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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/05/keystone-xl-pipeline-pine-ridge-floods/">https://theintercept.com/2019/04/05/keystone-xl-pipeline-pine-ridge-floods/</a></font>
<h1 class="Post-title" data-reactid="166">Trump Pushes a New
Pipeline Permit as Floods Devastate Native American Tribes</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Alleen Brown - April 5, 2019</div>
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<p><u>Three weeks after</u> the flooding began on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, families still remain
isolated, trapped in their homes by water and mud, even
as the water has begun to subside. On South Dakota’s
nine Indian reservations, spring is gumbo season — when
sticky, gummy, clay mud is exposed after the snow melts.
In the aftermath of the floods, it’s so thick and deep
that heavy equipment has been lost to it. In many areas,
the miles of gravel and dirt roads that make up much of
the reservations’ transportation infrastructure have
washed away or been made impassable by gumbo. Septic
tanks have overflowed, adding fecal matter to the muck.</p>
<p>The Oglala Sioux tribe estimates that 1,500 people are
displaced from their homes and 500 lack access to
drinking water. Teams of young men on horseback and the
occasional helicopter have been helping deliver food
packages, water, and medical support to isolated homes.</p>
<p>Farther north, 20-45 people have been staying in the
Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s community center every
night, according to Waniya Locke, who lives on the
reservation and has been assisting with rescue efforts.
The center lacks heat, so they’ve been relying on space
heaters and thick blankets to keep warm. She estimates
that around 300 people have been displaced from their
homes. Last week, the nearby Cheyenne River Sioux tribe
ordered the evacuation of a section of its reservation,
airlifting out three families.</p>
<p>Asked what the long-term recovery might look like,
Locke shrugged. “We’re not even to the point of
discussing recovery, because we’re still in it.”</p>
<h3>In the Midst of a Climate Crisis, a New Pipeline
Permit</h3>
<p>On Tuesday, the Oglala Sioux Tribe joined the state
legislature in calling on officials in Washington to
declare a federal disaster in South Dakota, which would
make available aid from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency. “Rather than declaring emergencies that don’t
exist, President Trump needs to pay attention to the
ones that do,” said Tribal Chair Julian Bear Runner, in
a statement referencing Trump’s declaration of a
national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico. “I
call upon him to send us help before lives are further
disrupted.”</p>
<p>He also requested that Trump drop his efforts to
expedite construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. On
Friday, in the midst of the crisis, Trump issued a new
presidential permit that would allow the pipeline to
cross the Canadian border into the U.S. “Trump’s
decision to ram KXL through while our families suffer
feels like being kicked while we’re down,” Bear Runner
said.</p>
<p>The same Native communities that have been hit hardest
by Midwestern flooding are also some of the most vocally
opposed to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which
would pump up to 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per
day from Alberta, Canada, through Montana, South Dakota,
and Nebraska. Many Oceti Sakowin people, known by the
U.S. government as the Sioux, are concerned that the
pipeline will leak, contaminating the rivers and
waterways that provide the reservations’ drinking water
and that lie within territory the U.S. government
illegally swindled away more than a century ago. They’re
also worried about the longer term climate impacts of
continuing the production of dirty tar sands oil.</p>
<p>To opponents on Pine Ridge, the floods prove their
point about the pipeline: Without a halt to fossil fuel
extraction, the nation’s most vulnerable communities
will pay the heaviest price for climate-fueled flooding,
droughts, extreme weather, and ecosystem collapse.
Scientists say the <a
href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/04/did-climate-change-cause-midwest-flooding/">weather
conditions</a> that led to the flooding have become
more likely because of climate change. “The use of
fossil fuels has led to this extraordinary weather event
and many other disasters,” Bear Runner said. “Keystone
XL will only continue to exacerbate the cycle of
destruction in the future.”</p>
<p>It’s not the only contentious decision that was
finalized in the midst of the disaster. Last week, Gov.
Kristi Noem signed into law two bills designed to help
the state government pay for the costs of policing what
are expected to be massive, Indigenous-led
demonstrations if construction begins. One of the two
laws, SB 189, creates new civil penalties for “riot
boosting,” which would apply not only to riot
participants but to anyone who “directs, advises,
encourages, or solicits other persons participating in
the riot to acts of force or violence.”</p>
<p>The American Civil Liberties Union is suing South
Dakota for infringing on the free speech rights of
organizations including the Indigenous Environmental
Network, Sierra Club, Dakota Rural Action, and the NDN
Collective, all of which assert that the law will limit
their ability to provide training and support to
pipeline opponents.</p>
<p>At the single hearing for the two bills, a lobbyist for
the governor’s office called the riot-boosting law a key
aspect of what he hoped would be “the next generation
model of funding pipeline construction.” The second law,
SB 190, has received less attention. That law creates a
fund from which law enforcement can draw money as they
police the protests. As Remi Bald Eagle, head of
intergovernmental affairs for the Cheyenne River Sioux
tribe, put it, “The PEACE fund does nothing more than
create mercenaries out of state law enforcement
institutions.”</p>
<p>Much of the money in the PEACE fund would come directly
from the pipeline parent company, TransCanada. The state
government would bill TransCanada monthly for policing
costs, up to $20 million. Additional PEACE money would
come from a “Riot Boosting Recovery Fund,” made up of
penalties from the new riot law. If the state managed to
obtain grants from the Justice Department or money from
Congress, that would also go into the PEACE fund.</p>
<h3>Native Women Challenge Big Oil Via the Vote</h3>
<p>According to state Rep. Peri Pourier, who’s from Pine
Ridge, one of the biggest problems with the pair of laws
is that while TransCanada and an array of public
officials, including law enforcement and county
representatives, were consulted, the state’s nine tribes
were left out of discussions entirely.</p>
<p>Tribal leaders have noted that the tribes are likely to
accrue large expenses if protests break out, since both
protest camps and “man camps,” temporary housing sites
for pipeline workers, are likely to be located near
reservation borders. Indigenous women across the U.S.
are disproportionately victims of violent crimes,
including homicide and sexual assault, and many are
concerned that violence against women will rise as
temporary, mostly male workers flood the area. Yet
already under-resourced tribes are apparently not
eligible to access the PEACE fund.</p>
<p>Pourier decided to run for office in mostly white,
Republican South Dakota precisely because tribes are
routinely left out of decisions that impact them the
most. Pourier was part of a historic wave of Indigenous
women elected into state and federal offices last
November — a result of indigenous cultural and political
organizing that has been reinvigorated nationwide, in
part because of pipeline organizing. She and two other
Native women joined three incumbent Native men in the
state legislature. The Native legislators were among the
handful who voted against the bills.</p>
<p>“My greatest hope is that Native women and Native men
in those spaces becomes normalized,” Pourier said. But
the road will be uphill. “These political structures
were not created for us; the reservation was created for
us.”</p>
<p>After the election, a handful of Republican legislators
accused Pourier and newly elected state Sen. Red Dawn
Foster, also from Pine Ridge, of election fraud. They
claimed that the two Oglala Lakota elected officials
violated a state law that says legislators must be
residents of the state for two years before taking
office. Pourier, they said, spent part of the two years
in Nebraska, and Foster was in Colorado. An <a
href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2019/01/11/foster-pourier-eligible-legislature-residency-challenge/2548347002/">investigation</a>
ultimately confirmed their eligibility.</p>
<p>“I was a resident of South Dakota since 2015 — they
took one piece here and one piece there and created a
picture and a narrative about me that was completely
untrue,” said Pourier. “It was ridiculous for them to
argue that somehow an Oglala Lakota was not from her
Indigenous homeland.”</p>
<p>Pourier has spent the last few weeks helping coordinate
volunteers and supply deliveries on the reservation, as
co-founder of the nonprofit Pine Ridge Reservation
Emergency Relief, formed in the wake of the disaster.
Although Noem sent in the National Guard last week to
distribute drinking water, Pourier said that much of the
relief efforts have come from community members.</p>
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