Sioux Blk Hills
history see uber1
https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-1064
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see standing rock dapl
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Y MAIL 3? 26
Despite community outcry to stop the project, the Black Hills National Forest just issued a permit to drill for graphite at Pe’sla -- a Lakota sacred place within the Ȟe Sápa, known in English as the Black Hills, and a place of ceremony and prayer for thousands of years.
This violates the treaty rights and religious freedom of the Oceti Shakowin, the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples.
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Trump and First Lady Melania Trump planned to visit Mt. Rushmore National Memorial on Friday for a Fourth of July celebration that was expected to draw an estimated 7500 people. When Julian Bear Runner, president of the Ogala Sioux Tribe, appeared on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” on Thursday night, he explained to host Lawrence O’Donnell why he believed the president’s plans for the event were disrespectful of Native Americans.
“I sent out a letter today to Mr. Trump advising him and stating reasons why he is not permitted to enter the treaty territory at this time due to the lack of consultation with the sovereign leaders of the Great Sioux Nation,” Runner noted. “There’s been no correspondence from his staff or himself to ever attempt to sit down, diplomatically, with the leaders of the Great Sioux Nation to obtain that permission or to contingently seek a plan on how to go about his Independence Day celebration. Right now, for me, it’s very hard for me to remain diplomatic in times like this due to the lack of consultation.”
Runner went on to tell O’Donnell, “My people, it is in our DNA to fight for these lands, to defend these lands — and to protect what is sacred. And Mt. Rushmore is carved on one of our most sacred mountains within the Black Hills, and the people are angry. All I can do as a leader is stand back and support them.”
In addition to criticism from Runner, the event has drawn criticism from health experts who are warning that an event of that size should not be held at a time when coronavirus is infecting so many Americans. AN
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ew 1119
Oct. 11 people around the world celebrated the release of four plains bison onto a snow-covered butte in Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
Their large, chocolate brown bodies were in beautiful contrast against the park's snow-covered sagebrush, hills, and canyons. This was the first time that the species had set hoof in this area since 1877. For wildlife fans and the U.S. national mammal it was a homecoming long overdue. For tribal community members who were there to witness this important moment, the significance was immense for much deeper reasons.
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omfg
no lnx vid
https://www.indianz.com/News/2019/04/04/native-sun-news-today-trump-once-again-p.asp
Native Sun News Today: Trump once again pushes Keystone XL Pipeline on Indian Country
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Holding on tight as Trump boosts KXL Pipeline
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today Health & Environment Editor
nativesunnews.today
MISSION - As the Rosebud Sioux Tribe celebrated the fifth anniversary March 29 of founding its spirit camp to protect nature from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, U.S. President Donald Trump advanced the Canadian tar-sands crude-oil slurry project by revoking its stalled State Department permit and issuing a fast-track executive proclamation.
“Today we celebrate the day now recognized as a Rosebud Sioux Tribe Official Holiday and we continue the original prayer as we remain steadfast, Shielding the People - Oyate Wahancanka Woecun,” the Rosebud Spirit Camp announced, inviting the public here to a feast and dance “to give thanks for the continued success of the original prayer.”
Just hours later, Trump signed a memorandum declaring: “By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States of America, I hereby grant permission … to TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. to construct, connect, operate, and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada at Phillips County, Montana, for the import of oil from Canada to the United States.”
If unopposed, the order would allow construction to go forward despite a federal court suspension of the State Department Presidential Permit, requiring further study before approval.
indianz.com
@indianz
President Trump is attempting to circumvent the judiciary by approving the Keystone XL Pipeline without a full environmental review of concerns raised by Indian Country. #NoKXL statement from the Indigenous Environmental Network:
The Indigenous Environmental Network responded by calling the order “an attempt by the President to bypass federal environmental laws.
“In defense of the sacred and the protection of indigenous peoples, we will continue to fight this pipeline, even if that means further legal action against the office of the President of the United States,” the Bemidji-based non-profit alliance said in a written statement.
Trump’s document professes to be an instrument that “supersedes” the State Department’s Presidential Permit issued March 23, 2017. However, the earlier permit applied to the full length of the segment of the pipeline that remains to be built through unceded 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
If completed, the Keystone XL Pipeline would carry diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from the tar-sands mines of the Athabascan homelands in Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast refineries and export terminals.
The memorandum only covers construction at “border facilities,” consisting of a 36-inch diameter pipeline extending from Canada “to and including the first mainline shut-off valve in the United States,” located approximately 1.2 miles from the international boundary.
Oyate Wahacanka Woecun: #NoKXL #NoDAPL #WeAreProtectors
The announcement came as tribal governments and ranchers along the route were struggling to survive monumental spring storm runoff that is creating mud plains and stranding residents for weeks.
“In the face of historic flooding in Nebraska and South Dakota, the Trump Administration issues another proclamation attempting to shove a risky tar-sands pipeline down the throats of farmers and ranchers currently facing devastation,” said Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska founder.
The past Administration had denied the Presidential Permit to build into the United States and Trump overturned that with the flourish of a pen during his first week in office, as promised on the campaign trail.
“Instead of helping the heartland, Trump is driving a stake through the hearts of family farmers and ranchers and tribal nations who are trying to protect the land and water from a foreign oil pipeline,” she said in a written statement.
The White House action followed the announcement one day earlier of a lawsuit against the state of South Dakota for Gov. Kristi Noem’s recently approved Riot Busting Act, so-called after she coined the phrase “riot busting” in drafting the measure she said was aimed at avoiding costs to the government for conflicts the Keystone XL project is anticipated to engender.
The act says that “anyone that contributes to a protest, whether through monetary donations, donations of supplies, or even through organizing a page on social media, can be held liable, and have civil and criminal penalties for supporting a protest that the state deems violent,” plaintiffs claimed.
“Individuals or organizations that support a protest don’t even need to be on the ground or physically present at the protest to be held liable,” plaintiffs added. Also under the law, TransCanada Corp. could use money obtained from protesters and organizations to promote pipeline construction,” they alleged.
“Gov. Kristi Noem's legislation is yet another way to promote Big Oil interests and prevent dissent by making protesters subject to legal action,” said Kim Pate, vice-president of NDN Collective. Cherokee and Choctaw, Pate is an attorney with 25 years of experience in civil rights litigation.
“Protests and other forms of dissent are protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. If we don't fight this now, what's next? Silencing all speech to placate and enable corporate interests at all costs?” she asked. “Not on our watch.”
Joining her organization in the lawsuit prepared by the ACLU are the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and Dakota Rural Action, as well as Oglala Lakota’sDallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the NDN Collective.
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819 ew
A Nebraska court has granted a victory to the owner of the Keystone XL pipeline, removing one of the last major challenges in the project's way.
The state's Supreme Court on Friday ruled unanimously that the state's Public Service Commission had acted in the public interest in approving an alternate route for the pipeline in November 2017. Challengers to the project say that the approval of an alternate route did not include appropriate input from landowners and tribes, who filed a motion with environmental groups to intervene.
"The Nebraska decision to approve the KXL route is not a surprise, but we had hoped they would be courageous to protect the earth, water, and wishes of the indigenous people and our allies," Yankton Sioux member Faith Spotted Eagle said in a statement released by 350.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-the-women-of-standing-rock-are-building-sovereign-economies
nolnx
How the women of Standing Rock are building sovereign economies
Written by YES! Magazine August 24, 2019
For Sicangu Lakota water protector Cheryl Angel, Standing Rock helped her define what she stands against: an economy rooted in extraction of resources and exploitation of people and planet. It wasn’t until she’d had some distance that the vision of what she stands for came into focus.
“Now I understand that sustainable sovereign economies are needed to replace the system we support with our purchasing power,” she said. “Our ancient teachings have all of those economies passed down in traditional families.”
Together with other front-line leaders from Standing Rock, including Lakota historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and Diné artist and activist Lyla June (formerly Lyla June Johnston), Angel began acting on this vision in June at Borderland Ranch in Pe’Sla, the grasslands at the heart of the Black Hills in South Dakota. Nearly 100 Indigenous water protectors and non-Indigenous allies met there for one week to take steps to establish a sovereign economy.
The first annual Sovereign SistersGathering brought together women and their allies to talk about how to oppose the current industrialized economy and establish a new model, one in which Indigenous women reclaim and reassert their sovereignty over themselves, their food systems, and their economies.
“When did we as a people lose our self-empowerment? When did we wait for a government to tell us whether or not we could have health care? When did we wait for them to feed us?” Allard asked. “When did we wait for laws and policies to be created so that we could have a community? When did that happen?
“We’ve given our power over to an entity that doesn’t deserve our power,” she added, referencing the modern corporate industrial system. “We must take back that empowerment of self. We must take back our own health care. We must take back our own food. We must take back our families. We must take back our environment. Because you see what’s happening. We gave the power to an entity, and the entity is destroying our world around us.”
Allard, June, and Angel shared a bit about the work they’ve been doing to establish sovereignty, each in her own way, since the Standing Rock encampments.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard: Planting seeds
As the woman who established the first water protector encampment at Standing Rock—called Sacred Stone Camp—and issued a call for support that launched a movement, Allard learned a lot about sovereignty and empowerment during the battle against the Dakota Access pipeline.
As the camps began to dismantle in the last weeks of the uprising, she frequently fielded the question: “What do we do now?”
Allard’s response was simple: “Plant seeds.”
Planting seeds is what Allard has been doing since the Standing Rock encampment, as she’s worked with her neighbors and with those who stayed on at Sacred Stone Camp toward a vision of a sustainable community.
“Our first act is taking care of self. So no matter what we do, if we’re not taking care of self, we’ve already failed.”
“I tell people that our first act of sovereignty is planting food,” Allard said. “Our first act is taking care of self. So no matter what we do, if we’re not taking care of self, we’ve already failed.”
These days, self-care is more important than ever, she said, with the accelerating climate crisis, something that Native people are acutely aware of and have seen coming for a long time. “We’re not worrying—we’re preparing,” she said.
Sacred Stone Village has installed four microgrids of solar power and have two mobile solar trailers used to connect dwelling areas that can also be taken on the road for trainings, and the neighboring town of Cannon Ball has opened a whole solar farm. They’ve been planting fruit trees and growing gardens, fattening the chickens, stockpiling firewood. And in some ways, life on the reservation is already a preparation in itself.
“On the Standing Rock reservation, as you know, we are below poverty level, and many of the people live by trade and barter. A lot of people live in homes without electricity and running water. We burn wood to heat our homes,” Allard said. “What I find in the large cities is people who don’t know how to live. And their environment—if you took away the electricity and the oil, what would they do? We already know how to live without those things.”
Lyla June: The forest as farm
A Diné/Cheyenne/European American musician, scholar, and activist, June has gravitated toward a focus on food sovereignty through her work to revitalize traditional food systems. Currently, she’s in a doctoral program in traditional food systems and language at the University of Alaska, where she works with Indigenous elders around the country to uncover the genius of the continent’s original cultivators.
“I think there’s a huge mythology that Native people here were simpletons, they were primitive, half-naked nomads running around the forest, eating hand to mouth whatever they could find,” she said. “That’s how Europe portrays us. And it’s portrayed us that way for so many centuries that even we start to believe that that’s who we were.
“The reality is, Indigenous nations on this Turtle Island were highly organized. They densely populated the land, and they managed the land extensively. And this has a lot to do with food because a large motivation to prune the land, to burn the land, to reseed the land, and to sculpt the land was about feeding our nations. Not only our nations, but other animal nations, as well.”
June is intrigued by soil core samples that delve thousands of years into the past; analysis of fossilized pollen, charcoal traces, and soil composition reveals much about land use practices through the ages. For example, in Kentucky, a soil core sample that went back 10,000 years shows that about 3,000 years ago the forest was dominated by cedar and hemlock. But about 3,000 years ago the whole forest composition changed to black walnut, hickory nut, chestnut, and acorn; edible species such as goosefoot and sumpweed began to flourish.
“So these people—whoever moved in around 3,000 years ago—radically changed the way the land looked and tasted,” she said.
The costs to the food system as a result of colonization is becoming clear.
So did the colonizers, but in a much different way. The costs to the food system as a result of colonization, she said, is becoming clear, and the mounting pressure of the climate crisis is making a shift imperative.
“When did we start waiting for others to feed us? That’s no longer going to be a luxury question,” June said.
Besides the vulnerability of monocrops to extreme weather events, these industrial agricultural crops are also dependent on pesticides and herbicides. Additionally, pests are adapting, producing chemical resistant insects and superweeds.
“We’re running out of bullets in our food system, and it’s quite precarious right now,” she said. “The poor animals that we farm are also on the precipice … so we’re in a state where we should probably start asking ourselves that question now, before we’re forced to, and remember the joy of feeding ourselves.”
That’s June’s intention: to take what she’s learned from a year of apprenticeships with Indigenous elders in different bioregions, then return home to Diné Bikéyah—Navajo territory—to apply it, regenerating traditional Navajo food systems in an interactive action research project aimed at both teaching and learning, refining techniques with each year.
“I’m hoping at the end of three years, or four years, we will be fluent in our language and in our food system,” June said. “And we will be operating as a team—and we will have a success story that other tribes can look to and model and be inspired by.”
The long-range goal, she said, is to create an autonomous school that teaches traditional culture, language, and food systems that can be a model for other Indigenous communities.
Cheryl Angel: Creating sovereign communities
To Angel, sovereignty is best expressed in creating community—the temporary communities created at gatherings, like at the Sovereign Sisters Gathering, but also more permanent communities, like at Sacred Stone Village.
Part of being sovereign lies in strengthening and rebuilding sharing economies, she said. And part of it lies in reducing waste, rejecting rampant consumerism and the harmful aspects of the modern industrial system, like single-use plastics and toxic chemicals.
“I saw it all happen at Standing Rock; everybody came with all of their skills, and they brought [their] economies—and they were medicating people, they were healing people, they were feeding people, cooking for people, training people, making people laugh—they were doing everything. Everything we needed, it came to Standing Rock.”
Despite the money the pipeline company spent to repress the uprising, she said, water protectors around the world stepped up and pitched in to create an alternate economy at Standing Rock, and millions were raised to support the resistance.
“We could do that again. We can gift our economies between each other. We’re doing it right here,” Angel told the women assembled in the Black Hills—women who were gardeners and builders, craftswomen and cooks, healers and lawyers, filmmakers and writers—and, above all, water protectors. “These few days we’ve been here prove to me and should prove to you that we have the skills to create communities without violence, without drugs, without alcohol, without patriarchy—just with the intent to live in peace.”
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https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/crook-county-wyoming
Crook County, Wyoming
Published:
November 8, 2014
The area that is now Crook County, Wyo. was once covered by a prehistoric ocean, as demonstrated by sea-plant imprints and shellfish and shark fossils found in the area. These fossils date back 110 million years to the Cretaceous Period. The water receded millions of years later, however, and just 13,000 years ago or so, people arrived—ancestors of today’s American Indians.
Petroglyphs dated from around 1,000 to 500 years ago show the presence of aboriginal people well before Europeans began settling in the area. Plains Indian tribes followed bison through the land and were largely unbothered by white settlers until 1811, when theWilson Price Hunt Expedition passed through on a fur-trading venture bound for Oregon.
:{
George A. Custer (left center in light clothing) and his military expedition to the Black Hills, 1874. William H. Illingworth, National Archives:{.:(style="font-style:inherit"):}::(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;display:block"):}::(style="margin:6px 20px 10px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;display:inline-block;float:left;width:480px"):}:Long-simmering tensions between Indian tribes and white people erupted into war in the:{ mid-1860s, when the U.S. Army built a string of forts to protect emigrants on the [Bozeman Trail, bound from the Oregon Trail toward gold fields of Montana. This route came north through what soon became Wyoming Territory, east of where Crook County is now.
Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux warriors drove the Army away and burned the forts in what became known as Red Cloud’s War. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 set aside the area east of Dakota Territory and south of Montana—parts of the Black Hills and the Powder River Basin—as hunting grounds for the tribes.
The treaty prohibited white settlers from passing through the area without explicit permission from the tribes. In the 1870s, rumors of gold in the Black Hills began to spread. The government originally ordered the U.S. Army to keep prospectors out, but many slipped through. Those who were not caught and killed by Indians brought back stories, largely exaggerated, of huge gold deposits.
In 1874, the government sent a large military expedition under
Government officials met with Lakota Sioux chiefs in May and June 1875 to attempt to purchase the Black Hills, but the Indians balked. The land was holy ground for them, and they refused to part with it.
On Dec. 8, 1875, Wyoming’s territorial legislature created Pease (later Johnson) and Crook counties out of the northeast fourth of the territory. It was still Indian land, however. Just four days earlier, the Legislature showed its true intent in a memorial—that is, a message—to the U.S. Congress. The memorial referred to the Lakota Sioux as “the blood-seeking brave … and his filthy squaw,” and urged Congress to open the land “to settlement and improvement” so that Wyoming could “become what her natural resources entitle her to be … a great and prosperous state …”
The act only created the county on paper, however; it would be nearly 10 years before a county government was organized.
In early 1876, meanwhile, the government ordered the tribes out of the Powder River Basin and the Black Hills and onto reservations in Dakota Territory and Nebraska. The tribes, however, refused to go without a fight, and this led to the 1876 and 1877 campaign against the Sioux, including the fights on the Rosebud on June 17, 1876, Custer’s defeat on the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, and the attack on Dull Knife’s village of Cheyenne on the Red Fork of Powder River on Nov. 24, 1876. The war concluded with Indian surrender in 1877 and relocation to reservations. Brig. Gen. George Crook, the county’s namesake, directed these campaigns.
As early as late 1876, some brave settlers entered Crook County and began staking mining claims and launching small ranches. Cattle driven north from Texas began entering the area, and with them came more ranchers.
Beulah, now on Interstate 90 two miles east of the Wyoming-South Dakota line, is considered the first settlement in Crook County. First known as Sand Creek, the area drew gold prospectors in the late 1870s. The 1876 rush that began in Lead and Deadwood, Dakota Territory, extended west toSand Creek, and while discoveries of the precious metal dwindled, the lush grass and plentiful water were enough to attract cattlemen to replace the gold-seekers who left.
Sundance, Wyo., was named after the adjacent Sundance Mountain, which was named in turn for the ritual ceremonies the Sioux performed on that sacred site. The town, founded in 1879, became the county seat when the county government was organized a few years later. A stage line connecting Spearfish, Dakota Territory and Sundanceestablished a relay station at Beulah, and Beulah flourished, with a hotel, saloons and a dance hall....
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3 yr anniv
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-1-2019/
estes
npr
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https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700013728/our-history-is-the-future-puts-standing-rock-in-broader-native-american-story
Modern Indigenous American history is a history of resistance. It's often assumed that Indigenous resistance to white settlers
and enterprisers is often considered an act of self-defense, when it was — and is — also a battle between starkly different value systems.
For the Oceti Sakowin, or Sioux Nation, resistance is not just based on a claim to land that invaders have sought to usurp and exploit; it's also about what "land" means. In Our History Is The Future,Nick Estes poignantly describes an idea of what land means from an Indigenous perspective:
"During the last ice age, massive glaciers carved up the land. After the ice retreated, it left rolling hills and tunneling valleys that became buffalo roads, where herds that once blackened the plains traveled during seasonal migrations to and from water. The buffalo followed the stars, and the people followed the buffalo."
In this scene, land means interconnectedness, humility before the sublime rhythms of the earth.
The book's primary purpose is to situate the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock in the broader story of Indigenous American resistance (specifically Indigenous people of the central plains) to land incursion and dispossession. And Estes succeeds more often than not throughout the book by balancing an emphatic but accessible tone with academic (but not too academic) scrupulousness.
He writes about Indigenous forms of resistance that resorted to force when necessary, and negotiation and the courts when possible, even if, in the end, all often proved futile. For the people of Standing Rock and Indigenous people more broadly, DAPL was yet another violation of sovereignty by outsiders with an entirely different notion of what land means. To white settlers and enterprisers by and large, land meant power and property and corresponding violence in the service of wealth, resulting in the widespread annihilation of Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
The book also provides specific historical context for notions of land and property that animated white settlers and enterprisers. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall articulated the precarious status of Native Americans in the 1823 decision, Johnson vs. M'Intosh. Estes relates that "Indigenous people, [Marshall] ruled, only possessed 'occupancy' rights, meaning their lands could be taken by powers that 'discovered' them: 'The Doctrine of Discovery'." To unpack this decision, Estes cites Onondaga international jurist Tonya Gonnella Frichner, who argues that the "newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian political identity and concept of Indian land that would open the way for the United States in its westward colonial expansion."
Estes deserves praise for having written a very well-paced, highly detailed, morally urgent book in which he keeps his eye trained on the profound injustice he catalogs, condemns, and portrays, really, as beyond immediate redress. Although he traces Indigenous resistance back to the first white settlers, his focus is particularly sharp in his recounting the resistance at Standing Rock, the central form of opposition around which the book makes its case. At Standing Rock, and in the history of Oceti Sakowin resistance, existential threat has permeated a broader struggle of ideas, it should be said, not sought out by Indigenous people, but, rather, thrust upon them.
Again, it comes down to what "land" means. Tasunka Witko, also known as Crazy Horse, once said "my land is where my dead lie buried." And Estes echoes this sentiment and its betrayal in the context of Standing Rock:
"Because Native people remain barriers to capitalist development, their bodies needed to be removed — both from beneathand atopthe soil — and therefore eliminating their rightful relationship withthe land."
For instance, the changing of the course of the DAPL by the Army Corps of Engineers was an early perceived affront to the dignity of Standing Rock's land and people. The Army Corps planned to shift the pipeline's course from upriver of the capital of North Dakota, Bismarck, to upriver of the Standing Rock Reservation, or Sioux County, where 47 percent of the population lives in poverty. Estes writes:
"In its environmental analysis, the Army Corps had concluded that the Bismarck path crossed a 'high consequence area', which meant that the spill would have an adverse effect. Not once did it mention Standing Rock, for which a spill half a mile upriver was of no consequence to the Army Corps."
In August of 2018, AP reported that in "its initial analysis of the Missouri River crossing that skirts the northern edge of the Standing Rock Reservation along the North Dakota-South Dakota border, the Corps studied the mostly white demographics in a half-mile (0.8-kilometer) radius, which the agency maintained is standard. But if the Corps had gone another 88 yards (80 meters) — not quite the length of a football field — the study would have included the reservation." There's a clear disparity of concern here, one could argue, and it's exceedingly hard to characterize it as a mere oversight concerning vulnerable people and their land.
The protests at Standing Rock eventually developed into a full-fledged city of sorts, with Indigenous people not just from the plains states, but from all over. It was an Indigenous utopia of resistance. Estes describes it as such:
"All one had to do was walk through the camp to witness that dream. Flag Row — a half-mile procession of more than 300 Indigenous national flags that lined each side of the road — cut through the heart of the camp. Starting at the north gate, where new arrivals checked in with camp security, it was the 'main drag' of the 'Indian city' — the tenth-largest city in North Dakota at its peak. Alcohol and drugs were strictly prohibited. Media were required to report to the media tent. No photographs of children, or of anyone, were permitted without consent. Nor was the recording of prayers or ceremonies."
This was not only a protest; this was a community of collective resistance and cooperation pitched against the forces of greed and exploitation. And it was, in Estes' words, "Indigenous generosity — so often exploited as a weakness — that held the camp together."
Our History Is The Futurepoints a way forward, with solidarity and without sentimentality, to an idea of Indigenous land alive with ancestry and renewal. Standing Rock is the model for the present, bound to the past, to reckon with the future.
Now, as the Trump Administration has reauthorized not only the Dakota Access pipeline but also the Keystone XL pipeline, Indigenous people, their water, their lives, are once more under direct threat — their land once again imperiled by forces more concerned with the land's uses than its meaning.
Though the resistance at Standing Rock is very recent history, it is also the future.
nick estes kpfa event mod dunbar-oriz 3/19?
Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
https://www.amazon.com/Our-History-Future-Indigenous-Resistance/dp/1786636727
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13072018/keystone-xl-pipeline-native-american-resistance-oil-spill-cheyenne-river-sioux-dakota-access-transcanada
The company building the long-contested Keystone XL oil pipeline notified the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in a letter this week that it will start stockpiling equipment along the pipeline's route this month in preparation for construction.
Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier sent back a sharp, one-line response: "We will be waiting."
The Cheyenne River tribe has opposed the Keystone pipeline since it was first proposed in 2008, and it has seen how pipeline protests can play out.
Just to the north of the tribe's land in central South Dakota, protests against the Dakota Access pipeline drew international attention as thousands of demonstrators established semi-permanent camps starting in the summer of 2016 near where the pipeline would cross under the Missouri river just upstream from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
The Cheyenne River tribe helped fight that pipeline, and it is in a similar geographic situation now—its reservation is just downstream from where the Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Cheyenne River.
Like Standing Rock, the tribe fears a tar sands oil spill from the pipeline could contaminate its waters.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/24/dakota-access-red-fawn-fallis-biased-jury-pool-pr-campaign
By Steve Horn and Curtis Waltman
As tensions rose at Standing Rock last fall, Red Fawn Fallis was one of many arrested at the scene of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) protests near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. However, her charges stood apart: Attempted murder of police officers, an indictment later dropped for lesser charges.
Still, the claim that Fallis shot at police has stuck in the minds of North Dakotans who may have to judge her culpability and is one reason she could not get a fair trial in the area, her lawyers argue. Attorneys for Fallis, a 38-year-old Oglala Lakota Sioux woman from Colorado, have posited that the case should be moved to a different federal court district.
Their argument, made in a pair of recent pre-trial motions for a venue change, revolves around the public relations campaign waged by law enforcement, private security, and public relations firms hired by Dakota Access owner, Energy Transfer Partners. That campaign was headed by firms such as TigerSwan, the National Sheriffs' Association, Delve and Off the Record Strategies, as reported by The Intercept and DeSmog.
The recent motions pushing for a venue shift cite as exhibits multiple documents and emails previously obtained and published by DeSmog and The Intercept, along with other law enforcement communications and media efforts.
The exhibits include two emails and a talking points memorandum written by the founder and owner of Off the Record Strategies, North Dakota native Mark Pfeifle, who led communications efforts for the Iraq War under the George W. Bush administration. These documents were previously covered in a story by DeSmog.
Credit: U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota, Western Division)
“This email shows active attempts to influence public perception of Water Protectors in media markets throughout North Dakota in collaboration with ‘DAPL folks’ utilized to reinforce law enforcement narratives,” reads one of the motion's footnotes about the Pfeifle communications. Many of those protesting the pipeline refer themselves as “water protectors.”
Though Morton County prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charge against her, Fallis still faces charges for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, civil disorder, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. She was involved in an incident in which she allegedly drew a gun on officers arresting her, while they subdued her on the ground, on October 27, 2016 at the protests against Dakota Access in North Dakota.
pix]
Fallis has pled not guilty to the charges and her supporters describe her as a pacifist, though in 2003 she was convicted of being accessory to an attempted first-degree murder in Colorado, which is a felony.
'Poison Their View'
Fallis’ legal team also points to recent surveys done by the National Jury Project in the counties housing the federal court district, which is based in Bismarck. The defense argues that those surveys — conducted in Cass County, MortonCounty, and Burleigh County — illustrate that a potential jury pool chosen in this federal court district could be heavily biased against its client.
“An attitudinal survey by the National Jury Project revealed that the vast majority of juror-eligible residents … have been exposed to publicity about the anti-DAPL protesters, have formed a negative opinion about the protests and the protesters, believe that the arrested protesters are ‘guilty,’ and cannot be fair and impartial if selected as jurors for the trial of a protester,” reads the June 16 motion for venue transfer.
The lawyers representing Fallis also make the explicit legal argument that the conduct of law enforcement and the role the media played in echoing its claims have made it nearly impossible to assemble an unbiased jury pool for the case going forward.
“Fallis has presented the Court with substantial evidence of massive, pervasive, and negative media reports, often generated by law enforcement, which have aroused negative community sentiment about the anti-DAPL protests [and] the protesters in general,” her legal team wrote.
“These stories and reports, together with personal citizen encounters with anti-DAPL protests and police activities and the resulting community involvement have, as evidenced by the [National Jury Project] attitudinal surveys conducted in Morton, Burleigh, and Cass Counties, so prejudicially impacted the prospective [jury pool] as to poison their view of protesters, including Fallis, and make it impossible for her to empanel a fair and impartial jury and thereby obtain a fair trial within the District of North Dakota.”
'Best Interests of Justice'
Grounding its legal argument in the 5th and 6th Amendments — a citizen's rights to due process, a fair and impartial jury, and a fair trial — Fallis’ legal team has said that a shift in venue would be in the “best interests of justice.”
According to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a defendant has the right to transfer his or her trial for prejudice “if the court is satisfied that so great a prejudice against the defendant exists in the transferring district that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial there.”
The survey results collected by the National Jury Project, contend Fallis’ attorneys, make the case for the trial being moved elsewhere under those rules.
“The NJP surveys found that as of mid-December 2016, approximately 75 percent of the juror-eligible population of Morton County and 77 percent of the juror-eligible population of Burleigh County stated that DAPL protesters who have been charged with crimes are probably or definitely guilty,” wrote Fallis’ attorneys on June 16.
“Moreover, approximately 88 percent of the juror-eligible population of Morton and Burleigh Counties indicated strong signs of prejudice by declaring one or more of the following: that they could not be fair and impartial jurors, that they had previously expressed their opinion that the arrested protesters were guilty, and/or that they thought that most of the protesters charged with crimes are probably or definitely guilty.”
Though the surveys never asked about Fallis specifically, respondents cited her case in answering a question about the potential guilt of protesters.
Credit: U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota, Western Division
Department of Justice Responds
On the contrary, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ responded on July 28 to the motion to shift venues. The federal government suggested that this issue could be resolved during the jury selection process when attorneys for both sides can eliminate biased jurors from the pool, in the standard court procedure known as the voir dire process. From there, if assembling a fair jury seems infeasible, then a motion for venue shift could still take place, argue the DOJ attorneys.
“A majority of people in Burleigh and Morton Counties were exposed to media coverage of the protest activities in general, but have had very little exposure to the incident involving the defendant in this case,” the DOJ argues. “It is not a due process violation for a court to seat jurors who have heard something about the case.”
The prosecutors also point to the 2001 U.S. Court of Appeals case, U.S. v. Blom, a ruling which cautions against venue changes except under “rare and extreme cases.”
“Because our democracy tolerates, even encourages, extensive media coverage of crimes such as murder and kidnapping, the presumption of inherent prejudice is reserved for rare and extreme cases,” reads the ruling in that case.
Further, the DOJ says these surveys have already been cited in a different state-level case (*North Dakota v. Kelli Maria Peterson* in Morton County) and unsuccessfully, while also arguing that many other juries have been seated on this topic in the area. The DOJ contends that other tools already exist to ensure an unbiased jury.
“[M]ultiple juries have been seated in Morton County, North Dakota cases arising from charges related to pipeline protest activity, some resulting in not guilty verdicts,” it wrote.
“There are many tools available to the Court to help ensure a fair and impartial jury, including: juror questionnaires; potential individualized voir dire; jury instructions; assembling a larger than normal jury pool; an increased number of peremptory strikes; and importing jurors from outside” the North Dakota federal court’s Western Division.
'Among the Strongest'
But Mykol Hamilton, a psychology professor at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and research director for the American Society of Trial ConsultantsFoundation, told DeSmog that the motion for venue change was “among the strongest” she had seen in her entire career and a “slam dunk” decision.
“The most important thing I believe is the percentage of people that already assumed she’s guilty. And those were really high in Bismarck where she is supposed to be tried and not that much weaker than in Cass County,” said Hamilton. “So the guilt, and then I’ve never seen a case with 100 percent recognition either. The closest I’ve come with the recognition factor is 97 percent, and usually it’s in the 70 or 80 percentages, and often that’s enough to get a change of venue,” she says, while also mentioning, “in a lot of different ways the survey shows the prejudices there, which is the central issue.”
Hamilton was quick to say that success “depends 99 percent on the judge,” who has the final say in the motion for venue change. She also noted that voir dire is not a foolproof measure, as her research shows that it often serves to intimidate potential jurors into suppressing their actual beliefs.
She has come to call this phenomenon “prehabilitation” in her scholarship, wherein a judge, and often the attorneys, will inform prospective jurors they must be fair and impartial, and that it is their duty to put their biases aside. Instead of having people open up about their thoughts and feelings on the case, helping the judge and lawyers understand who would make for a good juror, it intimidates prospective jurors into burying their biases, Hamilton argues.
The DOJ attorneys and press team declined to comment for this story, as did attorneys for Fallis.
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National Sheriffs' Association
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http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/321018-state-legislators-take-steps-to-criminalize-protests
Republican state legislators across the country are advancing bills that would criminalize or penalize some public protests just a month after millions of Americans took to the streets in opposition to President Trump.
In North Dakota, where protesters occupied land around an unfinished section of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, Gov. Doug Burgum (R) on Thursday signed four laws that would stiffen penalties against protests. The measures increase sanctions for offenses related to riots and broaden the definition of trespassing, allowing law enforcement officers to issue citations and fines.
The new laws, passed under emergency provisions that allow them to take effect immediately, came just hours after a protest camp near the pipeline was evacuated.
Senators in neighboring South Dakota on Thursday passed a bill that would allow the governor to create a "safety zone" in emergency situations. Anyone who entered the zone would be fined.
Legislators who backed the measure specifically cited the Dakota Access project and possible protests against the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which will run through South Dakota. Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R), who sponsored the legislation, said it was needed to deter “professional agitators.”
“Certainly, the Keystone XL pipeline would be a likely prompt to these types of demonstrations,” Daugaard told reporters at a press conference last week.
Native American tribes objected to the legislation, which they say improperly targets them.
Minnesota lawmakers say cracking down on protesters who block access to highways is among their top priorities this legislative session. On Wednesday, two legislative committees voted to increase penalties for protests that block access and to make protesters liable for costs incurred by police responding to their demonstrations.
The Minnesota legislation follows protests against the shooting deaths of several black men by police. Those protests blocked roads leading to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Legislators in Indiana and Iowa have also considered bills to criminalize blocking streets during protests.
Arizona Republicans have introduced a measure to expand racketeering laws, which target organized crime groups, to include rioting. The bill would allow police officers to arrest and the seize the assets of those who organize protest events.
Civil libertarians say the measures are unconstitutional overreactions to a historic era of protests.
“Robust protest activity is a sign of the health of our republic. Our democracy is literally designed for citizens to get out in the streets and make their voices heard to their legislators,” said Lee Rowland, a senior attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.
“To see legislators in these states make it a priority not to listen to the voices of their constituents, but to silence them, is deeply troubling and fundamentally un-American.”
One measure in Tennessee goes so far as to give civil immunity to a driver who hits a protester blocking traffic.
The legislation, sponsored by state Rep. Matthew Hill (R), comes after a car hit volunteers helping protesters cross a street in Nashville as they demonstrated against the Trump administration’s orders blocking immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Hill’s measure passed its first test in a state Senate committee earlier his month. Hill did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
A similar bill failed in the North Dakota legislature earlier this month.
Republican-led legislatures in Michigan and Virginia have already rejected their own measures increasing penalties on protests.
Rowland, who has been following state legislatures for about a dozen years, said the measures represent a “fairly unprecedented level” of action against protestors. The wave of bills come after high-profile protests including the Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Women's March on Washington, which took place the day after Trump’s inauguration.
The women’s march drew more than 3 million participants in cities across the nation. It attracted more people to Washington’s subway system than Trump’s inauguration, the city's transit authority reported.
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http://thefreethoughtproject.com/navajo-water-supply-horrific-flint-cares-native-american/
hmm
he news out of Flint, Michigan brought the issue of contaminated drinking water into sharp focus, as it was revealed that officials at every level—local, state and federal—knew about lead-poisoned water for months but did nothing to address the problem.
Under state-run systems like utilities and roads, poorer communities are the last to receive attention from government plagued by inefficiencies and corrupt politicians. Perhaps no group knows this better than Native Americans, who have been victimized by government for centuries.
In the western U.S., water contamination has been a way of life for many tribes. The advocacy group Clean Up The Mines! describes the situation in Navajo country, which is far worse than in Flint, Michigan.
Since the 1950s, their water has been poisoned by uranium mining to fuel the nuclear industry and the making of atomic bombs for the U.S. military. Coal mining and coal-fired power plants have added to the mix. The latest assault on Navajo water was carried out by the massive toxic spills into the Animas and San Juan rivers when the EPA recklessly attempted to address the abandoned Gold King mine.
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