Earlier this month, the U.S. government paused construction on the pipeline to address the tribes’ concerns. “But the oil companies and the government of the United States have failed to respect our sovereign rights”, Archambault told the council. The tribes also have asked the company to, among other things, assure the more than 12,500 tribal members on the reservation that the pipelines are safe.
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“The Obama Administration has temporarily stopped the Dakota Access Pipeline’s illegal push toward contaminating Sioux water and its bullying tactics that deliberately desecrated Sioux Ancestors and a sacred place”, Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute and recipient of a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, stated in the release.
The Dakota Access pipeline project crossing through ancestral Native American land has been an ongoing issue since April.
In Geneva, Archambault and other tribe representatives met with two United Nations ambassadors – including Keith Harper, the USA representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council – and experts on indigenous rights.
Owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project would carry almost a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota’s oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets. Energy Transfer Partners’ willingness to proceed with the pipeline has produced a clear message.
That was on September 3, the day that Dakota Access employees bulldozed a two-mile-long, 150-foot-wide swathe in the exact spot that Standing Rock officials had said contained burial grounds and sacred items.
Next, North Dakota called out the National Guard and began arresting people for trespassing, including medics and reporters. “[The protest] hopefully will spread the message to people on campus, because there is not a huge Native American demographic here”. Those there call themselves protectors, not protesters. The department said 69 people have been arrested for “illegal protest activities” related to the pipeline, and Martinez is the last one in custody. Children and adults alike pressed painted palmprints into a paper banner reading, “NASU, SURJ, NALSA: We Stand with Standing Rock!”
Last week several federal government agencies suspended work on the construction of a small portion of the US3.8 billion-pipeline, pending a more thorough review. The Corps often is accused of “checking marks on a checklist and moving on with what the developer intends to do”, said Galanda. More recently, members of the group expressed solidarity the 14th with the North Dakota Standing Rock Sioux tribe as both take the same stance against the pipeline.
Along with environmentalists, the tribes say the 1,100-mile Dakota Access pipeline, being developed by Energy Transfer Partners LP, would threaten the water supply and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux.
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The Indian Law Resource Center is a non-profit law and advocacy organization established and directed by American Indians. He said the opportunity to address the world’s leading human rights body was “a historic moment” for the tribe.
