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Trahant Reports: Standing Rock Wins Court Case
The story of Standing Rock has always been about the water and the treaty rights of tribes. Now a federal court agrees with that interpretation. The next chapter of the Standing Rock story begins. (Trahant photo)
The story of Standing Rock was supposed to be over and done. The pipeline was completed. Oil is flowing. And the Water Protectors have moved on.
But Standing Rock is a story that won’t go away. And for many good reasons.
This is Trahant Reports.
Last week a federal court ruled in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Tribe in their complaint against the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s not yet clear what impact that ruling will have, except this, the tribes won. That means all the players will have to pay attention to their concerns.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote that the tribes have a special relationship with Lake Oahe. When that lake was built by the Army Corps of Engineers it took 56,000 acres of some of ‘the best land’ from Standing Rock as well as 104,420 acres from Cheyenne River’s trust lands. Standing Rock tribal members rely on the lake’s waters to service ‘homes, a hospital, clinics, schools, businesses, and government buildings throughout the Reservation.’ The lake is also the primary source of water for the Cheyenne River Reservation. The judge said: Both tribes consider the waters to be ‘sacred’ and ‘central to their practice of their religion.’
In other words, water is life.
The ruling also reaffirmed the treaty relationship between the United States and the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River nations. The judge said the government has an obligation to work with the tribes. One way to make that happen, he said, is “early involvement” and that means the tribal government is given an opportunity to comment on a proposed action in time for a meaningful decision.
That did not happen. So what now? There will be a continued legal back and forth. And a remedy will be proposed. Some rulings will favor the tribes, others the pipeline company. And perhaps there will be a new Environmental Impact Statement.
But most important the two tribes basic arguments about Treaty Rights are now given the respect that is deserved.
This is the ideal moment for the Dakota Access Pipeline partners, the state of North Dakota and Morton County, to reassess. This is that moment when mutual respect can earn its way back into the conversation.
I’d start by ending the criminal prosecution of water protectors. It’s excessive and clearly an affront because it disrespects the right of a free people to dissent. There is nothing to be gained by sending hundreds of people to jail.
This could also be that moment where the state uses the court’s action as a call to re-negotiate. All parties could really listen to each other and see if there is a way to move forward. Together.
This could be a great next chapter to the Standing Rock story instead of more of the same.
I am Mark Trahant.
Is the battle at Standing Rock over?
Trahant Reports – Standing Rock pipeline actions & reactions
The Trump administration has been in office for less than a month — and already the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline is once again proceeding. Company officials say oil will be flowing by June.
This is Trahant Reports.
There is a flurry of activity around the Dakota Access Pipeline. The project has cost more than $3.8 billion to transfer oil from North Dakota to markets in Illinois and beyond.
Yet every action to build the pipeline is met with many more reactions to stop it.
The fight about this pipeline — and the broader issues it represents — is far from over.
Of course some days it does not seem that way. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the final easement for the pipeline to cross under the Missouri River and complete the project.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said if the construction is successful “the tribe will seek to shut the pipeline operations down.” IT has also called for a march in Washington, DC, on March 10th.
Then President Trump lives in a world where none of this is a big deal. “I don’t even think it was controversial,” he said. “I haven’t had one call.”
Of course the White House wasn’t taking calls.
So the Center for Investigative Reporting and its Reveal News has created a phone number to solicit voice mails from the public about what they would tell the president. (It’s 510-545-2640). This is your opportunity to sound off.
Another challenge is a financial one. Many individuals, tribes, cities, and companies are pulling their money out of the banks that finance the Dakota Access Pipeline.
But that’s really just the beginning. Rebecca Adamson, founder of First Peoples Worldwide, points out to investors how much capital they are losing by investing in companies that operate without the consent from the community involved. She pegs this as a real cost, somewhere between $20 million to $30 million a week.
Just look at how much money has been wasted on law enforcement at Standing Rock and you get a sense about how big a number that could be. Clearly it’s better to partner with tribal communities.
I also have a big idea.
So we know the project will take some 60 days to complete. And about three weeks to actually transfer oil from North Dakota to the end of the pipeline.
What if on that day, the day the oil reaches markets, there is a Day Without Oil? One day. It will take a massive organizational effort. But why not? What if every ally of Standing Rock, every community that has its own Standing Rock, everyone who is concerned about water, just takes a day off from oil? Either walk every where that day — or just stay home. Do what it takes to remind the companies, and the government itself, who’s really in charge of the economy.
I am Mark Trahant.
Beyond Standing Rock: pipelines crisscross the nation
What’s next for Standing Rock
Trahant Reports – Standing Rock Win
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The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has defied history. This is Trahant Reports.
Nearly two years ago the Dakota Access Pipeline and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the tribe about an inevitable pipeline that would cross near their reservation and within treaty lands. The tribe objected. But it was inevitable. A done deal.
But the tribe, and its allies, had a different idea. There was a lot of prayer — as well as direct action by Water Protectors putting the company and the state of North Dakota on notice.
But the Dakota Access Pipeline’s owners and the state has ignored tribal concerns. Why should the project stop? It was inevitable. A done deal.
One example of that thinking was an extraordinary exchange before the U.S. Court of Appeals, where the company admitted that the process was incomplete. Judge Thomas B. Griffith asked: “Why not wait until you see whether you’re going to get the easement?” asked Judge Thomas B. Griffith. “To a neutral outside observer, it looks like you’re forcing their hand … So it’s a gamble. You’re gambling you’re going to win.”
That gamble blew up Sunday night. On the same weekend when thousands of veterans showed up to support Standing Rock, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it will not grant an easement under the Missouri River. And the corps will now require an Environmental Impact Statement for at least part of the project.
So what now? Energy Transfer Partners said Sunday night: “Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way.”
So here we go again. Inevitable. A done deal. If only the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Tribe, hundreds of other tribes, and people from across the planet would not have got in the way.
But no energy company can roll over a community that’s united.
Second, President-elect Donald J. Trump can revisit this issue. He probably will. But it will not be easily undone. I have been writing for months that President Obama would likely take this action but it had to be done in concert with the federal agencies involved. A president’s power is not absolute.
Third, and most important, this is a moment when North Dakota can tell the world what it really wants to be. The timing is ideal for a new beginning, a spirit of reconciliation. The state should get serious about an environmental impact statement, a smarter route, work with the tribes, end prosecutions, and pardon those who are in the criminal justice system. Even better: Take one more step and build bridges by investing in the Standing Rock neighborhood.
This whole pipeline encounter was a better story for the 19th century and not the 21st. It represented the total breakdown in communications between the tribes and the State of North Dakota. There’s now a path toward the healing that needs to occur. And that is what should be inevitable. A done deal.
I am Mark Trahant reporting.
Trahant Reports – Dangerous Phase Begins At Standing Rock
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A dangerous moment at Standing Rock.
This is Trahant Reports.
A line of trucks and commercial vehicles on North Dakota’s Highway 6 Saturday was a speeding train. One vehicle after another. Traveling too fast and too close. Then, still on track, the entire train turned left and began racing down a rural dirt road.
This is where the Dakota Access Pipeline is on a speedy timetable. As the company has testified in court it wants the 1,170 mile, $3.8 billion project up and running by January 1, 2017.
Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and several hundred people camped nearby are determined to slow down that train, protect the waters of the Missouri River, and ultimately, help the country begin the most important conversation of this era about energy, climate and survival.
And North Dakota is acting as the trustee for the company, using what it considers the powers of state, to make this project so.
How far will North Dakota go?
Look at where it has been. The state has been an ally instead of a referee. Helping to craft a regulatory approach that avoided regulation. There is this crazy notion that the company did everything it was supposed to do so leave them alone. Yah. Because the plan was to avoid pesky regulation. It’s so much more efficient to be governed by official winks instead of an Environmental Impact Statement.
How far will North Dakota go?
They’ve already tried intimidation, humiliation, and the number of arrests are increasing. Pick on protectors, elders, journalists, famous people, anyone who could make the state appear potent. The latest action is a road block on a state highway and the reclaiming of land that the tribe retained in its Treaty.
Action. Reaction. The idea of civil disobedience is that there are unjust laws (or in this case, rigged laws) and there are people willing go to jail to highlight that injustice. The state lost its moral claim when it moved the pipeline route away from its own capital city to near the Standing Rock Nation.
Again, the question is, how far will North Dakota go?
Is the state ready to arrest hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And then what? The illogical conclusion to that question is too terrible to think about.
Yesterday a call went out from the camps for more people. People who, as Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, are willing to get arrested. People who will interrupt their lives so that this pipeline will go no further. It’s a call to a higher law than the one that’s codified by North Dakota. And for every water protector arrested, there will always be someone else ready to be next.
How far will North Dakota go? The military-style law enforcement base at Fort Rice sends its message: Whatever it takes. And, yes, that’s frightening.
Except. There is an antidote to those fears. It’s found among the people at the Standing Rock camps who continue to use prayer as their status quo.
I am Mark Trahant
Who Tells the Standing Rock Story about What’s Next?
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It always amazes me how different people can look at the same set of facts and walk away with completely different impression. Then in four decades of reporting I have never seen a story with as wide a gulf as what’s occurring at Standing Rock.
This is Trahant Reports.
The government of North Dakota sees Standing Rock as a minor glitch in their rush toward more profits from North Dakota oil. And so many of the characterizations are written as if none of the top government officials — you know the governor, members of Congress, the state’s power structure — have ever been to the site that they know so much about. But that’s me being generous: They have not been there and they are clear about their intentions to never go.
That’s why this is a fight about story. And who gets to tell it?
The stories North Dakota Officialdom wants the public to believe are those of lawlessness, “sound science and engineering,” and an overzealous regulatory structure.
The first story is quickly erased by anyone who takes the time to travel to the camps. And it is the same with the second story, the debate about science and engineering, because that telling only works when you ignore climate science.
That leaves the third story, the one about an “overzealous regulatory structure.” Folks: This one is the whopper. The fact is that the Dakota Access Pipeline was designed to avoid federal regulatory oversight. The whole point was to make certain that there was no serious environmental assessment.
As U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote (in his decision against the tribe’s injunction): “A project of this magnitude often necessitates an extensive federal appraisal and permitting process. Not so here.”
Not so here. Three potent words that should wipe out the narrative of over-regulation.
So after one federal agency did not do its job, the Obama administration said take a second look. That is the so-called overzealous regulatory framework. After all: The company spent a nearly billion dollars before it had all of the permits required under even The Easy-peasy Regulatory Scheme.
Then the State of North Dakota and the Army Corps of Engineers have a rich history of rolling over tribes in this region, ignoring treaties, water law, and science, in order to build dams along the Missouri River. A generation ago, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash wrote these projects “caused more damage to Indian land than any other public works project in America.”
Except. Not this time. Easy-peasy is on hold.
I am Mark Trahant reporting.
Trahant Reports is brought to you by Kauffman & Associates, Inc., a Native American owned, woman-owned small business that has delivered innovative .solutions for government and commercial clients since 1990. KAI’s expertise spans diverse specialty areas, including public health, education, and economic development.
Trahant Reports – Standing Rock Water
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On Friday I tweeted: “What an extraordinary day, the federal government has a pulse.” The United States finally weighed in on what many of us believe is the most important issue in the country right now: The question of how this nation will address climate change.
This is Trahant Reports.
Let me back up. The Federal Government didn’t exactly answer that question, but it raised new ones in the Standing Rock dispute in North Dakota. The Standing Rock Tribe filed suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because the agency did not adequately consult with the tribe as required law. But last week a federal court ruled the Tribe had not demonstrated that an injunction was warranted to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Several minutes after the court ruling three federal agencies issued their own statement and required a review of the pipeline under the Missouri River and asked for a voluntary halt to construction near the reservation.
So what does this all mean? Well, there is a review of the pipeline crossing water — and that should lead to a larger question, how important are water resources in the era of climate change?
I suspect the oil and pipeline industry already knows the answer. A news release from the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now was gloomy in its assessment. “Should the Administration ultimately stop this construction, it would set a horrific precedent.” The industry says. And, quoting here, “We hope and trust that the government will base its final decision on sound science and engineering, not political winds or pressure.”
That is exactly where the country ought to start the conversation, using sound science.
The federal government’s best science comes from the U.S. Global Research Program. In its most recent report, it says “climate change does not occur in isolation. Rather, it is superimposed on other stresses, which combine to create new challenges.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline is such a challenge. The industry’s own promotions say this pipeline will move oil to markets faster; eventually moving 570,000 barrels a day. Instead of reducing consumption, it makes it easier and cheaper for Americans to have more.
Yet at the same time the United States has promised the rest of the world that we will slow down our use of fossil fuels. That will not happen with more, cheaper oil.
The Federal Government’s best science says we need to protect water as the most important resource on the planet. In other words: Water is life. And that’s not politics. It’s science.
I am Mark Trahant reporting.
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