Neil Young’s latest single is a jangly, shuffling folk-rock song that takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a vast oil duct under construction near Native American land in North Dakota. Tribal officials and Morton County law enforcement in North Dakota say construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land outside the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
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The pipeline goes through the Dakotas and Iowa to IL.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.78 billion United States dollars (approximately £2.90 billion GBP) infrastructure project that will transport around 450,000 barrels of domestically produced light sweet crude oil per day from the Bakken and Three Forks production areas in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, through a 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipe. Archambault told the commission that the pipeline violates treaty rights and the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Young isn’t the only singer using his platform to spread awareness of the Dakota Access Pipeline issue.
The video for the track shows images from the news, including recent protests of the oil pipeline.
International Indigenous Youth Council of Standing Rock and Oceti Sakowin Youth announced Monday that they had asked Sen. The protests have led to many arrests, Rolling Stone noted.
“This company has also used attack dogs to harm individuals who tried to protect our water and sacred sites”, he said, referring to the violent clash September 3 between protesters who broke through a fence onto the construction site and the pipeline’s private security personnel armed with guard dogs and pepper spray. The project, he notes, was approved without appropriate consultation with the Tribe.
Pipeline contractor Energy Transfer Partners has said multiple archaeological studies indicated there were no sacred sites along the pipeline route. Included in the court filing were the locations of these sites.
The pipeline has undergone raging arguments over the past month, most of it revolving around concerns brought up by Native American tribe Standing Rock Sioux.
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“Our nation is working to protect our waters and our sacred places for the benefit of our children not yet born”.
