Imagine planning a visit to the river that provides the water you played in as a child, the water your community drinks and the water that sustains the life around you. But, instead of being greeted by the rushing sound of water you’ve familiarized yourself with, you hear the loud clamoring of pipes and the buzzing of a drill piercing through concrete. Tall, orange signs remind you to “CAUTION” because you’re entering a construction zone, one that your family didn’t agree to.
This is what the Great Sioux Nation is battling against.
Just last month, thousands of Indians from several Native American tribes gathered at the Camp of the Sacred Stone. As the elders of the Great Sioux Nation sat in deliberation and prayer, everyone waited to hear a federal court decision about the $3.7 billion project set to build a pipeline through sacred territory.
Although three federal departments agreed to halt the construction while they “reconsidered the tribe’s concerns,” the win was only temporary. While the construction has been paused at one location, it continues elsewhere.
Today, protesters continue to gather near the construction sites, proclaiming, “It’s about our rights as native people to this land. It’s about our rights to worship. It’s about our rights to be able to call a place home, and it’s our rights to water.”
What is the Dakota Pipeline Project and why is it being built?
The Dakota Pipeline Project is, as the Energy Transfer website explains, a “new approximate 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline that will connect the rapidly expanding Bakken and Three forks production areas in North Dakota to Patoka Illinois.” And, according to the US Geological Survey, there is an estimated 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation.
The construction of the pipeline is meant to transport “domestically produced light sweet crude oil” from North Dakota to major refining markets in a more “direct, cost-effective, safer and environmentally responsible manner.” With this project, businesses can reduce the current use of rail and truck transportation by transporting 470,000 barrels of oil through the underground pipeline.
CNN reports that the project developer, Dakota Access, which is a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Crude Oil, says the “pipeline would help the United States become less dependent on importing energy from unstable regions of the world.” The business also argues that they are committed to monitoring the pipeline “24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year by full-time operations maintenance staff” to ensure safety.
In addition, the pipeline is estimated to bring $156 million in sales and income taxes and add 8,000 to 12,000 construction jobs. According to CNN, project developers say that the $2.7 billion project will “bring significant economic benefits to the region that it transverses.”
What’s wrong with the pipeline?
Protesters, including environmental and tribal groups, argue that the construction of the pipeline would damage scared cites, burial locations and ancestral lands, and a leak could contaminate the Standing Rock Sioux’s water supply.
The Missouri River supplies water for the Standing Rock Reservation’s 8,000 residents. Not only that, but as Nick Tilson of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota tells The Washington Post, “We know there are 17 million people downstream from us. The problem is bad for whatever community is near this pipeline. It’s not going to be if it breaks it’s going to be when it breaks.”
Unfortunately, as The Huffington Post points out, pipeline leaks are not unheard of. During the 2010 Kalamazoo spill in Michigan, oil leaked into the river for 17 hours before it was detected. And just last July, the Louisiana oil spill caused what Scott Eustis, coastal wetlands specialist at Gulf Restoration Network, calls a “toxic mascara across the marshes.” The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 1.3 million gallons of oil are spilled into U.S. waters from vessels and pipelines each year.
Additionally, Joseph Erbentraut from The Huffington Post argues, “All the pipelines’ leak detection systems are only set up to detect spills of greater than 2 percent [of their liquid]. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you have a pipeline pumping 470,000 barrels of oil every day, it is. These pipelines are often seeping or leaking in small places and we don’t have any way to detect them.”
But aside from the risk of water contamination, tribal leaders also proclaim that although the pipeline does not cross the reservation, “it traverses sacred territory taken away from the tribe in a series of treaties that have been forced upon it over the past 150 years,” The Washington Post writes.
What is happening with the protests?
These protests have been headlining the media for weeks as various tribes, celebrities, citizens and environmental agencies joined forces.
Inhabitat shares that a group of 30 environmental agencies, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, wrote a letter to President Obama demanding that he halt the project. Leonardo DiCaprio showed his support as he took to Twitter to encourage his followers to “take a stand.” Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein was charged last week for criminal trespass and criminal mischief after allegedly spray-painting a bulldozer with the words, “I approve this message.” And Senator Bernie Sanders recently appeared in front of the White House to rally against the construction of the pipeline.
According to The Washington Post, Sanders proclaimed, “I am calling for a full environmental and cultural analysis of the pipeline. When that analysis takes place, this pipeline will not continue.” He also pledged to help “end the exploitation of Native American people and the respect of Native American rights.”
Online, a Change.org petition to stop the construction has garnered over 310,000 supporters. Anna Lee, an inspirational 13-year-old member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, urges the public to understand the Missouri River’s importance.
Lee writes, “In Dakota/Lakota we say ‘mni Wiconi.’ Water is life. Native American people know that water is the first medicine not just for us, but for all human beings on this earth.”
