The land is restored after trenching and filling over the pipeline, but for the time being the animals do lose their homes and are forced to find somewhere away from the noise and construction.
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The record makes clear that the tribe persistently rejected the piecemeal approach to gain its cooperation, asserting that the whole of the pipeline be designated as an “undertaking” and involve tribal consultations.
“The 1,100-mile (1,770 km), $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline was originally expected to start up later this year, to deliver more than 470,000 barrels per day of crude from North Dakota’s prolific Bakken shale play through IL and toward refinery row in the U.S. Gulf Coast”, said Reuters. The project has been challenged for years by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe because of its fears that construction will disturb sites sacred to Sioux religious tradition.
Much of the oil that flows through the pipeline is from Continental Resources, whose CEO Harold Hamm is Trump’s energy adviser.
Democracy Now! reported on its websitethat an officer from the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation acknowledged in an affidavit that Goodman is seen in the video identifying herself as a journalist and interviewing protesters.
Many say they’re showing support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, backing that battle against the almost $4 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. But with its September 9 letter, the Obama administration could upend that arrangement, perhaps forever. Even more significantly, it recognized that the administration will revisit the whole way in which the government interacts with Indian Tribes on major projects like this one, as we have long advocated.
“There is no words for the experience I had up there”, said Poemoceah. The decision is curious in that it acknowledges the historic complicity of USA courts running roughshod over First Nations peoples; and contradictory in that this ruling is an example of that complicity, while at the same time telling a meticulous and powerful story of indigenous resistance and the fight against colonization. That ruling upheld a 1978 law giving the Sioux tribe a right to file new legal claims for compensation for the seizure of the lands of the Black Hills from them in violation of an 1868 treaty promising that the lands would remain theirs. “It’s definitely the largest gathering of tribes in our history”. Other federal laws also now are available to the tribes as they seek to protect their heritage, including provisions that govern the regulation of the nation’s waterways and the environment in general. The statement from the Justice and Interior departments and the Army acknowledged the “important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally”.
The company building the Dakota Access oil pipeline says it is removing damaged construction equipment from the area near a protest site in North Dakota. The group promoting the event, Unity of Boulder, said donations meant for the tribe will be accepted. The decision came soon after a federal judge ruled against the Sioux in a lawsuit that tried to stop construction.
But minutes later, federal officials ordered a temporary halt to construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land around and underneath Lake Oahe – one of six reservoirs on the Missouri River.
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“We are confident that a reexamination of the decisions leading up to this point will result in the protection of these sacred lands, and we welcome the opportunity to ensure that this never happens again”, Patterson said. Federal regulators halted work on Friday after months of prayers and demonstration at the Sacred Stone camp. Lake Oahe is a water source for the Standing Rock Sioux.
