Dakota Pipeline: Prelude to a Land Grab

High tensions over the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in the USA have subsided for the moment, with the recent announcement by the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama and a federal appeals court ruling that temporarily suspended the building of the 1,825-kilometer (1,135-mile) long pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois.

You have to hand it to the U.S. government for the clever way it handled the crisis. The last thing Obama needed in the last few months of his presidency was another Wounded Knee-type showdown before the eyes of the world in the heart of America’s Indian Country, pitting the Standing Rock Sioux nation and its many allies against a Dallas, Texas-based gas and oil pipeline operator and its many allies (the U.S. government being one of them). The postponement of construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline was a victory, albeit a limited one, for First Nations peoples of North America and the protection of sacred lands.

But the conflict over the Dakota Access pipeline — with pepper spray and attack dogs shamefully used at one point against those who tried to block the construction — is merely a prelude to even bigger troubles to come for such lands, and soon: the biggest act of government theft of Native American territory in more than a century that is now in the making.

A bill is currently being pushed through the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow the western state of Utah to outright claim 100,000 acres of land belonging to the indigenous Ute tribe in the name of progress and development (in other words, potential oil profits) by the state of Utah. Yes, you read that right: 100,000 acres of Native American lands. The state of Utah wants to put these tribal “reservation” lands under its own management, as stipulated by the Utah Public Lands Initiative Act, which was introduced a few months ago in July as House Resolution 5780. (A related bill, the Scofield Land Transfer Act, or Senate bill 14, is also making its way at the same time through the U.S. Congress.)

Representatives of the Native American community are calling this the most blatant act of official Yankee land grabbing and violating of Native American sovereignty rights since the late 1800s, and there is growing opposition to the plan. “We were shocked to learn that the bill proposes to take more than 100,000 acres of our reservation lands for the state of Utah,”announced officials of the Ute tribal nation. “This modern-day Indian land grab cannot be allowed to stand.”

If this does indeed go through, it would make projects like the Dakota Access pipeline look like a harmless Saturday night Bingo game at the local YMCA in comparison. So, where is the national news media coverage of this historical act of land theft? You will not find the substantial coverage it deserves by the U.S. corporate press, much as in the case of the Dakota Access project and other such development schemes that threaten to destroy natural ecosystems on Native lands for generations to come.

Native American leader Dennis Banks, co-founder in the 1960s of the American Indian Movement (AIM), described the situation well in an interview I did with him more than two decades ago here in Japan:

“The attitude of the [U.S.] government has changed from one of covert activities to one of overt activities,” Banks said. “They’re still trying to swindle Native people out of their land. They’re still trying to support Corporate America, and Corporate America has a lot of hands on Indian lands. So their attitude, as I said, is one of covert to overt business. I will never trust the policies that come out of Washington — ever. Individually, the Congress people, I’m sure, are good persons. But something happens to them when they become a collective body. They corrupt themselves, as honest as they are individually.”

In the case of the two Republican congressional sponsors in Utah of the land-grab bill, there can be no doubt about where their dishonorable priorities lie. U.S. representative Rob Bishop, known around Washington DC for his fashionable three-piece suits, has pushed for environmental regulations to be loosened in U.S. national parks to allow for more private use of public lands. The other sponsor, U.S. representative Jason Chaffetz, is known for his antipathy to laws that would protect wild animals facing extinction, saying, in one memorable quote: “The only good place for a sage grouse to be listed is on the menu of a French bistro. It does not deserve federal protection, period.”

In other words, in the 21st century, it is business as usual when it comes to the treatment of First Nations peoples and the stealing of lands inhabited by their ancestors for thousands of years before this curious thing called the “United States of America” ever came into existence.

The good news is that the controversy over the start of the Dakota Access pipeline construction has led to more and more Native people across the continent joining hands and standing up to the corporate and governmental defiling of sacred Native lands. More than 50 tribal nations in Canada and the northern United States recently formed a treaty alliance vowing to “come together in unity and solidarity to protect our territory from the predations of big oil interests, industry, and everything that represents”.

In the meantime, the struggle continues. Big Money never sleeps. The company constructing the Dakota Access pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, has already bought up parcels of sacred Sioux lands that it intends to develop as the Dakota Access pipeline construction progresses. The Standing Rock Sioux promise us that the pipeline project definitely will be stopped in its tracks, and the tribe is fighting toward that end on all fronts: in the courts, in the media, at the United Nations, and right on the ground in North Dakota.

President Obama wisely stopped the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline for now, just long enough for him to slide out of office and pass the problem on to his successor in the White House. Whoever becomes the next U.S. president, whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, we can be sure that such big gas and oil development projects will continue to be approved and supported at the highest levels under the staunchly pro-corporate policies of both candidates.

The issues of Native sovereignty rights and sacred land protection, in North America and beyond, are bound to rise in the years to come as the confrontations and conflicts grow in intensity. And as they rise, we would all do well to remember that these many Native battles to protect the land are our fights too. We need to support them wherever and whenever we can.

As for me, I know clearly where I stand: right alongside our Native brothers and sisters, wherever in the world they may be — not just to “protest” something, but rather to protect everything that has a right to life on this Earth, the common mother of us all. There can be no higher purpose to our own lives than that.

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