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Treaty Law

January 29, 2023 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

https://wordpress.com/post/clean-water-is-life.com/60 If you scroll back to the early posts of this blog, you will find some of the histories of Standing Rock that I researched. It is always important to study the past, to fully understand the present.

Greetings, and I hope your year is off to a great start! We’ve got a good video for you to watch today. It’s the twelfth chapter of our Dakota Water Wars video series, produced, as always, by us in partnership with the Standing Rock Nation and Great Plains Water Alliance. In this episode, we detail some new threats to the Mni Sose — the Missouri River — and highlight the importance of respecting both our water and treaty rights.

Watch: Lakota Law Standing Rock Organizer Phyllis Young shares her studied perspective on treaty law and passion to protect our water rights and environment.

Here’s the bottom line: the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie granted the Lakota people stewardship of the Mni Sose. When the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) appeared in our homelands, it threatened both our sole source of fresh water and our way of life. Now, to make things worse, other entities have made plans to take water from the Missouri and pipe it to places far away, like Colorado, and nearby, like Rapid City and the Black Hills.

That last part is particularly troublesome. Mining interests in the Black Hills will use even more water than a municipality, and those mines threaten to despoil an area filled with many of our most sacred sites. Plus, sending our water away for use by extractive industries is the exact opposite of what we should be doing in the midst of a climate emergency. Right now, we have to mitigate carbon emissions, halt the warming of our planet, and responsibly allocate our water.

As you know, Indigenous cultures traditionally live in harmony with our surroundings, with care for all our relatives (not just the human ones). As we said during the heyday of our NoDAPL stand, and as we continue to say today: mni wiconi — water is life! When the 1868 treaty granted us the ability to protect the Mni Sose, the state of South Dakota didn’t even exist yet. So we won’t back down on this. We’re not going to let the state, or any other man-made entity, threaten or take our water without a fight.

Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with us!
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Dakota Water Wars

December 18, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

Greetings from Lakota Country, where two blizzards just dumped several feet of snow and knocked out power for many of our people. Here’s hoping you’re staying warm wherever you are! Of course, no matter the weather, we keep doing all we can to look out for our relatives — including our ongoing fight to end the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).

Winning this battle is critical. Just last week, we received news of yet another pipeline disaster. One month after the Keystone pipeline increased the amount of oil it’s carrying, it ruptured and dumped 14,000 barrels — or nearly 600,000 gallons — of toxic tar sands crude in Kansas. So today, we bring you the eleventh chapter of our Dakota Water Wars video series, co-produced by the Lakota People’s Law Project, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Great Plains Water Alliance. Give it a watch, and you’ll see how hard we fought to keep the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) from doubling its flow rate, and just how far the oil company went to downplay the potential consequences.

Watch: Standing Rock member Winona Gayton addresses the North Dakota Public Service Commission during a hearing on DAPL nearly doubling its capacity.

This latest Keystone spill — its third major leak in the past five years — is the second largest domestic pipeline incident ever recorded. It’s going to be nearly impossible to properly clean up, And, because Keystone is now carrying more oil, the problem is exacerbated. In our video (at the top of the blog, which also contains all the other Dakota Water Wars chapters), you’ll hear a lot about “worst case discharge.” That sounds bad because it is. The math says that when a pipeline inevitably leaks, it’s going to be worse the more oil it’s carrying.

If DAPL spills where it crosses the Mni Sose — the Missouri River — just upstream from the Standing Rock Nation, it will threaten everything we hold dear: our drinking water, our pristine landscape, plants and animals, our way of life. That’s why we gathered by the thousands in 2016 and 2017 to prevent DAPL. And given the danger from increasing the oil flow, it should be easy to understand why we rallied again in 2019 to stop the doubling of its capacity to more than 1 million barrels per day.

We cannot accept this illegal and dangerous pipeline (the Army Corps of Engineers still has yet to produce a valid Environmental Impact Statement for DAPL, as mandated by the courts). We won’t stop raising awareness about how it imperils both people and planet, and we’ll continue — with your help — to fight using every available method until the Black Snake is defeated once and for all.

Wopila tanka — my deep appreciation for your solidarity!
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Featured

On this day in 2016…

November 22, 2022November 24, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

I had arrived in Bismarck, North Dakota. Scroll back to the beginning of this blog and you can read about the history of events at Standing Rock. Some things have changed, many things have stayed the same. The things I witnessed there made me profoundly angry and sad. I saw militarized police practicing with their new gear how to do crowd control. I experienced racism and hatred from the local population in town. I witnessed how some people infiltrated the camp and tried to cause destruction from within the movement. They were largely unsuccessful because of the people´s spirit. This was a sacred space. I talked to the spirits one freezing night. It was those spirits that I called on for help last year while I was being held against my will in the COVID-19 ward in the hospital. Yes, after traveling to such a sacred place you experience the power of the spirits.

In 2017, I left the U.S. and moved to Costa Rica. The history is very different here. They do not have an army. I wish everyone a holiday season when they remember the spirits and their ancestors and fight to maintain their freedoms and way of life. A way of life that is non-destructive of the environment and other people. These are dangerous times.

California Solidarity

October 25, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

Han, Mitakuyepi. I’ll start by thanking every one of you who supported our Oceti Vote event this past weekend. Your friendship helped to create something very special — a successful Native voter outreach campaign and also a true celebration of our Lakota culture. Today we’re submitting the many voter registrations we gathered, and we’ll have a lot more to share with you once we’ve all had a chance to look back at everything.

In the meantime, I’d like to draw your attention to something important from our sister org, Let’s Green CA! They’ve created a solidarity action to protect the Juristac — the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, Indigenous People in what is now called Northern California. As Santa Clara County evaluates an environmental impact report on a proposed sand and gravel mining project, your input could help protect the sacred! So, because you live in California, today I ask you to stand with my relatives on the west coast of Turtle Island and tell the County: no mining at Juristac!

The Lakota People’s Law Project and Let’s Green CA! (which also just got a climate equity bill signed into law in California) take both environmental and Indigenous justice extremely seriously. The two are inextricably intertwined, because far too often, Indigenous communities wind up on the frontlines battling extractive industry which demonstrates no regard for Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth, nor for us as this land’s first inhabitants and stewards.

The Amah Mutsun Band’s fight to protect the Juristac from being torn asunder by miners sounds a lot like our fight to stop gold, uranium, and lithium mining in our sacred He Sapa — the Black Hills. Our relatives in so-called Nevada have a similar fight on their hands with the lithium mining at Thacker Pass. And then there are all the oil pipelines — Dakota Access, Keystone XL, Line 3 — you have helped us resist.

It’s critical that we continue to stand in solidarity with one another every step of the way, each time any project imperils Unci Maka and the future we wish to create for the next seven generations. By widening our circle, we increase our power. So, please do keep tabs on the good work of Let’s Green CA! and show your support by submitting a comment to protect the sacred at Juristac. Rest assured that together, we can and will continue to win justice — for Indigenous People and for our Grandmother Earth.

Wopila tanka — thank you for your friendship and solidarity!
DeCora Hawk
Field Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project

The War for Water

October 9, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

Hello again, and I wish you well on the eve of Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Now seems an appropriate time to examine some history. Until now, our “Water Wars” video series has largely explored the present-day conflict around the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). Today, I invite you to watch our tenth chapter — co-produced again by Lakota Law, Standing Rock, and the Great Plains Water Alliance — in which we explore more of what led to this moment in time. This edition highlights the decades of sacrifice forced upon tribal nations as the U.S. government repeatedly flooded our homelands and uprooted us by building dams to block our great relative, the Mni Sose (Missouri River).

Watch me and the great Phyllis Young, Chase Iron Eyes, and others to talk about the long history of sacrifice demanded of Native nations to make way for dams along the Missouri River.

It all started with the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1944, which gave rise to the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. Pick-Sloan would go on to wreak havoc on tribal nations over the next several decades. The Oahe Dam at Standing Rock was one of seven installed to block the river. Its construction resulted in Lake Oahe, which now sits on the northern border of the Standing Rock reservation. Today, DAPL crosses directly beneath it, posing a direct threat to the water that sustains our people.

Damming the Mni Sose changed our way of life. Before then, my mom, Lakota Law Standing Rock organizer Phyllis Young, vividly recalls living in a paradise in the bottomlands near the river’s edge. But when the verdant area where my family had lived — filled with timberlands, plants, medicines, and wildlife, all gone now — disappeared under water, my mom and many others were forced to move into starker territory with none of the natural bounty they’d always known.

All this loss is real and remembered. But, in the end, it has galvanized our spirit. When, in 2016, DAPL came to our doorstep, we created a movement — which I’m grateful you share. So now, we must stick together for justice and honor the fighting spirit of those who preceded us. In this moment, we can and we will overcome, just as we have so many times before.

Wopila tanka — my gratitude for your solidarity!
Wašté Win Young
Legal Analyst
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Your Voice Will Be Critical: NODAPL

August 7, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

A couple weeks back, I was honored to join a delegation to Washington, D.C. led by Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire. We met with congressional reps and other decision makers to inspire action to stop the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). As the pipeline’s legally mandated Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) continues to stall despite the clear and present danger to Standing Rock and the Mni Sose — the Missouri River — this was mission critical. You can click here to watch our latest Water Wars video, produced in conjunction with Standing Rock, the Oceti Sakowin, and the Great Plains Water Alliance, which highlights our productive meeting with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

Watch: I joined Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire (right) for her delegation to Washington, D.C. We had several excellent conversations about DAPL, including one with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (left).

You may recall that, in 2021, members of the Squad — progressive millennial women leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives including Tlaib, AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar — joined us and other Indigenous justice leaders in Minnesota to combat the Line 3 pipeline. And, of course, in 2017 AOC visited Standing Rock to take part in the #NoDAPL resistance, inspiring her run for Congress. These true leaders recognize the dangers of pipelines and care about what happens to us. Their support remains critical, but frankly it isn’t enough. We need other lawmakers and the executive branch to recognize DAPL’s danger and help us stop the oil before it spills and creates an emergency for our people.

As we pointed out during our meetings in D.C., the Army Corps of Engineers has repeatedly failed to provide Standing Rock with an adequate emergency response plan for DAPL. It has only shared a redacted version, which prevents us from planning on our own. This is particularly concerning now, because extremely low water levels in the Mni Sose have made accessing potential leak sites a logistical nightmare. We pray that something will be done before it’s too late.

In the meantime, please take a few minutes to watch our video and stay ready to take action. Eventually, the Corps will have to release its sham EIS. When it does, your voice will be critical. The public comment period will offer us an opportunity to stand strong together — again — for the water, for the people, and for our future.

Wopila tanka — thank you, as ever, for standing with Standing Rock and the Oceti Sakowin.
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Standing Rock: Action

July 16, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

As many of you know, the Lakota People’s Law Project is a proud ally of Standing Rock. We provide media, fundraising, organizing, and lobbying support to the tribal chairwoman’s team, especially on environmental causes like the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). In this capacity, we’re traveling next week to Washington D.C. to support Chairwoman Janet Alkire as she meets with key decision-makers about the ongoing injustice of DAPL.

More on that soon — but for now, we’d like to share our new video with you, made in collaboration with Chairwoman Alkire’s team, the Oceti Ŝakowiŋ, and the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance. It brings tribal leaders together from all over South Dakota to speak about the necessity to protect Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) from Big Extraction’s misdeeds, like Dakota Access.

Watch: Janet Alkire and Oceti Ŝakowiŋ camp leaders reflect on the importance of the #NoDAPL movement to protecting Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth).

The stakes of our environmental movement remain as high as ever for all humans, plants, and animals. The year 2022 is on track to be one of the hottest on record. To make a difference we must act locally while thinking globally. Local for me means the Dakotas, where Standing Rock’s water supply (and that of 17 million others) is still in jeopardy from an illegal oil pipeline without a permit.

Why is it operating without a permit? Because the company hired by the federal government to do the environmental impact statement (EIS) was among those who joined a lawsuit against Standing Rock early in the NoDAPL movement. Of course, Standing Rock’s leaders won’t accept this, so there is a standoff at the moment with the feds. The Army Corps of Engineers has now postponed the release of their flawed EIS until next year, and that gives the tribe more time to fight back and demand that a decent company conduct a new assessment.

As you’re aware, Big Oil has a stranglehold on American politics. Wind power is the cheapest energy source available today — there’s enough wind in just the Dakotas and Texas to power the entire United States. But instead of shifting aggressively to clean technologies, this nation is allowing the fossil fuel industry to bully us into greater investments in our own destruction. Indigenous voices must remain strong to counteract forces of greed and narrow self-interest that plague our nation and world at this time. We will continue doing what we can, with your support!

Wopila tanka — thank you for your ongoing determined support
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Keep Informed and Active!

July 1, 2022November 24, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

This week, the Supreme Court issued an odious trifecta of decisions limiting three precious things: a woman’s right to choose, the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to combat the climate crisis, and tribal sovereignty in Oklahoma. I’m here to tell you, we must battle back. Here on the frontlines of environmental racism, we know exactly how far the colonizers will go to preserve their own power and profit. Breaking or changing laws is nothing new, and neither is marginalizing Native tribes. But we can and we must restore justice.

That’s the subject of the fifth chapter in our “Dakota Water Wars” series, Ignoring Tribes and Ignoring Laws, co-produced by us in conjunction with Standing Rock, the Oceti Sakowin, and the Great Plains Water Alliance. Please give it a watch.

Watch: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier joins other leaders from the Oceti Sakowin to talk about how DAPL ignores both tribes and laws.

Over the past five centuries, since European settlers first invaded the shores of Turtle Island, our Indigenous voices have routinely been silenced. Treaties have always been broken. Despite promise after promise, we’ve been further marginalized, year by year. State and federal governments alike seemingly couldn’t care less about the dire consequences for our People when projects like the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) are railroaded through our homelands. And conservative politicians, like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, are especially eager to reduce our influence and make us invisible.

Whenever we’re the ones most affected, industry and government seem to have no qualms ignoring their own laws, too — as has happened with DAPL. During Standing Rock’s lawsuit to stop the pipeline, the presiding judge had to tell the Department of Justice it was flouting the National Environmental Policy Act with its argument that tribal input doesn’t matter.

The fact is, we do matter, and your solidarity with us ensures that our voices increasingly become part of the conversation. As Lakota Law Standing Rock organizer Phyllis Young says in the video, it’s up to us to make sure government agencies take a new approach that prioritizes “mutual respect, mutual participation, and mutual benefit.” Please continue to stand with Standing Rock and the Lakota People’s Law Project. As our rights and protections are rolled back, it’s more important than ever that we unite and fight — hard.

Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for your friendship and solidarity.
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

#4 of The Water War Series

June 17, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

Today, we give you the fourth video from our “Water Wars” series, co-produced with Standing Rock, the Great Plains Water Alliance, and the Oceti Sakowin, highlighting why we resist the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). When the oil company forced DAPL through our homelands, it claimed that we, the Native People on the frontlines, had been consulted. But that term has come to mean less than nothing to us. What’s required under international law and what should be standard operating procedure with projects like DAPL is something much more substantial than “consultation” — and that’s our Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.

Watch: “Consultation” isn’t an adequate standard. We never gave our consent for DAPL to threaten our water and homelands.

No matter what they think over at the oil company headquarters, this isn’t the wild wild west anymore. There are rules. This pipeline is operating illegally, without a federal permit. Here in the modern era, I think most of us will also agree that no means no, and gaining consent from those affected before taking action is critical. The concept of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (or FPIC) is, in fact, codified in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And Under President Obama, the United States promised to recognize the right we hold as the Nation’s first inhabitants to have a definitive say in what happens to our homelands.

“Consultation” is a sham. Sending us emails notifying us that a pipeline is about to be drilled under our sole source of fresh drinking water is inadequate, and expecting us to stand aside and let that happen is just plain foolish. I’m grateful that, as our partner in this movement, you’re resisting with us. Please continue to stand with the Oceti Sakowin, and together, let’s defeat DAPL once and for all.

Wopila tanka — Thank you for supporting Indigenous justice!
Chase Iron Eyes
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project

Prayer Permits Needed?

June 9, 2022 / aztec8888 / Leave a comment

For time immemorial, we have lived along and revered our sacred relative, the Mni Sose, the Missouri River. These days, as you know, the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) crosses under the Missouri — just upstream from the Standing Rock Nation — without a federal permit. And yet, unlike the oil company, we are required to have a permit just to pray in our traditional sweat ceremonies in certain, sacred spots along the river’s banks.

This bit of disturbing cognitive dissonance is the subject of our third video in the “Water Wars” series we’re producing in partnership with Standing Rock and other tribes of the Oceti Sakowin. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch and share Dakota Water Wars, Chapter 3: Money Against a Prayer.

Watch: Tribal leaders discuss the sheer preposterousness of DAPL crossing under our sacred river without a permit, while we’re required to get a permit to pray in some areas along its banks.

Can we all agree that when Standing Rock’s tribal water resources administrator, Doug Crow Ghost, wants to pray at the river, it should be automatically allowed? Doug cares as much as anyone about our water, and he deeply respects our natural surroundings. In contrast, the oil company, Energy Transfer Partners, tries every means at its disposal to avoid environmental oversight. The colonizing governments occupying this land seem to be more comfortable with the potential of oil spills than prayer on sacred land.

The historical facts back all of this up. It wasn’t until 1978 that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed, permitting Native Peoples to engage in acts such as burning sage or sweat ceremony. Meanwhile, DAPL continues to operate without a valid Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), despite a court ruling that this violates the National Environmental Policy Act. Still, we remain hopeful that we can win this fight in the end.

Earlier this year, a majority conservative Supreme Court rejected the oil company’s latest attempt to avoid environmental oversight, and now we await the (much delayed) release of the EIS, which was overseen by an oil-friendly firm hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Naturally, we expect the statement to be deeply flawed when we finally see it. I hope you’ll be ready to join with Lakota Law, Standing Rock, and the united tribes of the Oceti Sakowin to, once again, stand up to Big Oil and say no to the Dakota Access pipeline when the EIS is finally released. We’ll keep you posted!