The powerful words, “We stand for our people, for our nation. We stand for our brothers and our sisters. We stand for water, for life”(Urban Native Era), are chanted by protesters as the fight against Energy Transfer and its construction of the Dakota access pipeline ensues. According to MSNBC, this $3.7 billion dollar project in the making is half completed and will run through four different states including, Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota and North Dakota. Essentially, the pipeline will be delivering 470,000 barrels of oil daily along the 1,100 mile stretch (NBC). This highly debated topic has received widespread media coverage as more than 300 native tribes and numerous environmentalist groups have shown support for the Rock Sioux Tribe in 40 different states (Yubanet). Construction for the Dakota Access Pipeline should be permanently halted due to its imminent contamination of clean water, it’s disrespect to tribal land, and its causation of unnecessary violence towards protesters.
Consequently, when reviewing the
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Numerous tribes, environmental groups, protesters, and even museum directors have come together in a unified stance against the destruction of land, water, burial grounds and subsequent disrespect of the Rock Sioux Tribe. NBC News reported, “On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe 's request for a temporary injunction in a one-page ruling.” The article also detailed that the federal government overturned Judge Boasberg’s ruling and temporarily halted construction close to Lake Oahe to conduct a more thorough investigation. However, protesters are unwavering in their mission to suspend construction permanently and the case serves as a reminder that insurgence is sometimes necessary when concerning the preservation of the world and its
“Now the Sioux Must Battle Big Oil”, authored by Alan Gilbert, is an argument with many forms of evidences. Gilbert uses a variety of statistics, quotations, as well as personal experience to support his argument and his opinion. Most of these evidences are reliable, but some can be improved by adding more authority to the evidences. In the beginning of his essay, Gilbert uses a quote from a Standing Rock Tribal chairman. This is a trustworthy source, since it is from a firsthand witness of the situation.
The Keystone XL Pipeline and other parts of it that stretches across the U.S and Canada and has good benefits for both countries ; it provides job security, economic stability, and also gives the U.S the opportunity to stop importing oil from foreign countries. The country, like never before, has an oppressive government that doesn’t allow for companies to grow and make The state representatives continuously discuss matters but rarely follow through. The Keystone XL should be the end of that era and be put to good
President Obama. After interviewing with aNebraska news reporter, President Obama addressed that adding the pipeline will accommodate Unites State economy and will produce thousands of jobs, but the health and safety of the American people comes first. No need to build the pipeline that will be a danger to American citizens. The Pipeline will go through the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies one forth of drinking water key sources in Nebraska and the Midwest. Nebraska residents also supports the president and they will choose their children’s safety over a few jobs added if it will harm their kids by drinking potentially hazardous water that would damage their
It’s important for the United States to produce and export oil because if we don’t, the Middle East and Russia will capitalize on the product and they will become stronger and richer countries. One of the ways that the United States can be an economically strong country is to reopen the Keystone pipeline and also allow states to have the power to generate their own oil. The opposition believes that pipelines have posed a huge risk to wildlife and the surrounding environment. The Key Stone pipeline has too many hurdles to go through; therefore, wildlife activists are against this project.
In response to this discussion, Senators Kyl and McCain wrote the article, “An Endless Tribal Water Fight,” in hopes of defending the intentions of their bill. On the other hand, Navajo representative, Ed Bencenti wrote the article, “Senate Bill 2109 Seeks to Extinguish Navajo and Hopi Water Rights,” in which he exposes the real intentions of the Senate Bill. Both Kyl and McCain do a good job of presenting their claims to support their interests. However, the intentions of the Senate Bill are not ethical and efficient; instead of attempting to alleviate the issue of the scarcity of water, it is contributing to this problem by taking away the water that belonged to the tribes’ and giving it to coal
The IAA forced the Lakota tribe to not leave the reservation that they were forced onto. Causing overtime for these conditions shown in the picture to occur.
The American society should strive to obtain higher standards of respect for the majority as well as the minority communities. There are not many people who are aware about the controversy and issues that the use of reclaimed water at the Snowbowl has created. Yet this disrespect to Indigenous belief has a long path in American history and Native American people. Indians were stripped of their land in 1829 because of the Homestead Act, which granted white people the right to claim up to 160 acres of land as their own. Even as the Constitution states that “all men are created equal”, Native Americans have faced discrimination, oppression, and racism due to their culture and skin color.
As Kitson (2009) notes, "the hydropower projects, in many ways, represented a new form of colonization, as indigenous peoples were excluded from the decision-making process and bore the brunt of the social and environmental impacts of the dams" (p. 630). This lack of consultation and collaboration with Native American communities during the planning and approval of hydropower projects has been a significant challenge in mitigating their impacts. In fact, as Deloria and Lytle (2011) explain, "the United States government, which had a trust responsibility to protect tribal lands and resources, had approved the dam without consulting the tribal nations that would be most affected by it" (p.
I was raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I grew up with an awareness that Native Americans, or “Indians,” were a minority in my home town of Rapid City, South Dakota. But in school, my only real contact with the Lakota was in basketball tournaments like the Lakota National Invitational. My parents took me to the largest Pow Wow in Western South Dakota every year where we watched the beautiful grand entry dancers and listened to the awe-inspiring drummers and Lakota singers performing traditional music. Toward the end of my middle school years, my mom, a family physician, started taking me to the Pine Ridge Reservation once a summer to drive around the town, eat at Subway, which is one of the only restaurants in the expansive reservation,
“The attack was led by volunteer soldiers from California, and it was one of the first and largest massacres of Native peoples west of the Mississippi River” (History of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes). A year later, “[i]n 1864 the government attempted to confine the tribes to a reservation with the Treaty of Soda Springs, but it failed to gain ratification” (History of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes) Springs, but it failed to gain ratification” (History of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes). Now the Bannock tribe has a reservation and bit of the land they once
For the Sioux tribe, American expansion caused many problems and hardships, primarily derived from Americans’ dislike for Natives. This is evident in an excerpt from the book Sioux by D. L. Birchfield. One can see from this excerpt that when streams of American expansion moved west because of the California Gold Rush, they brought various illnesses and sickness to the Sioux. The spread of smallpox, measles, and other contagious diseases killed off an estimated ½ of their population (Birchfield). Settlers were not sad because of this news, and a lot were actually glad that so many Native Americans had died.
These issues can still improve through cooperation and understanding, however, and reaching a satisfactory decision about the Dakota Access Pipeline provides a perfect gateway to uplifting improvement of the reservations’ lifestyle. If the government agrees to give a little, a great opportunity arises for them to get a little as well. In the last decades, lack of funding has led to blatantly subpar education for the majority of Native American students, even when the government made an attempt to intervene due to an understandable inherent distrust of Government interference. Through a monumental compromise via the Dakota Access Pipeline, the government could prove its decency, transparency, and trustworthiness, which would advance the relationship of Native Americans and the United States Government brilliantly. The newfound trust could easily apply to areas such as financial welfare, educational support, and government-run health clinics.
In Chapter 4 of Uneven Ground, Wilkins discusses the United States v. Winans case which regarded tribal rights. It held that the Yakamas tribe had “reserved rights” to hunt and fish because the Winans brothers had been depleting the salmon in the river. Wilkins also writes how the tribes implemented their rights based on their original and indigenous sovereignty. Chief Justice Fuller recognized this and confirmed the tribe’s rights to hunt and fish because of tribal sovereignty (125). In a similar case, Winters v. United States (1908), a man had built a dam that restricted all water flow down the Milk River.
…” (18) says Creon while sentencing Antigone to death for her so-called “crimes.” This common theme of punishment in a struggle for justice does not only appear in ancient times and literature, but it also has happened in the near-past, such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s and Nelson Mandela’s battles to end racial segregation leading to their imprisonments, or even the incarceration of gay rights demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. I, personally, call myself an active supporter in the current fight against the North Dakota Pipeline, in which the United States’ government is arresting Sioux tribespeople and others for protesting the development of an oil pipeline on sacred lands. Fights for justice against governments have never stopped occurring in history, and they will not stop, shown by the immense continuum of justified rebellion before Antigone, written around 441 BCE, and the “#NoDAPL” movement in
There are several groups who are not in favor of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. One of these groups is the Environmentalists.