The Lakota and Dakota are fighting another battle in which they are the underdogs: North Dakota oil interests are building a pipeline across the state, right near the Standing Rock reservation and their water supply, the Missouri, Mississippi, and Big Sioux rivers.
You know, oil pipelines leak, right?
So look at these amazing photos of the current standoff.
The police keep standing on the wrong side of every fight, don’t they?
That’s their job.
The United States exists purely to “protect and serve” the status quo, and, in this case, the status quo is money being more important than literally everything else. I’m writing a post about this, in fact, though it’s not easy… I’m gathering a lot of sources. But the fact is, our police force is, and has been, doing what they always existed to do… protect the interests of our Patriarchal, White Supremacist, Capitalist society against being torn down. They are the Knights of the ruling class.
What Nathan says. Cops don’t work for us. They work for the powered and monied class. And the government entities that benefit from those powers and monies.
Or, as William J. Ryan put it in his great book Blaming the Victim (which may not have been the origin of the phrase, but definitely brought it into the attention of many people like me), the law-and-order types (including, not limited to, the institutional police forces) have always been much, much more interested in order than in law.
Thank goodness the First Nations have gotten some political power of late. They’re the only ones stopping the pipelines all over this continent.
We know the pipeline goes through ancestral land but does it go through reservation land? Is that how the federal government was able to approve this? Or are they able to approve construction on reservation land?
I grew up and work on reservation land, mostly suturing up feet and knees of kids who have been playing in the river and treating insect bites right now – I still love summers here – but I’m Canadian and not at all familiar with what decisions the American federal government can make about construction on reservation land.
It REALLY depends on the particulars of the treaty under which the reservation was created. Some are effectively independent states, others have almost no political power at all.
Whatever the law says, the US gov’t has been uniformly terrible at honoring treaties with the Native Americans. To my knowledge, there has not yet been a single one we haven’t violated. If native tribes want to enforce their rights, they generally have to do it with a lengthy and expensive court battle. Not being white, they haven’t fared well with armed standoffs.
The police were certainly on the RIGHT side when they were being threatened by the Bundy bunch.
Oh yeah, think of how energetic the police handled the Bundy bunch *cough*
Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff.
Indigenous Economics and Environmentalism.
Feds Grant TRO Against Standing Rock Members.
Dakota Access Protest: We’re being sued – help us fight it!
Rezpect Our Water.
Sacred Stone Camp.
Sign the Petition.
We are going to lose this fight if people don’t help. Please, please, help. We are fighting for all people. We are fighting for healthy land, healthy animals, healthy people. We are fighting for clean water. Water does not stay still, and neither does contaminated water.
Wait a minute. The pipeline is being built by the Army Corps of Engineers? Why is the military doing a private company’s job?
rietpluim@12, I could easily be mistaken, but the Corps is not “building” the pipeline, it is the “expert” reviewer of the plans (albeit Caine@11’s quote suggests they also have some sort of actual construction approve / deny authority).
Dakota Access Standoff Calls on Obama.
Blf @ 13, yes to all of that. It’s best if people just read the full articles, they have all the information you need.
Caine @ 14 – You’ve done such a wonderful job covering the Dakota Access Pipeline issues. I agree with you that it is best if people read the full articles. After reading your articles, I signed the petition which at the time had around 186,500 signatures and was growing.
My first thought upon seeing the top photo was, “I’ll bet that’s what Custer’s dismounted skirmish line looked like on June 25, 1876.” It was kind of eerie. Rather like a moment of time traveling clarity.
rietpluim@12 — When I was an undergrad in environmental science I had a hydrology professor who said, only half jokingly, “The Corps’ job is to make every lake into a rectangle and every river into a drainage ditch.” More seriously though, the Corps often gets involved in projects that affect the nation’s major waterways and aquifers.
> You know, oil pipelines leak, right?
The problem is, so does every other method of transporting oil from A to B. And most of those leak more than pipelines do (or so I’m told; I haven’t done the research). So rather than asking “Can we not build this pipeline?”, we should instead ask “Can we not move this oil?”. In the long term, certainly. In the short term, I’m not sure.
You’re volunteering your own backyard
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 19:
Sometimes we really do need things like pipelines, mines, power stations, highways, and industrial complexes, and they have to go in *someone’s* back yard. That’s why governments are supposed to be involved in these processes, to find the least bad place to put unpleasant things and make the NIMBYs live with it. Perhaps the governments haven’t been doing their job in this particular case? I haven’t been following it. Certainly treaty obligations add another wrench to the works — and I’m not familiar with the treaty obligations in play here either.
Ask the good people of Lac Megantic what they think of transporting oil by rail. I’m sure that they’d prefer a pipeline through the middle of their town to a railway.
And since Indian land makes fine backyards it’s A-OK to put their water supply in jeopardy. End justify the means, especially when the means victimise aboriginal people. Same damn story since Cristobal Colón.
How about the fucking US of A start to collectively invest in things that don’t kill the planet?
Re: Rail vs. pipeline.
Link
The Kalamazoo River spill caught my attention. The Kalamazoo River runs through Battle Creek, Michigan, where I grew up. The spill occurred upstream from Battle Creek.
To me, it looks safer to use rail cars due to the smaller impact of problems.
fakeemailaddress:
Maybe you should follow things first, before you make a complete fucking ass out of yourself.
As I quoted, in this fucking thread, above your fucking asshole idiocy, in comment #11:
Oh yeah, it’s gotta be in someone’s backyard alright, but guess who gets water that won’t be poisoned? White people in Bismarck. (And don’t go telling me jack shit about Bismarck, I live an hour away from there.) The Indian lands have been erased from reports and maps, treaty is being broken, but hey, you fuckin’ NDNs, just suck it up, we don’t care. Well, we do care. Our land, our water, our health, our people, our animals, our food, and you know what? We aren’t just standing for ourselves, we are standing for ALL people, for the right to healthy land and clean water. For the right of all people to stand up and say no. There’s no room for the apathetic handwavers, who can’t be arsed because they aren’t being affected.
This is a very serious matter, and it affects all people, not just Indians. Water isn’t sitting still, and contamination won’t sit still, either. Is it a good lesson to leave future generations, that we saw, and did not care? That we allowed our land to be ripped to pieces, our water poisoned, for the sake of convenience and padded pockets?
You think convenience and money is everything. Great. In that case, keep all the poisonous shit in your yard. Go ahead, campaign for it. Start yelling, hey, over here, I’m good with this! Maybe this oil mania isn’t a good thing. Maybe convenience isn’t everything. And here’s hoping all those who are just padding their pockets at the expense of our lives have a good fucking time eating and drinking their paper money.
Did I say that? Perhaps this is not the least bad place to put it and the people whose job it is to figure that out haven’t been doing their jobs. I have no idea. If there is a reasonable argument that we really do need a pipeline and that this really is the least bad place to put it, then the fact that is passes through First Nations land should be irrelevant (if the government is ignoring a treaty again, that would imply that that they haven’t been doing their jobs); they’re citizens just like everyone else.
I’m all in favour of the US investing in things with lower environmental footprints. However, there are few things that we can do with *no* environmental footprint, and unless you’re willing to persuade most of the population of the US to accept a dramatic drop in standard of living, it’s going to take at least a decade to significantly reduce carbon emissions. And then we’ll be having the same arguments about wind and solar farms that kill birds and lithium mines that disrupt flamingo breeding grounds and alumina tailings leaking into waterways and whatever waste is produced from mining vanadium.
Right now, the demand for oil is still rising at a faster rate than our ability to replace it with more sustainable stuff. If we work hard, we can reverse this trend within five years or so. However, unless the US wants to stop immigration entirely (thus dramatically slowing population growth) and accept that the economy will essentially stop growing, they still need to expand oil production for the next couple years. Either way, the US will still need significant quantities of the stuff for a couple decades at least (until viable alternatives exist for ship and aircraft fuel and for long-distance ground transportation outside of the major cities). So oil still needs to get from A to B somehow. If you have a better option, or have reason to believe that a better option exists, please let us know what it is.
Lepidoptera @ 15:
Thank you so much! For everyone who can, signal boosting, supplies, presence, or money, the Sacred Stone Camp is in need, after the arrest of 28 people (maybe more by now), and they had to pull out 20K for food and bail money. Good news is the camp is around 2,500 strong now! Oceti Sakowin is standing strong.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll have Brandon Ecoffey’s piece up, which brings up an important point – the quality of the oil that will be coming through this pipeline. It guarantees leaks, and as it will sink, we don’t have the ability to clean it up. Anyone who is already subbed to LCT can read it now.
What about what the First Nations PEOPLE have to say on the subject. Your bigotry is showing.
Why don’t you do your homework, instead of criticizing others. And YOU present a viable alternative, and quit sniping at those who don’t want their water polluted. What will YOU do if that happens? Just say Tsk, Tsk, too bad?
Fuck you and the SUV you drove in with.
Indians have been put on the very bottom since your nation started, so maybe the fact that it’s their land actually matters.
It’s like tearing a Synagogue down in Germany for an Autobahn because it’s the “least bad place”.
You haven’t even started, Mx Apathy
How nice, pitching immigrants (many of them descendants of native people who had their lands stolen themselves) against Indians.
Nerd
It’s also perfectly possible to lay tracks around cities instead of through cities…
Flamingdoucheweaselassholeaddress:
Are you that fucking stupid? I hope you are, because if you aren’t, you are a lousy excuse for a human being. This is not the “least bad place to put it”. They are trying to put it on Standing Rock because it won’t endanger white people in Bismarck, which happens to be the capitol city, dipshit.
This will, guaranteed, damage the water supply for Standing Rock, and many, many others. The feds are not obligated to fork over tax revenue to us Indians, either. All the other towns, yeah, they’ll make money. Us? No. But we don’t fucking care about money, we care about water. Mni Wiconi. Pity some of you white assholes haven’t figured that out, all these years after you tried to kill all of us, and stole most of our land. You want your fucking oil, you can drink it for all I care, just get it the fuck off OUR LAND. Not yours, ours.
Ah, you’re proposing a form of affirmitive action, in which anything that is perceived as victimizing historically-victimized people should be avoided, even if everyone is actually being treated equally? I can live with that, though it would be clearer if you’d go out and say that without the invictives.
And as I said, I really don’t know anything about this particular pipeline. I’m talking about pipelines and other industrial developments in general. If the local first nation really is being stomped on again, I can certainly support not doing that.
fakeemailaddress
Stop digging.
fakeemailaddress
If you actually did your research, you would realize that often these sorts of pipelines and industrial developments go through poor and disadvantaged neighbourhoods, disproportionately harming people of colour and yes, First Nations people (in addition to pipelines, this includes things like train tracks and highways). Your sad “If the local first nation really is being stomped on again, I can certainly support not doing that.” is a pathetic attempt at appeasement and only goes to demonstrate how truly ignorant you are about the issue you are attempting to argue.
It would appear that the First Nations aspect of this issue is sufficiently sensitive that even mentioning the more general NIMBY problem caused offense. For that, I apologise. I did not intend to criticize First Nations issues or politics and failed to anticipate that I would be interpreted as doing so.
A presupposition on your part without evidence, and dismissed as such. First Nations Peoples have not historically been treated equally. Where is YOUR evidence that they have?
fakeemailaddress
… And then I read your first sentence in @30 again:
“Everyone is actually being treated equally”? You are so full of bullshit.
And I’ve decided that you can just fuck right off.
To everyone who is talking about the Trains being less safe;
listen fuckbuckets, Lack Megantic happened BECAUSE THE FUCKING COMPANY IGNORED THEIR FUCKING SAFETY OBLIGATIONS.
not because trains crash more.
because the companies skimped on their obligations to have safe train transportation of dangerous substances, then didn’t get penalized for it.
I’m sure that a pipeline, with the same stringent safety regulations in place, will be perfecccttylllyyyyyy fine.
Fuckhead, there’s no issue with “perceiving this” as victimising Indians again. It’s clear that it does.
No, nobody is being treated equally.
If I steal a thousand dollars from you, and give it to Katie, and then make you and Katie both pay 10 bucks, I wouldn’t be treating both of you equally. As it stands, I’m making you pay 10 bucks but not Katie because I simply like Katie.
Try reading comprehension.
This is what I wrote:
Tashiliciously Shriked @ 36:
Oh yeah, sure thing. Especially here in NDakota, where we have one white governor who provides all the “oversight” of the oil industry here. No oversight committee, no regulations, no accountability, and zero limits on indemnification. One company got away with blowing up a derrick operator by being able to say they had no employees on site, ’cause they used a subcontractor. And OSHA lets them get away with everything. Sure, they micromanage everyone else to death, but big oil? Nope.
People here are stuffing their pockets, without one thought to the future. Great swathes of land have already been destroyed, it’s wasteland, no good for anything. Most people don’t seem to know where the fuck food comes from anymore. Well, we’re going to be growing a whole lot less here. And water? Oh man…
And to top it all off, we have people like fuckweaseladdress, who can spit out Canada’s “First Nations!” without understanding a damn thing about us Indians, ’cause you know, we’re just citizens like everyone else. Fuckin’ A. I need a drink. I wish I could have one.
Basically the oil pipeline is about privatizing profits and pushing the considerable negative externalities primarily to those who can least afford them and secondarily to everybody downstream the rivers Missouri and Mississippi.
Me @ 39
Clarification: Private gains and public losses as opposed to a necessity for the oil extraction to continue. The price of crude oil (ca $50/bbl) may at present be too low for profitability, but the price is bound to rise or oil will become an obsolete commodity.
fakeemailaddress@whatever:
The people of Quebec are pretty unified in hating pipelines. Lac Mégantic among us. Driving around, you see “non” signs all over the place with respect to pipelines and oil terminals. One major political issue right now is drilling on Anticosti island, which was OK’d by the previous government but which the current government wants to kill without paying the damages stipulated in the contract (that and anti-islamaphobia are about the only two things that I like about our current government).
The Fraser Institute (Canada’s answer to the Heritage Foundation) has an annual white paper about how important it is to build new pipelines, funded by the pipeline industry. Even in that white paper, they aren’t able to cook the numbers to make oil transport by pipe look safer than by rail. They note that fewer people are killed by the direct results of pipeline accidents, but pipelines leak a lot more (only a bit less than trucks).
Instead of investing hundreds of billions in pipelines and rail cars and oil drills and refineries, we could as a society put those investments in public transit and electric cars.