp fires, coffee, and smoldering sage and cedar. Near our camp was the central gathering place, where early risers were already congregating over coffee, while others were making huge amounts of breakfast over open fire.

People of all tribes and many ethnicities gathered. I admit, that I was a little giddy just at the site of a blond gentleman there with his family — a wife and two young children. I admit, that I have been conditioned if not traumatized while living in the Dakotas for the last decade to expect much less than warmth from the majority of non-Natives in the area. But what I immediately saw in the camps at Standing Rock was pure unity of humanity. Unity for Earth, and solidarity for life. And it was beautiful. There were several non-Natives present, standing with the Lakota and Dakota people of Standing Rock as fellow human beings.

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Support Native Youth.

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The Oceti Sakowin youth are asking for help, as we continue in our fight for healthy land, clean water, and healthy people.

Construction for the Dakota Access Pipeline has begun in spite of thousands and thousands of people demanding a stop to the project and the 1,800-mile run we made across the country to deliver your signatures to the Army Corps.

Now we’re going to the front lines of the fight against this pipeline and we want to bring other youth leaders with us to join the struggle!

What we’re doing is risky, but we’re willing to do it for our future. Will you help us bring youth leaders from surrounding reservations to the Sacred Stone Camp where we are staying? Your donation will go towards renting buses and buying food and camping gear for young activists.

We’ve already helped to disrupt construction of the pipeline by peacefully using our bodies to block roads – but we need more support!

We believe that young people should be on the front lines of the movement to protect our water and our future. Donate $5 today to invest in youth leadership and the protection of our planet!

If you can kick in, please do. I don’t have much myself, but I kicked in because this is so very important.  If you can’t, please signal boost, can’t stop the signal!

https://www.change.org/f/send-native-youth-leaders-to-block-the-pipeline

Looking at Police Brutality.

Police Cross Line 3, 2015.

Police Cross Line 3, 2015.

In works such as Nick Cave’s Soundsuits or David Hammons’ Untitled (Rock Head), material evokes the metaphorical and mythological meanings of the black body. Recently, some artists have chosen to symbolically explore its heft and value by emphasizing elevating materiality over the modernist privileging of form. In the artist Dáreece J. Walker’s Black is the giant exhibition of painting, sculpture and text, for instance, the artist’s use of cardboard examines the weight of the black body politic in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement.

[…]

“It’s about a conversation,” says Walker to The Creators Project. “A conversation about how myself and other black Americans that I’ve spoken with feel devalued or not considered in the overall societal structures.” He explains, “There’s a lot of stigma and media bias toward people with dark skin and particularly here in the United States there’s been a lot of police brutality.”

“The reason I used the medium cardboard is because the associations it has with being easily replaceable or disposable. It’s a sentiment that I feel that started to spread through the media representations of black men. It seemed that, through the coverage, black lives didn’t matter as much.”

The Saint, 2015.

The Saint, 2015.

The exhibition includes two wooden sculptures, The Martyr and The Saint, that speak to the portrayal and discrediting of black victims of police brutality in the media. The abstract works allude to the media coverage branding Trayvon Martin a “thug,” as well as the selection of imagery of black victims of police shootings that inspired the black Twitter hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. A poem entitled “If They Gun Me Down” by Daniel J. Watts, a Walker collaborator and Hamilton star, presented alongside Walker’s objects, aims to capture the bleakness of the representation of black life by the media, even in death:

If they gunned me down

would the media paint a picture

of a poet

or would I be politically portrayed as a perilous person with potential to be a paraphernalia pushing pistol popping pilferer?

If they gunned me down, would you be shown the hopeless romantic mama’s boy who writes about how his grandmother taught him how to blow kisses or would you be presented with a production still of the anti-violent “This is how we shoot back” as I brandished a metaphor into the camera?

If they gunned me down

will the photos in which I hold some sort of stone cold pose as I throw two fingers into the air be recognized as peace when they land on judgmental eyes or will they be both misconstrued and inappropriately affiliated with gang culture

by the media vultures that will surely circle my dead carcass ready to feed without taking me or my deeds into consideration?

Full Story at The Creators Project.

Dakota Access: A Disaster Waiting to Happen.

The Dakota Access Pipeline. Photo by criminalintent on Flickr.

The Dakota Access Pipeline. Photo by criminalintent on Flickr.

ShadowProof has given us some much needed coverage. Still asking mainstream media, where the hell are you all? There are a thousand stories to be told, at least. So many stories. And there is one hell of a big story, if you can manage to pull your heads out of oil’s backside.

The Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota will not only impact the environment but also lead to an influx of out-of-state workers and increase crime, drug use, and sex trafficking, according to an indigenous columnist.

If completed, the pipeline, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, would travel from North Dakota to Illinois through 50 counties in the United States and transport crude oil. A data sheet published by Dakota Access, LLC, indicates it is a $3.7 billion “investment” intended to run some 1,172 miles, or 1,886 kilometers. It is expected to “transport approximately 470,000 barrels [of crude oil] with a capacity as high as 570,000 barrels per day or more.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe launched a protest encampment called the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp back in April, but in recent weeks, demonstrations against the pipeline have intensified, as thousands have traveled to the camp to support the struggle of indigenous people against Dakota Access.

Ruth Hopkins, a Lakota and Dakota of the Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation, and an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Nation, told Shadowproof oil development tends to bring in a lot of non-Native men from out of state who do the work, often on a temporary basis. This influx of transient workers “brings an increase in crime, drug use, and sex trafficking. The Bakken is a perfect example of that.”

As the oil boom began, North Dakota saw a major population spike, and the state’s law enforcement, particularly on reservations, wasn’t prepared.

“We don’t have the kind of funding necessary to combat crimes waves, and there are special concerns regarding jurisdiction on tribal lands,” Hopkins said. “As a tribal judge on a nearby reservation, I witnessed the effects of this oil boom. It pushed the tribe to the point of declaring a State of Emergency due to rampant drug use.”

[Read more…]

BREAKING: Federal Courts Won’t Rule.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – No decision has been made today in federal court regarding the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near Cannon Ball, N.D.

Judge James E. Boarsberg says the main legal issue is the consultation factor between the Tribes & Army Corps of Engineers.

Boarsberg said he will issue his opinion by September 9 and an appeal hearing has been set for September 14 if the Tribes or Corps of Engineers is unhappy with the decision.

Via KFYR. There was noise a couple of days ago that the judge thinks we need more time to just talk things over with the AC of Engineers. Apparently, he’s decided to be utterly oblivious to the months of talks that did go on, when the AC of Engineers assured the people of Standing Rock that they understood the issues, and were sensitive to them. Well, we’ve seen that so-called sensitivity, and we’ve seen the lies. No, Judge Boarsberg, this is not something we can settle over tea. And this is really important to remember:

This is the truth, I see it every day. Dakota Access swore on their black heart they would stop until the court hearing, but they have not stopped. The only thing they stopped was drilling under the Missouri River. Everything else is going ahead, in spite of the thousands of people at the camps and everywhere else. The interstate from where I live is lined with massive pipe, holes and ditches being dug everywhere. They have no intention of stopping, because all they ever do is lie. Please, if you can, get this news out if you can, please. I’m begging. Mainstream Media is still busy pretending we don’t exist, and they aren’t about to cover Dakota Access lying their asses off about stopping work.

WE ARE NOT GIVING UP. WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY. THIS IS NOT GOING TO BLOW OVER. RISE, STAND WITH US. We should not have to fight for healthy earth, clean water, and clean air. We should not have to fight for these things for all the generations to come. We must protect our earth, we must protect our people. All of us, every single one of us, let us raise our voices in unity and strength. We have the right to say no. Join the resistance, come to the camps if you can. If you can’t, donate money, supplies, a few moments of your wireless to get the the word out, whatever you can do. It matters. Every action matters. Every word matters. You matter. Make a difference.

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Rezpect Our Water.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition. And please, please, signal boost as much as you can, spread the word – mainstream media is still acting like nothing is going on, and I saw one new MSM article today, and it was covering the 3rd day in August! This has been going on since April, and even now, media can’t manage to be remotely current. Help them out by doing their job for them, since they can’t seem to handle it. Thank you!

Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff. – Feds Grant TRO Against Standing Rock Members. – Dakota Access Protest: We’re being sued – help us fight it! – Dakota Access Standoff Calls on Obama. – Among Those Arrested… – Sacred Stone Camp: Calling Water Warriors! – Dakota Access: About That Oil… – Dakota Access Purchaser Looking Like Enron. – Standing Rock and IITC File Urgent Communication to UN. – Sacred Stone Camp. – North Dakota: State of Emergency Declared. – Solidarity Sings! – Settling into Camp – Washington DC: Action Alert – Solidarity Sings Along. – WE ARE… – URGENT Petition Call and Solidarity Sings III – A Tale of Two Standoffs. – Lakota No Access. – Coping With Cops. – Dakota Access and The Mindset of Christendom. – Adding Insult to Injury. – Tanka’s Mark Tilsen Speaks. – Los Angeles: Action Alert. – Sadness. – Reno Nevada: Action Alert. – Never Broken. – Resistance: Photo Essay. – Washington, DC –

Washington, DC.

Photos and videos are flowing in from Washington DC, and the protests at the hearing there today. You can see much more at https://twitter.com/RedRoadWoman.

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Rezpect Our Water.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition. And please, please, signal boost as much as you can, spread the word – mainstream media is still acting like nothing is going on, and I saw one new MSM article today, and it was covering the 3rd day in August! This has been going on since April, and even now, media can’t manage to be remotely current. Help them out by doing their job for them, since they can’t seem to handle it. Thank you!

Resistance: Photo Essay.

San Carlos Apache Tribe council member Wendsler Nosie Sr. embraces Standing Rock Sioux Tribe David Archambault II at the Camp of the Sacred Stones near the Standing Rock reservation, where Nosie came to offer support and prayers to those taking a stand against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. The Apache Stronghold has been fighting for more than a decade to stop the takeover of sacred Oak Flat for copper mining by Rio Tinto. Apache Stronghold is one of nearly 90 tribes that have expressed support.

San Carlos Apache Tribe council member Wendsler Nosie Sr. embraces Standing Rock Sioux Tribe David Archambault II at the Camp of the Sacred Stones near the Standing Rock reservation, where Nosie came to offer support and prayers to those taking a stand against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. The Apache Stronghold has been fighting for more than a decade to stop the takeover of sacred Oak Flat for copper mining by Rio Tinto. Apache Stronghold is one of nearly 90 tribes that have expressed support.

Riders on horseback exit the campsite and keep a watchful eye to ensure that folks stay safe and protected. Some paint their hoses in traditional designs. Thosh Collins.

Riders on horseback exit the campsite and keep a watchful eye to ensure that folks stay safe and protected. Some paint their hoses in traditional designs. Thosh Collins.

Each morning at the Cannon Ball prayer camps, participants walk and ride horse from the campsite to the construction site, about a half-mile away. Songs are sung and prayers are offered by all. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

Each morning at the Cannon Ball prayer camps, participants walk and ride horse from the campsite to the construction site, about a half-mile away. Songs are sung and prayers are offered by all. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

Veterans from tribal nations, including several bands of Lakota and Ojibwe people, carry staffs to lead the crowd toward the pipe ceremony just outside the gate of the construction site. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

Veterans from tribal nations, including several bands of Lakota and Ojibwe people, carry staffs to lead the crowd toward the pipe ceremony just outside the gate of the construction site. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

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