On April 1, 2016, hundreds of people gathered at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. All of them opposed the proposed linking of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which would cross within a half mile north of the reservation and under the Missouri River. From Fort Yates, the growing number of protestors moved to set up Spirit Camp south of the reservation town of Cannonball, near the pipeline construction site. The water protestors (as they would be designated) let it be known that they were not going to leave until construction on the 1,200-mile pipeline stopped.
DAPL is owned by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and represents a joint venture of Phillips 66 and two partner companies—Energy Transfer and Sunoco Logistics. In addition, Enbridge and Marathon Oil have invested in the ETP Dakota Access Pipeline. US Bank has extended a credit line of $175 million to ETP, making it the main financial backer, and a total of seventeen banks are backing these companies, including Wells Fargo, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo–Mitsubishi, and Citibank, the latter being an instrumental player in getting the other banks involved.[1]
The pipeline will threaten not only the Lakota but also the Mandan, Arikara, and Cheyenne. LaDonna Bravebull Allard (Lakota, Dakota) claims that “the place where [the] pipeline will cross the Cannonball [River] is the place where the Mandan came into the world after the great flood; it is also a place where the Mandan had their Okopa, or Sundance. There are numerous old Mandan, Cheyenne, and Arikara villages located in this area and burial sites.”[2]
By November (designated as Native American Heritage Month by President Obama), the now 7,000 protestors were primarily from three camps: there were Standing Rock Sioux tribal members; Indians from many other tribes, not just those whose lands were directly impacted; and non-Indian environmentalists, farmers, veterans, and celebrities. Indigenous people from Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand have joined the protestors in order to save sacred burial sites, water, and the environment. All of these groups have protested peacefully. The highway patrol and Morton County police have, nevertheless, used “water cannons, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades against [the] unarmed water protestors in below freezing temperatures” and arrested an estimated 500 individuals, including Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault.[3]
The Standing Rock Protest has become the largest Indian activist movement—in terms of the number of protestors—in history and raised extremely important concerns. To understand the concerns regarding the pipeline, let us take a look at the related oil business of hydraulic fracking of oil shale. Fracking to extract oil from shale that is buried 2,000 to 3,000 feet below the ground has revolutionized the petroleum industry. On the one hand, fracking has produced an economic boom in North Dakota, creating many jobs related to oil and resulting in the lowest unemployment rate—3.1 percent—among the fifty states. The Bakken oil area that comprises 200,000 square miles in western North Dakota, eastern Montana, and parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada potentially contains 4.3 billion barrels of untapped oil. On the other hand, fracking has aroused the ire of environmentalists, who have lobbied against the creation of fracking wells. They argue that fracking's extraction process endangers the natural environment. Fracking uses a tremendous amount of water that must be transported to the wells, and carcinogenic chemicals used in fracking can potentially escape, thereby contaminating groundwater at drilling sites. Fracking also causes earth tremors, so much so that Oklahoma has passed California as the state with the most tremors and earthquakes. Although fracking promises economic booms and lower gasoline prices, some maintain that the long-run environmental cost is too high and oil companies should be focusing on renewable energies.[4]
If a rupture occurred where the Dakota Access Pipeline crosses under the Missouri River, the damage done would make these environmental concerns over fracking appear inconsequential. The compromised water quality would affect both wildlife and up to 12 million people downstream. So, in spite of the economic benefits to the state of North Dakota, these potentially devastating environmental consequences lead the Standing Rock protestors to chant in Lakota at the law enforcement monitoring the protest: Mni wiconi! “Water is Life!”
Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole) is Distinguished Foundation Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources, Second Edition.
[1] “Who Is Funding the Dakota Access Pipeline? Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo,” no author, September 9, 2016, Democracy NOW!, http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/9/who_is_funding_the_dakota_access, accessed November 4, 2016.
[2] Matt Remle, “Pipeline Fighters Set Up Spirit Camp to Block Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline," Last Real Indians, http://lastrealindians.com/pipeline-fighters-set-up-spirit-camp-to-block-construction-of-the-dakota-access-pipeline-by-matt-remle/, accessed October 30, 2016.
[3] Thirty-five Indian organizations to President Barack Obama, "NARF Joins Coalition of Native Organizations Calling on President Obama to Prevent Violence and Halt Violations at Standing Rock," December 2, 2016, Native American Rights Fund, narf.org, accessed December 9, 2016.
[4] “What Is Fracking and Why Is It Controversial,” December 16, 2015, BBC News, bbc.com, accessed December 9, 2016.
