<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div id="reader-header" class="header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-11-30/the-beginning-is-near-the-deep-north-evictions-and-pipeline-deadlines?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork">http://www.indiancountrynews.com/index.php/columnists/winona-laduke/14339-the-beginning-is-near-the-deep-north-evictions-and-pipeline-deadlines</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">The Beginning is Near: The Deep North,
Evictions and Pipeline Deadlines</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Winona LaDuke - <span
class="article_date">Nov 30, 2016 </span></div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div id="moz-reader-content" class="line-height4"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page"
xml:base="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-11-30/the-beginning-is-near-the-deep-north-evictions-and-pipeline-deadlines?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork">
<div class="article_body_detail dinNormal">
<p>Standing Rock is an unpredicted history lesson for all
of us. More than any moment I recall since Wounded Knee,
the Vietnam War, or the time of Martin Luther King, this
moment stands as a crossroads in the battle for social
justice. It is also an economic issue, in a time of
economic system transformation, and profoundly a
question of the future of this land. <em>The world is
watching.<br>
</em><br>
As the US Army Corps of Engineers issues a December 5
eviction notice for thousands of people gathered on the
banks of the Missouri River, we face our truth. Those
people at the Oceti Sakowin and Red Warrior Camps, along
with the 550 people who have been arrested so far, are
really the only thing standing between a river and a
corporation that wants to pollute it. That we know,
because absent any legal protections, and with a
regulatory system hijacked by oil interests and a
federal government in crisis, the people and the river
remain the only clear and sentient beings.</p>
<p>
In short, this is a moment of extreme corporate rights
and extreme racism confronted by courage, prayers, and
resolve. This moment has been coming. The violence and
the economics of a failing industry will indeed unravel,
and this is the beginning.</p>
<p><strong>The Deep North</strong></p>
<p>North Dakota did not become Alabama – or the Deep
North, as it is now called – overnight. Native people in
North Dakota have been treated poorly for more than a
hundred years, whether by the damming of the Missouri
and the flooding of millions of acres of tribal land, or
by poverty and incarceration, North Dakota is a place of
systemic and entrenched racism. Two of the poorest
counties in the country are on Standing Rock, Native
people comprise almost a fourth of the people in prison,
Native suicide rates are ten times that of North
Dakotans, infrastructure (like the fifty year old
hospital with four doctors for 8000 people, and a now
blocked Highway l806, without a shoulder) is at an all
time low, and people freeze to death and overdose in the
shadow of the Bakken Oil fields. That’s the first layer
of abuse, aside from the day to day racism, emboldened
by Morton County and the incoming Trump government. It
is visible for the world to see now.</p>
<p>For many who come, North Dakota is something unknown.
Americans fly over the state, talk about how the movie
Fargo was funny, and wonder sheepishly about how it’s
working out in the Bakken. Very few visit, and there is
almost no civil society to advocate for the environment
or the people. Let me put it this way, until this year,
the Sierra Club had one staff person in North Dakota,
and the American Civil Liberties Union had one staff
member covering both North and South Dakota. It is as if
North Dakota is just too uncomfortable for a progressive
movement to visit or work in. Instead, we have watched.</p>
<p>After all, the sex trafficking, violence, and
corruption has overwhelmed most of the state’s capacity
to address it, and a recent study by the National
Academy of Sciences found widespread groundwater
contamination in the fracking fields. For North Dakotans
it has become just how it is<em>… </em>That is to say:<em>
accommodating corporations is the North Dakota way.</em>
This last year, North Dakota health officials excused
more oil spills without penalty, and increased the
allowable levels of radiation in municipal and county
dumps to accommodate the fracking industry. The
corporations direct state policy.</p>
<p>It’s been easy to put it out of mind because after all,
it seems so far away when we view the world from our
television or smartphone. In the midst of this, we find
ourselves facing a larger set of forces. As of November
18, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department inventoried
their troops at 1,287 deputies, including police from 25
North Dakota counties, 20 North Dakota cities, and 9
states (Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana,
Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming).
Over 550 people have been arrested, many of them strip
searched and cavity searched for misdemeanor charges,
and a number of them held overnight in dog kennels. Now
the state has fired on unarmed people who want to
protect the water from contamination. <em>After all,
that’s what this is about.</em></p>
<p>To serve the convenience of a deadline for Energy
Transfer Partners’s corporate profits, the police have
fired teargas canisters, water hoses, concussion
grenades, rubber bullets, tasers, and bean bag rounds at
unarmed people trying to protect their water supply.
Most of them are Native, and the North Dakota media has
continued to portray the water protectors as outlaws.</p>
<p>When 21 year old New York resident Sophia Wilansky’s
arm was blown off by a concussion grenade, Morton County
Sheriff Kirchenmeir suggested that the water protectors
caused it. A statement of her father, attorney Wayne
Wilansky, differs: “At around 4:30am after the police
hit the bridge with water cannons and rubber bullets and
pepper spray, they lobbed a number of concussion
grenades which are not supposed to be thrown at people
directly, at protesters or protectors as they want to be
called. A grenade exploded right as it hit Sophia in the
left forearm taking most of the undersurface of her left
arm with it. Both her radial and ulnar artery were
completely destroyed. Her radius was shattered and a
large piece of it is missing. Her medial nerve is
missing a large section as well. All of the muscle and
soft tissue between her elbow and wrist were blown away.
The police did not do this by accident - it was an
intentional act of throwing it directly at her.
Additionally police were shooting people in the face and
groin, intending to do the most possible damage…”</p>
<p><strong>January 1 Energy Transfer Deadline</strong></p>
<p>On January 1, the Dakota Access Pipeline may turn into
a pumpkin. This is to say, that the Dakota Access
Pipeline was proposed in 2014, when the Bakken was at a
peak. The Bakken is presently producing 900,000 barrels
a day of oil, and steadily declining. All of that oil is
already being refined locally, or shipped out by train
or pipeline. The state of North Dakota has announced
that they project to have the same 900,000 barrels of
oil a day coming out of the Bakken in 2019, two years
from now, and even that may be optimistic. In other
words, there’s already plenty of infrastructure to move
all the oil from North Dakota; this pipeline is not
needed. We call it the Dakota Excess Pipeline.</p>
<p>The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial
Analysis with Sightline Institute just released a new
report on the shaky finances of the Dakota Access
Pipeline. The report, “The High-Risk Financing Behind
the Dakota Access Pipeline: A Stranded Asset in the
Making in the Bakken Region of North Dakota,” delves
into “the project’s financial weaknesses, and the fact
the pipeline may represent a substantial overbuilding of
the Bakken’s oil-transport infrastructure.” The report
notes that the pipeline’s principal backer, Energy
Transfer Partners (ETP), has conceded in court
proceedings that it is contractually obligated to
complete the project by January 1. ETP will most likely
miss this deadline, if for no other reason than lack of
clearance. The company recently informed investors that
it would take from 90 to 120 days to complete the
pipeline <em>after</em> it receives an easement from
the Army Corps of Engineers to cross the Missouri River.
The Corps has yet to give that permission and last week
recommended further study on the question.</p>
<p>If the deadline is missed, companies that have
committed long-term to ship oil through the pipeline at
2014 prices will have the right to rescind those
commitments. “In the interest of protecting their
investors and shareholders, these companies may well
renegotiate terms, seeking concessions on contracted
volumes, prices, or contract duration.</p>
<p>The impetus for striking new deals on Dakota Access
Pipeline contracts is rooted in radical changes in the
broader economic context in which the project was
proposed in 2014 and in which the majority of the
contracts were signed. Global oil prices began to
collapse just a few months after shippers committed to
using DAPL, and consensus market forecasts see no
recovery for at least a decade….”</p>
<p>In short, greed is expensive, and if Energy Transfer
Partners does not meet that deadline, many prudent
shippers may want to renegotiate or withdraw their
contracts<em>. In other words, the pipeline could become
a pumpkin, in the terms of Cinderella, and there are a
lot of people who would not be sorry about that. </em></p>
<p>So, let’s be honest, all of the aggression is to see if
North Dakota can make sure that Energy Transfer Partners
can make a deadline and not lose money and continue to
bilk potential shippers.</p>
<p><strong>Evicting Native People</strong></p>
<p>On the day after Thanksgiving, the Army Corps of
Engineers issued an eviction notice to the thousands of
people camped on the banks of the river. Creating the
legal fiction of a “free speech zone”, in no
relationship to anything significant. District Commander
John W. Henderson sent an email to the Standing Rock
Sioux Tribe stating that on December 5, the Oceti
Sakowin camp would need to evacuate Army Corps land. The
letter claims that evacuation “is necessary to protect
the general public from the violent confrontations
between protestors and law enforcement officials that
have occurred in this area, and to prevent death,
illness, or serious injury to inhabitants of encampments
due to the harsh North Dakota winter conditions. The
necessary emergency, medical, and fire response
services, law enforcement, or sustainable facilities to
protect people from these conditions on this property
cannot be provided.” At no point did the Army Corps
point out that Highway 1806 was closed by Morton County
and that all the sustained injuries were from Morton
County.</p>
<p>Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault
responded to the Army Corps: “Our Tribe is deeply
disappointed in this decision by the United States, but
our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever.
The best way to protect people during the winter, and
reduce the risk of conflict between water protectors and
militarized police, is to deny the easement for the Oahe
crossing, and deny it now. We ask that everyone who can
appeal to President Obama and the Army Corps of
Engineers to consider the future of our people and
rescind all permits, and deny the easement to cross the
Missouri River just north of our Reservation and
straight through our treaty lands. When the Dakota
Access Pipeline chose this route, they did not consider
our strong opposition. Our concerns were clearly
articulated directly to them in a tribal council meeting
held on Sept. 30, 2014, where DAPL and the ND Public
Service Commission came to us with this route. We have
released the audio recording from that meeting.”</p>
<p>The fact is that the Dakota Access Pipeline is not
complete because of the people camped on that land-
whether in the Oceti Sakowin, Sacred Stone, or Red
Warrior Camps. The arrests of 550 people have been at a
high cost to people, but also at a high cost to Energy
Transfer Partners, because they are unlikely to meet
their deadline.</p>
<p>None of us know how this moment in history is going to
work out. On December 4, thousands of military veterans
are coming to support the people and the river –
veterans of Iraq, Vietnam, and every war in between. I
am interested how the Army Corps will speak with the
veterans. The veterans join the thousands of elected
officials, religious and cultural leaders who have come
to stand with the river and the people. In the end,
that’s what will remain, long after Energy Transfer is
bankrupt and the state of North Dakota has come to
reckoning. The river will remain.</p>
<p>I am reminded of a quote originating from Thunder
Valley. <em>“ How long are you going to let others
determine the future for your children? Are we not
warriors? When our ancestors went to battle they did
not know what the consequences would be, all they knew
is that, without action, things would not go well for
their children . Don’t operate out of a place of fear,
operate from hope. With hope everything is possible.
The time is now. “</em></p>
<p><strong>That is this time.</strong></p>
<p><a
href="http://www.indiancountrynews.com/index.php/tv/14328-standing-rock-nodapl-water-protectors-video-stack"
rel="alternate" class="external" target="_blank"><em>LINK
to VIDEO STACK by date and events at Standing Rock</em></a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>