Dakota Access Pipeline Halted by Obama in 11th Hour

By Jane Ayers, Reader Supported News

05 December 16

 

he Obama administration stepped in on Sunday to permanently halt and reroute the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, the site of a seven-month standoff with tribal water protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Works, announced that the Department of the Army “will not approve an easement that would allow the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.”

Darcy stated in the official announcement that it was determined that the best way to complete the project “responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.” She pointed to the need for a thorough Environmental Impact Statement “with full public input and analysis,” so decisions could be reached where to reroute the pipeline.

Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman Dave Archambault II stated, “Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it will not be granting the easement to cross Lake Oahe for the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline. Instead, the Corps will be undertaking an Environmental Impact Statement to look at possible alternate routes.”

He continued, “We wholeheartedly support the decision of the Obama administration and commend with the utmost gratitude the courage it took on the part of President Obama, the Army Corps, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior to take steps to correct the course of history and to do the right thing.”

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader of the Great Sioux Nation, announced the news to the 15,000 gathered at the water protector camp for a global day of prayer, and to thousands of Veterans Stand with Standing Rock (organized by Wesley Clark Jr.) gathering for a nonviolent action as human shields for the tribal water protectors.

He stated, “The prayer has been answered, and it is so beautiful. Great Spirit will bless each and every one of you. People have said it was either ‘make it or break it,’ so I guess we made it. We thank people all over the world who stood with us in prayer. It is not just our prayers that were answered, but the prayers all over the world were answered, and I know it will change everyone’s lives. Water is life.” The camp erupted in joy and celebration, and the elders asked the veterans to stay for days to have direct actions of celebration with the water protectors. Fireworks lit the sky at dark. Drumming and singing expressed the victory for the tribal people and their water.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was on site with the veterans when the announcement was made, stated, “Today we have shown the power of people’s voices standing together to protect our water. Water is life. We cannot live without it. While we celebrate today’s news, we cannot be complacent. We must continue to protect our water and preserve our land.”

Halting the Pipeline: Timing with Veterans Deployment and Evacuation Threat

The halting of the pipeline was announced today, one day before a December 5th evacuation date ordered by North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple was to begin unfolding, with the tribal people stating they would not budge from their location. Last Monday, Chairman Archambault asserted the governor’s evacuation order was a “menacing action meant to cause fear” and noted that the governor’s order stated his concern for tribal campers’ protection due to winter weather, but was issued one week after police authorities had doused tribal peoples in sub-freezing temperatures, endangering them with hypothermia and bombarding them with tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades.

Archambault stated, “The most dangerous thing we can do is force well-situated campers from their shelters and into the cold. If the true concern is for public safety then the governor should clear the blockade and the county law enforcement should cease all use of flash grenades, high-pressure water cannons in freezing temperatures, dog kennels for temporary human jails, and any harmful weaponry against human beings. This is a clear stretch of state emergency management authority and a further attempt to abuse and humiliate the water protectors. The state has since clarified that they won’t be deploying law enforcement to forcibly remove campers, but we are wary that this executive order will enable further human rights violations.”

A strong nationwide envoy of thousands of veterans called Veterans Stand with Standing Rock, organized by Wesley Clark Jr., had committed to arriving at Standing Rock tribal lands on Sunday, with peaceful actions planned for Monday, December 5th. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) had also arrived to join with the veterans in a non-armed show of force of their own against the escalating police presence. Even though all actions were to be nonviolent, Morton County police were stirring the pot with assertions at a press conference “of INTEL” that tribal people were going to give guns to veterans with PTSD to escalate tensions.

The stage was being set for possible conflict and/or chaos with the veterans, even though they were “deploying” committed to nonviolence, so the announcement to halt the pipeline construction couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only that, it was highly disrespectful for the county police to insinuate that tribal people would ever use or harm veterans. Native Americans comprise 1.7% of the military population, making it the highest per capita commitment of any ethnic population to defend the United States, and all tribes actively honor their veterans.

Yesterday, former congressman Dennis Kucinich addressed an open letter to the thousands of veterans deploying to Standing Rock’s front lines: “Thank you once again for being willing to put yourself on the line. I have heard from thousands of people across America about the hope that you represent. Your presence at Standing Rock, coming to the defense of native peoples and future generations, in the struggle to protect the water supply of 17 million people from the threat of the Dakota Access pipeline, represents the potential for a historic turning point.”

Because of the recent ongoing silence from President Obama (except for stating he was waiting to see “how it all plays out”), there was beginning to be a sense of abandonment being expressed by tribal members. This morning, Dr. Cornel West, renowned civil rights movement leader, participated in a prayer circle with tribal leaders and arriving veterans, stating, “So much of this solidarity has to do with the fact that we are expressing our genuine love for indigenous people. It is a deep love, and when you have the love, you hate the fact that they are treated unfairly. You loathe the fact that they are being treated unjustly, and if we don’t do something, the rocks are going to cry out.” Congresswoman Gabbard had also addressed Congress three days ago, pleading for the president to intercede and halt the pipeline, so the accumulative efforts by so many across the nation prompted the 11th hour reprieve for the tribe.

Earlier in the week, former vice president Al Gore also addressed The New York Times Global Leaders’ Collective Conference, saying, “The massive investment in these pipeline infrastructure projects will be amortized over 50 to 75 years, and we need that capital to flow into renewables. This Standing Rock project is an atrocity. It is an absolute atrocity, and I wish that President Obama would step in before there is more violence out there against those who call themselves ‘water protectors.’ This is an embarrassment to our country. All those promises have been broken for so long. Using water cannons in subfreezing temperatures? That’s inhumane.”

Three weeks ago, Gore had also stated, “I stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. We have witnessed inspiring and brave acts by Native Americans and their allies who are defending and trying to protect their sacred sites and the safety of their sole source of water.… The courage and eloquence of the Standing Rock Sioux in calling all of us to recognize that in their words ‘Water is Life’ should be applauded, not silenced by those who are driven by their business model to continue spewing harmful global warming pollution into our Earth’s atmosphere.”

Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. marched to the front lines in November to show his support to the Standing Rock Tribe. He spoke about how the pipeline will create more carbon pollution than “29 coal-burning power plants” and how sad it was that the “police power” of the state had been deployed “on behalf of a law-breaking corporation.”

Today a full Environmental Impact Statement was mandated with the Army Corps of Engineers’ announcement of denying the easement. This week, Kennedy stated in Ecowatch, “If Obama were to order an Environmental Impact Statement, our incoming President, Donald Trump, would be powerless to reverse that determination.” Previously, an environmental impact assessment had been conducted but was questionable and inadequate to address the many threats to the water, environment, and wildlife (i.e. eagle nesting, whooping crane migration zones, etc.).

Even though the Obama administration recently requested Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily halt the laying of pipeline until considering the treaty rights and legitimate concerns of the Standing Rock Tribal Nation, the oil company has rapidly moved forward to finish within “days,” blatantly disregarding all attempts by government agencies and tribal attorneys to halt the prospect of immediate drilling under the Missouri River.

Dakota Access, LLC issued a statement on November 11th, stating they were “left with no choice but to fulfill its responsibilities to its tens of thousands of unit holders by continuing its efforts to complete the project.” However, documents show that a January 1st deadline has been issued to the Energy Transfer Partners Company stipulating that if the pipeline isn’t up and running by then, all shipping contracts will be null and void.

President Obama stated a few weeks ago that he wanted the pipeline controversy “to play out,” but time had rapidly been running out in this false temporary “voluntary halting.” Over a week ago, Native media drone footage documented the oil company barreling ahead in the night, while transporting parts of the horizontal drilling equipment to the drilling pad, now close to the banks of the Missouri River. All this movement, documented by Digital Smoke Signals media drones, caused the tribes to be on high alert.

The night before the most recent clash with police, the drone footage showed DAPL drilling equipment being transported into the drilling pad area in the night, prompting tribal “water protectors” to begin more direct actions. These passionate tribal people once again tried to gain access to one of their ancestral burial grounds, since others had been previously desecrated by pipeline construction. But more importantly, they were also trying to gain any access to the area of the drilling pad so water protectors could stop the horizontal drilling from immediately beginning to drill without an easement permit and/or a full Environmental Impact Statement.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s concern was the pipeline’s horizontal drilling equipment being rapidly transported to the drilling pad, and dangerously becoming a possible threat to their water source and sacred sites. They stated that the immediate non-complying plans by Energy Transfer Partners for drilling under the Missouri River could endanger the tribe’s main source of drinking water, and the water source for millions of the U.S. population downstream. Two hundred eighty tribes support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s assertion that international treaty laws are also being violated by the government allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to endanger their water rights.

Myron Dewey, a Native journalist who operates the Digital Smoke Signals drones, stated via livestream during the November 20th protest, “Energy Transfer Partners is an international oil company being allowed to use the domestic resources of our National Guard, county police, and mercenaries, and invoking eminent domain of farmland and Indian country to possibly contaminate our water.” The Standing Rock Tribe has documented 86 sacred sites that the Dakota Access Pipeline has desecrated. Dewey added, “While the big drill was being moved in the night, this recent show of force was the distraction to militarize the area.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson also visited the front lines and encouraged the water protectors with empowerment messages to continue to stay strong during the tense standoffs. He noted “environmental racism” and immediately sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, stating, “I plead with you to intervene in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe pipeline protest in North Dakota and ask the state authorities to stand down immediately.” He cited the tribe’s water source and added, “One leak in the pipeline could cause a catastrophic environmental disaster.”

Robert Redford, who recently was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, appeared in a Redford Center video urging the public to contact Obama to halt the pipeline, and urging Americans to question the laws of the land, stating, “There are laws that prioritize the profits of energy companies over the rights of people who actually live on the land, drink its water, and eat its food.”

Human Rights Violations: United Nations and Amnesty International Step In

Two weeks ago, the National Guard and riot police arrived with a brutalizing show of force against hundreds of tribal people at the frontlines wanting access to a highway being blockaded, an entryway to the land corridor where the pipeline is being laid, and close to another burial ground hill that police were occupying, upsetting the tribal people’s responsibilities to protect their burial sites.

More than six hours of continual inhumane use of water cannons soaking protestors in below-freezing temperatures, along with deployment of massive amounts of tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets, officially caused 167 “water protectors” to be seriously threatened with health issues and wounds, and one Native elder to suffer a cardiac arrest. Many of the protestor’s lives were endangered with possible hypothermia after hours of being drenched by the water cannons at close range, requiring emergency medics to set up two life-saving fire pits on the edge of the protest to immediately keep the wounded warm until ambulances could arrive.

Water protector Sophia Wilansky, 21, was seriously wounded by a concussion grenade while she was taking water to the frontlines for the few left standing at 4 a.m. Her father, Wayne Wilansky, an attorney from the Bronx, in a press conference in Minneapolis (where her daughter was airlifted to surgeons), stated, “Our government is throwing grenades at our citizens. It’s un-American what is being done to the native peoples. My daughter said they threw it right at her, so there is no question of accuracy. The force of the explosion blew out the arteries. It was a grenade, a weapon of war. I love President Obama but three weeks ago, he said ‘let it play out.’ This needs to be diffused or people are going to die.”

The next day, Morton County sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier announced that water protectors had caused the explosion by throwing a propane bottle, even though Native media drones documented concussion grenades being launched through the night by the police force.

Lisa Bellanger, an Ojibwa Board Member of the International Indian Treaty Council, stated at the press conference, “We honor Sophia for standing with us. It is for Water, the life blood of Mother Earth. This water supply is the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi River, and then feeds into the dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a major water source we are protecting. Are they using Federal money to harm our people of all tribal nations? Is the oil pipeline considered a ‘disaster’ to get these funds? The world is watching.”

Morton County sheriff’s spokesman Rob Keller stated that water cannons were only used to put out fires intentionally set by the “rioting” protestors. However, Facebook livestream and drone footage showed a different story: While millions of Facebook viewers watched the live footage, they witnessed firsthand the continual use of water cannons on the people, and tear gas and flash grenades, which hit the ground igniting fires. Contrary to sheriff reports, protestors were the ones putting out the erupting fires, not starting them.

On November 15th, United Nations officials denounced the “inhumane treatment” against the tribal people by police forces protecting the construction of the pipeline. United Nations Special Rapporteur Maini Kiai, a human rights lawyer, reported, “Law enforcement officials, private security firms and the North Dakota National Guard have used unjustified force to deal with opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

Kiai reported, “Protesters say they have faced rubber bullets, tear gas, mace, compression grenades, and beanbag rounds while expressing concerns over environmental impact and trying to protect burial grounds and other sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.”

To date, 550 water protectors have been arrested, and Kiai’s statement issued by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights also addressed additional unjustifiable force while detaining arrestees: “Marking people with numbers and detaining them in overcrowded cages on the bare concrete floor, without being provided with medical care, amounts to inhumane and degrading treatment.” Tribal attorneys have also shown the excessive use of cavity and strip searches, along with one Native woman stripped and left naked in the jail cell overnight. The UN human rights expert also pointed out, “Tensions have escalated in the past two weeks, with local security forces employing an increasingly militarized response to the protests. This is a troubling response to people taking action to protect natural resources and ancestral territory in the face of profit-seeking activity.” He added, “The excessive use of state security apparatus to suppress protest against corporate activities that are alleged to violate human rights is wrong, and is contrary to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

The human rights violations at the front lines of the protests were recorded via live Facebook feeds, and by Native media drones. The violence led many tribal children to post personal videos pleading for President Obama to “Help us,” “You visited us and said you had our back,” “Don’t let us down.” The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a statement on November 22nd concerning the issues of “excessive use of force by police, the civil and sovereign rights of Native Americans, and environmental justice.” They stated that “protesters have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble and lawfully express their concern about the environmental and cultural impacts of the pipeline, and that our concerns are compounded by the disproportionate police use of excessive force against Native Americans, who are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by police.”

Over the past month, Amnesty International USA had sent a delegation of human rights observers “to monitor the response of law enforcement to protests of the Indigenous community,” calling on the DOJ to investigate law enforcement officers “who are not respecting international human rights standards while policing protests.” Amnesty International was concerned that police and security staff have responded to tribal people with guard dogs, pepper spray, and bean bags. In addition, those arrested have been subjected to strip and cavity searches, and in one instance, a young native woman (daughter of the camp’s founder) was strip-searched and left naked in her jail cell overnight.

On November 28th, forty members of Obama’s administration, all American Indian and Alaskan Natives who served as appointees in his administration, wrote a letter to the president, urging him to block or reroute the Dakota Access Pipeline. They stated, “Months of peaceful demonstrations on the part of the water protectors have been met with intimidation tactics and civil rights violations. The youth you and the First Lady visited in Standing Rock in 2014 are on the front lines of this effort. We were outraged to see attack dogs unleashed on water protectors. And we were disgusted as we watched local law enforcement agencies spray water on unarmed people in sub-freezing weather. These tactics were used to inflict fear, pain, and humiliation on people who were merely exercising their constitutional rights.”

In October, over 500 nationwide clergy also traveled to the Oceti Sakowin Camp to stand in solidarity with the tribe after they had been tear-gassed and held in the freezing waters of the river. After protesters were recovering from their trauma, clergy did a prayer walk the next day to the front lines, and some priests later were arrested doing a civil disobedience action at the State Capitol.

Neil Young, Daryl Hannah, Joan Baez, Mark Ruffalo, Dave Matthews, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Jason Mraz, Sting, Willie Nelson, Shailene Woodley, and A. Bone Martinez all played a big part in keeping the story of the Standing Rock water protectors in the limelight, especially when Native people locked down the construction equipment, halting the digging on their ancestral burial grounds, and then later when gross human rights violations were occurring, and the mainstream media was engulfed in covering the presidential election. Thankfully, reporter Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! had recorded the first human rights violations against the water protectors when a private security team used vicious attack dogs against Native peoples. She was arrested for covering the ordeal, when in reality she should receive the Pulitzer Prize for the extraordinary coverage.

Joan Baez sent a passionate letter to First Lady Michelle Obama, stating, “I am appealing to you as one concerned mother to another. You were fierce when you spoke so eloquently about your daughters, how precious they are, how they need to be respected and protected. Your speech was a wonder for the world to hear.” Baez pointed out, “There are girls your daughters’ ages and my granddaughter’s age, risking their lives daily at Standing Rock. They are brave, and they are patient. There is little to protect them from the North Dakota winds, rubber bullets, pepper spray and water cannons in freezing weather. The children of the original caretakers of America are fighting not only for their sacred lands, but for their lives. Maybe you can feel for them as profoundly as you feel for your own children.”

Baez emphasized to Michelle Obama, “There are two sides to the battle to keep oil interests off their sacred land, the Native Americans and their many allies, with their prayers and nonviolent resistance on one side, and a militarized police force with its crushing power on the other. I applaud the courage of the Water Protectors for maintaining a statute of nonviolence, as great transformative heroes from our past, like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, have done.” She implored, “I do not believe President Obama wants to be remembered for The Bloody Battle at Standing Rock. Nor for complicity with five hundred years of disrespect, racism, torn up treaties, and massacres. I believe he is better than that. There is still time for your husband to right wrongs. Now he must take care of our Native American children, just as he would his own, and stop the ongoing bloody confrontations at Standing Rock by first rescinding the order to close the camp on December 5th. Then he must reaffirm his commitment to the environment, and once and for all, put an end to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

After Jane Fonda joined the Standing Rock tribe for Thanksgiving feasts, she wrote in Time, “I came away with the belief that what is happening at Standing Rock is an existential confrontation between two opposing world views. One is represented by the Indigenous Water Protectors and their allies who believe our future depends on respecting the land and water on which human life depends. The people on the front lines are very brave. They stand, carrying their banners, chanting, and praying with arms reaching toward the sky. They are unarmed as they face the Morton County Police. They have all been trained in non-violent civil disobedience. No weapons of any kind. And no drugs or alcohol are allowed in the camps. The aggressor side, with militarized police defending their interests, is represented by those who insist on unfettered extraction of non-renewable fossil fuels no matter the consequences. Greed versus a habitable planet.

Fonda warned, “Because of where we find ourselves at this precarious moment in history, with the reality of climate change close to its tipping point, if the short-term, profit-oriented view is allowed to prevail, it could actually spell the end of human life as we know it. The other view looks long-term, to the future and holds the potential for salvation — ours and the Earth’s. This is the existential crossroad. The choice is ours to make and it must be done quickly.”

Nationwide Protests, Bank Divestments, and International Treaty Law

A nationwide Day of Action was also launched on November 15th in major cities, resulting in huge protests to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, and a new nationwide campaign began to divest monies from banks that funded the pipeline. So many bank accounts have been closed in major banks over the past month, that Wells Fargo announced on December 3rd that they want to meet with the leaders of the Standing Rock Tribe to discuss their issues about the bank’s funding of the pipeline.

Last week, Chief Arvol Looking Horse traveled to Washington DC to study maps of the original treaty lands of his tribes. Standing Rock tribal attorneys have also been communicating their nation-to-nation sovereignty status, and demanding that their international treaty laws and statutes be respected. Audio recordings of Standing Rock Tribal Councilwoman Phyllis Young have been released, showing the tribe’s rejection of the pipeline two years ago, though the oil company tried to convince the public that the tribe never raised objections.

Two attorneys from Marin County, California, Larry Bragman (a Marin Municipal Water District board member) and Ford Greene (San Anselmo mayor), traveled to Standing Rock and, after discussing treaty rights with Phyllis Young, conducted their own research. In an interview with the Marin Independent Journal (MIJ), Bragman stated, “Under a 1958 congressional authorization to partially compensate the tribe, there is a specific reservation of rights for oil, gas and all mineral rights whatsoever. I believe under the clause that the tribe retains rights to those adjacent, underground areas that the pipeline company is intending to tunnel through.” He stated to the MIJ that another congressional action in 1992 “more sharply defined and limited the Army Corps of Engineers’ authority at Lake Oahe. The Army Corps of Engineers has authority over the operation and maintenance of Lake Oahe, but the tribe has retained its right to the area beneath the lake bed that the pipeline would violate.”

President-elect Donald Trump this week voiced his support of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but many are questioning his conflict of interest due to his large investments in Energy Transfer Partners in the past and currently. Energy Transfer Partners LP owns the DAPL jointly with Sunoco Logistics Partners LP and Phillips 66. A joint venture was announced in August by Enbridge Energy Partners LP and Marathon Petroleum Corp., who stated they also are taking a minority stake in the pipeline.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) congratulated President Barack Obama Sunday after the Army Corps of Engineers announced it will deny a federal permit needed for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sanders stated, “I appreciate very much President Obama listening to the Native American people and millions of others who believe this pipeline should not be built. In the year 2016, we should not continue to trample on Native American sovereignty. We should not endanger the water supply of millions of people. We should not become more dependent on fossil fuel and accelerate the planetary crisis of climate change. Our job now is to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels, not to produce more greenhouse gas emissions.”

Water is Life.

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Jane Ayers is an environmental and human rights independent journalist (stringer with USA Today and Los Angeles Times, etc.) and a regular contributor to Reader Supported News. She is Director of Jane Ayers Media, and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.