Photo: Joe Brusky (flickr)
Photo: Just Brusky (flickr)

by Sarah Nixon

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a new legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, on Feb. 13, requesting that a federal judge block the easement granted by President Trump through executive order on Feb. 8. This last-ditch legal effort comes after a failed attempt to acquire a restraining order against Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the pipeline construction. The restraining order was filed for immediately after President Trump granted the easement, but was denied soon after, on Feb. 13, spurring the filing of a new legal challenge.

Drilling to lay the final 1.5-mile leg of DAPL under Lake Oahe, however, has already begun. Spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners Vicki Granado confirmed in an email last week that the company “expect[s] to be completed in 60 days with another 23 days to fill the line to Patoka,” where Bakken crude oil from North Dakota will be refined for sale. This final leg of the pipeline is being laid less than a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, beneath the Lake Oahe portion of the Missouri River where the Sacred Stone camp has stood since Spring 2016.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, a prominent Indigenous activist from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, told the Leveller in a Feb. 18 interview that DAPL’s construction “is a classical case of environmental racism in the heartland of the United States, and everyone should be concerned about it.” Thomas-Muller also noted that the pipeline is “a piece of infrastructure that will hardwire our economy into the dirty energy economy” and push us “far past the Paris Accord’s 2050 goals,” referring to the Paris Climate Agreement goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050.

Meanwhile, officials with Energy Transfer Partners have attempted to discredit water protectors resisting the pipeline by characterizing them as “terrorists.” Executive Vice President Joey Mahmoud wrote of activists who shut off a handful of pipeline pumping stations in October, that “had these actions been undertaken by foreign nationals, they could only be described as acts of terrorism” in a testimony to congress on Feb. 15.

Yet, in regard to violent acts surrounding the pipeline’s construction, Chase Iron Eyes noted on Democracy Now, Feb. 8, that the record of the Morton County Police during the months-long resistance to DAPL “includes the brutalizations of a young woman named Sophia Wilansky. It includes the loss of eyesight of another young lady. It includes the permanent maiming by at-close-range deployment of less lethal bullets. It includes dog attacks. It includes water cannons in subfreezing temperatures, the negligent or intentional risking of human lives. It includes the lying — the Morton County law enforcement agencies lying about the criminal conduct.” In total, the Morton County police have made over 700 arrests in relation to pipeline protests, which Iron Eyes described as a peaceful, prayerful, nonviolent exercise of our human, treaty, constitutional and civil rights.”

Thomas-Muller warns that “it’s important to understand that this issue of Standing Rock is tied to so many other issues that are being disrespected and disregarded and agitated by the Trump administration policies,” and observed that “the circumstances are eerily similar to the geopolitics pre-World War Two Germany.” He went on to say that these geopolitics have “serious ramifications for our entire economy, our country, our security, and certainly that is magnified on vulnerable populations through Canada like Indigenous Peoples.”

Water protectors are continuing to fight against DAPL, calling for mass mobilizations worldwide. An All Nations March on Washington will take place on March 10. This will be to demand respect for Indigenous rights and climate justice, while “standing in solidarity against the tyranny of the Trump administration,” according to Thomas-Muller. Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dave Archambault also vowed in a recent letter that “[i]f DAPL is successful in constructing and operating the pipeline, the Tribe will seek to shut the pipeline operations down.”

In addition to rallies and direct action, other forms of resistance are also being pursued. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously to divest $3 billion from Wells Fargo on Feb. 7, as a means of retaliating against the bank’s role in funding DAPL. The City Council made the move by passing a Socially Responsible Banking bill, which stated that the city would not renew its contract with Wells Fargo when it expires in 2018, and enshrined other social justice principles for the city’s future investments and banking relationships as well.

Resistance to DAPL may spill over into opposition against the renewed Keystone XL pipeline project, after President Trump ordered its construction on Feb. 8. The pipeline, thought by many to be dead after Obama rejected it in late 2015 on the grounds that it would contribute to climate change, would carry Alberta tar sands oil south across the border to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect to other major pipelines. Prime Minister Trudeau has repeatedly expressed his support for the project. On Democracy Now, Feb. 14, Thomas-Muller explained that “the Trudeau government has prepared itself for a Standing Rock level of resistance.”

This article first appeared in Vol. 9, No. 5 (February/March 2017).