A banner protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline is displayed at an encampment near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016.
Advertisement
Even as the court ruled against the tribe, the US Government clearly saw the flaws in the Dakota Access Pipeline project.
Last Friday, a federal judge rejected a request from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to stop construction.
The Native Americans argued that the 1,172-mile pipeline project violates federal laws and would threaten drinking water and disturb sacred sites.
The federal government ordered a halt to work on a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline in the Upper Midwest on Friday, handing a temporary victory to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other opponents of the project.Boasberg said he could not concur with claims by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that the government erred in approving the Dakota Access pipeline.
Construction on a segment of the pipeline in North Dakota was stalled after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a lawsuit challenging the federal permits for the project in July. This fall, the administration will initiate government-to-government consultations with tribal leaders about the need for nationwide reforms to the permitting process for similar projects.
In the statement, the agencies acknowledged “important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations”. He called the federal announcement “a attractive start” and told reporters that the dispute is a long way from over.
“Our message is heard, and it’s going to go a long way”, Archambault said.
“Everywhere in Indian Country, people are talking about this”, said Eid, who spoke by phone Saturday while on horseback during a parade at the Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, Arizona.
The tribe, which uses the Missouri River for its water supply, says allowing the pipeline to cross it just north of its reservation, near the campsite, would also destroy culturally significant lands nearby.
People rally on the grounds of the state Capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota, following a federal judge’s ruling in Washington denying a request by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline, a thousand-mile pipeline being built to carry North Dakota crude oil across four states to IL. “Having done so, the Court must nonetheless conclude that the Tribe has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here”.
In North Dakota, work has stopped on one section of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
The primary owner of the Dakota Access pipeline is Energy Transfer Partners. They also said they respect protesters’ rights to assemble and speak freely.
Arrests were made in Iowa at a landowners’ protest last week.
A week ago, protesters and construction workers clashed when, according to tribal officials, workers bulldozed sites on private land that the tribe says in court documents are “of great historic and cultural significance”. Since earning the title at a powwow earlier this year, she’s been traveling the world speaking out on topics like suicide prevention and now, the pipeline.
That sentiment was repeated by several other labor and business groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, North Dakota Petroleum Council, and Laborers District Council of Minnesota and North Dakota.
Brave Bull Allard says nobody is leaving the Sacred Stone Camp, which has drawn thousands of Indigenous people from across Canada and the United States to stand in solidarity.
Advertisement
If the protests stall the pipeline’s completion, the big losers could be oil drillers in North Dakota.
