The decision to run the so-called Dakota Access Pipeline through Sioux sacred lands, some of it formerly awarded to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe by US treaty, but later stolen from them, stands in stark contrast to an earlier decision to reroute it from a planned Missouri River crossing point near North Dakota's capital city of Bismarck. There, protests by the local (white, middle-class) public forced a rethink by the companies behind the pipeline, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. They decided to alter the planned route to run it through Indian territory instead.
The Standing Rock Tribal Council has called on President Obama to put a halt to this dangerous and obscene project, suggesting that as president he has the power to declare the crossing site a National Historic Site, thus protecting it from such defilement. The president, of course, could also look at the local Sheriff's repressive and and violent tactics against an Indian people, and simply federalize local National Guard troops, ordering them to force local police to stand down instead of follow the Republican governor's orders to participate in the repression.
That he hasn't already done so speaks volumes about this president's lack of courage and of principle. In 2014, President Obama visited the Standing Rock Sioux, and acknowledged their centuries of abuse by the US government. Now, however, that abuse is occurring on this president's watch, and incredibly, despite the extent of the violence, he has done nothing to stop it.
It's time for all decent Americans to take a stand in support of the Sioux People of Standing Rock. Contact the White House at 202-456-1414 and demand that the president send troops to stand between Sioux water protectors and their local law-enforcement assailants, and to have Federal Marshals arrest those who commit acts of brutality.
The militarized response to peaceful protest at Standing Rock should stand as a warning to all who would protest America's slide into totalitarianism. What the government will do to Native Americans and their Anglo supporters today is what we can probably expect them to do to any of us who protest in this new Trumpian America.
The corporate media meanwhile, have been for the most part shameless and useless in this enormous conflict between native people and the state. Even as local sheriff's deputies launched what appears to be building into a third Wounded Knee-style massacre at Standing Rock, the press keeps referring to a "confrontation" between protesters and law-enforcement, as though it is a battle being fought between equals. NPR yesterday ran with a story that referred to the Standing Rock challenge to the pipeline as "a magnet for activists."
The NPR reporter might more honestly have called it a "magnet for police" since many of the "law enforcement" thugs attacking the peaceful water protectors are volunteers from neighboring states' police departments -- people anxious for a chance to play "cavalry" in this latest iteration of American's murderous history of Indian Wars.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
