TransCanada’s Keystone 1 Pipeline leak occasioned an investigation to find the source of at least 16,800 gallons of tar-sands crude-oil that escaped near Menno and Freeman in Hutchinson County, South Dakota. Photo by Cindy Myers

As pipeline oil again spills on Northern Great Plains, tribes gain traction to defend homelands
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environmental Editor
www.nsweekly.com

FT. YATES, N.D –– After Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes -- as well as activists from around the Northern Great Plains -- railed for months against the Dakota Access Pipeline project, federal officials are responding to pleas for defense of water, cultural resources, and tribal sovereignty.

The Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, would carry Bakken crude oil from the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota 1,134-miles across Native American ancestral territory in North and South Dakota, through Sac and Fox land and former claims of the Iowa Tribe in Iowa, to Illinois, according to the 2-year-old proposal by Houston-based Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66.

In what the non-profit international Indigenous Environmental Network called “a surprising act of solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe”, the U.S. Interior Department, EPA and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation have called on the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to increase efforts to respond to tribal and public concerns about the pipeline.

The pipeline entails a $3.7-billion private investment in infrastructure that would include two Missouri River crossings upstream from the Standing Rock and numerous other wetland passages.

“It is impressive to see these federal agencies stand up in support of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and acknowledge tribe’s right to be consulted on any extractive development that impacts lands, water, and peoples within their territory,” said Dallas Goldtooth, Keep It In The Ground Campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: As pipeline oil again spills on Northern Great Plains, tribes gain traction to defend homelands

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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