Free Republic

Watching the events and the court case surrounding the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, I appreciate that people are paying attention to any negative environmental impact an oil pipeline may have. At the same time, I cringe at the coverage and the absence of important factual information related to the pipeline’s legal permitting process. When I hear celebrities on the news claim the Dakota Access Pipeline is going through the heart of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s land, I expect the reporters to correct them. The media should tell us that the pipeline follows existing utility easements (including the existing gas...

On Monday, Native Americans conducted a forgiveness ceremony with U.S. veterans at the Standing Rock casino, giving the veterans an opportunity to atone for military actions conducted against Natives throughout history. In celebration of Standing Rock protesters’ victory Sunday in halting construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, Leonard Crow Dog formally forgave Wes Clark Jr., the son of retired U.S. Army general and former supreme commander at NATO, Wesley Clark Sr. This was a historically symbolic gesture forgiving centuries of oppression against Natives and honoring their partnership in defending the land from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In the latest development on the Dakota Access Pipeline, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that it will withhold the final easement under Lake Oahe needed to complete the project. This abrupt reversal of approval, given by the career environmental specialists, is deeply disturbing, particularly for the North Dakotans that will remain under threat of harm from protesters who will likely persist in the region for the foreseeable future. The action also sets a disconcerting precedent by an administration that appears willing to rewrite its own regulatory procedures to appease the protestors. The rule of law is the...

What the Dakota Access Pipeline Is Really About The standoff isn’t about tribal rights or water, but a White House that ignores the rule of law. Kevin Cramer A little more than two weeks ago, during a confrontation between protesters and law enforcement, an improvised explosive device was detonated on a public bridge in southern North Dakota. That was simply the latest manifestation of the “prayerful” and “peaceful” protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Escalating tensions were temporarily defused Sunday when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at the direction of the Obama administration, announced it would refuse to grant...

Federal officials have denied the final permits required for the Dakota Access Pipeline project in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineers announced Sunday it would instead conduct an environmental impact review of the 1,170-mile pipeline project to determine if there are other ways to route the pipeline to avoid a crossing on the Missouri River...

Meanwhile, it’s high time for a new slogan. Call it, ‘Save the Environment…from ‘environmental’ protesters and the U.S. Army Corps Engineers In yesteryears Hollywood got it right when it portrayed native people as being on to government authorities whom they described as: “two-faced” and wont to “speak with a forked tongue”. The governments of later generations may have fooled the masses with their doublespeak and campaign promises that melt like the snow in spring, but it’s all but impossible to fool a people who routinely faced the elements and followed herds to keep their families fed.

Gen. Weasley Clark’s Son To Lead Veterans’ Group To Protest Dakota Access Pipeline The son of retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark heads a veterans’ group committed to preventing law enforcement from evacuating Dakota Access Pipeline protesters. The group plans to arrive at the encampment Sunday.The group will supplement the few veterans who already arrived at one of the encampments earlier in the week and and demanded that law enforcement lay down their firearms.Wesley “Wes” Clark Jr. and former U.S. Marine Michael Wood Jr. lead Veterans Stand for Standing Rock. Clark’s father was also a 2004 Democratic presidential primary...

The hardware store chain said a statement circulating on social media indicating it had stopped selling products to protesters had been “manipulated.” Despite social media reports and rumors to the contrary, Ace Hardware says that its stores have not stopped selling supplies to people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Protests in North Dakota have been ongoing for months.

Perhaps significantly advancing the time frame designated in the Army Corps of Engineers’ notice several Standing Rock Camps would face some form of eviction on December 5, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple opportuned an incoming winter storm to issue a mandatory emergency evacuation order — for all encampments north of the Cannonball River. Although the evacuation appears not be one of force, it is obligatory — all water protectors camping in Army Corps-managed land have been ordered by Dalrymple to take all possessions and vacate the area. “These persons are ordered to leave the evacuation area immediately, and are further...

The veterans will be joined by Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic representative from Hawaii, who has developed a positive reputation among Republicans and Democrats alike. "Next weekend, the congresswoman will be joining thousands of veterans from across the country to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota who are protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through their tribal lands, with grave concerns about the contamination of their major water source,” Gabbard’s Press Secretary Emily Latimer confirmed in an email to the Observer.

Tension is brewing within the Dakota Access protest as complaints grow about outside activists trashing the camps, mooching off donations, and treating the anti-pipeline demonstration like a Burning Man-style festival for hippies. “Need to get something off my chest that I witnessed and found very disturbing in my brief time there that I believe many others have started to speak up about as well. White people colonizing the camps,” said Alicia Smith on Facebook. “They are coming in, taking food, clothing etc and occupying space without any desire to participate in camp maintenance and without respect of tribal protocols,” she...

Native Americans protesting the construction of the 1,200-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline: quit throwing rocks at police; stop setting cars ablaze; discard your “Children Don’t Drink Oil” signs—and join your fellow brothers and sisters in making America great again. “We don’t have weapons. … We are looking out for … the children who are not even born yet,” Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II said to defend his 10,000-member tribe’s use of violence, aggression and disorderly conduct to protest the construction of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline. No weapons? “A line of sheriff’s officers retreated in the face...

Third-party presidential candidates have participated in acts of civil disobedience, risked arrest, been arrested and been jailed with some frequency over the past 150 years. So the fact that Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein faces misdemeanor criminal charges in North Dakota stemming from a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline is hardly unprecedented. But it is politically significant. https://www.thenation.com/article/there-is-an-arrest-warrant-out-for-jill-stein/

The public land where hundreds of protesters have been camping out as they protest construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline will be closed on December 5th. That announcement was made in a letter sent by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe on Friday. The Associated Press reports: The letter, provided by the tribe, says: “To be clear, this means that no member of the general public, to include Dakota Access pipeline protesters, can be on these Corps lands.” It says anyone on land north of the river after Dec. 5 will be trespassing and...

Before traveling, Sheriff Champagne admitted he had the wrong impression about the pipeline based on what he called sensational news reports that the pipeline was to run directly through the Standing Rock Reservation and disturb ancient burial grounds. "I quickly learned and saw for myself that this was untrue." Upon his return to Louisiana, Sheriff Champagne shared his North Dakota experience in a lengthy post to his Facebook page. The full post has also been transcribed below.

North Dakota officials are encouraging hundreds of Dakota Access oil pipeline protesters to respect a directive to leave a sprawling, months-old encampment on federal land. According to Standing Rock Sioux tribal leader Dave Archambault, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent him a letter Friday that said all federal lands north of the Cannonball River will be closed to public access Dec. 5 for “safety concerns,” including the oncoming winter and the increasingly contentious clashes between protesters and police. The Oceti Sakowin camp is on Corps land in southern North Dakota and is where the vast majority of the several...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—With the help of celebrities and professional activists, protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota attracted international attention. The shouting and violence have drawn sympathy from people who are hearing only one side of the story — the one told by activists. Were the full story to be heard, much, if not all, of that sympathy would vanish.

A director at a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. said on Tuesday that white privilege and white supremacy led to the Energy Transfer oil pipeline project that includes land in North Dakota, and compared it to building a pipeline under Arlington Cemetery and across the Potomac River. […] Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project, first quoted David Archambault, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, who has said the pipeline would harm burial grounds and threaten the water of Lake Oahe, the location of a Sioux ancestral site. […] “The equivalent, we might think,...

Right now a major energy and environmental fiasco is playing out over the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). This 1172-mile pipeline, when completed, will move 470,000 barrels of oil per day from the production fields in the Bakken and Three Forks regions of North Dakota to refineries and terminals located in Patoka, Ill. Originally, the case was a legal dispute... ...the case should have been over... ...Two major interconnected issues have surfaced. The first is that the SRST and its allies have sought to turn the entire dispute into a re-examination of the entire history of the troubled...

Tear gas, freezing cold water and rubber bullets were used to disperse a crowd of 400 protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in clashes late Sunday and early Monday that left more than 150 activists and one law enforcement officer injured.