As we go to press, the Standing Rock Sioux Nation together with 90 tribal nations and their supporters are fighting to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The pipeline’s route threatens the tribe’s drinking water and would disturb sacred and cultural sites.
In Facebook, activist Linda Black Elk wrote:
On Friday (9/2/2016), the Standing Rock Nation filed papers challenging Dakota Access permits from the Army Corps of Engineers’… because in a recent survey of the area, the tribe found many incredibly sacred sites, including burial sites, directly in the path of the proposed pipeline. The tribe had never been allowed to survey these areas before, so they hadn’t been able to document these sites.
Barely 24 hours after those papers were filed, Dakota Access used bulldozers to destroy those sites. It was absolute destruction. They literally bulldozed the ancestors right out of the ground, along with destroying tipi rings and cairns. They did all of this while assaulting peaceful resistors using vicious dogs, tear gas, and pepper spray.
“There’s only one conclusion,” Black Elk added, “they are attempting to provoke us to violence.”
“The U.S. government is wiping out our most important cultural and spiritual areas. And as it erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as a people,” she continued. “These sites must be protected, or our world will end, it is that simple. Our young people have a right to know who they are. They have a right to language, to culture, to tradition. The way they learn these things is through connection to our lands and our history.”
“If we allow an oil company to dig through and destroy our histories, our ancestors, our hearts and souls as a people, is that not genocide?”
