Native Americans from throughout the Northern Great Plains joined members of the Cowboy Indian Alliance at a rally in the nation’s capital against the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo courtesy/Chas Jewett
Was employee of Mike Rounds involved in scheme to finance pipeline?
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor WASHINGTON — As Indians from throughout the Northern Great Plains joined members of the Cowboy Indian Alliance at a rally in the nation’s capital against the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, the controversial Canadian tar-sands crude slurry project became a midterm elections issue. With the slogan “Reject & Protect,” the rally in the National Mall culminating April 26 “was meant to be an exclamation point” on a campaign to sway U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on whether the national interest is served by building the pipeline from Alberta Province through Lakota Territory treaty lands of the Oceti Sakowin in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to climate-action advocates at the non-profit 350.org “To be honest, we were expecting that President Obama’s decision on Keystone XL was on its way as soon as next month,” they said. “But after Friday’s announcement that his final decision will be postponed indefinitely, everyone here on the mall is gearing up to fight this thing for perhaps another year.” Members of the Cowboy Indian Alliance rode horse back into the National Mall on April 22, and set up camp for a week of resistance. “They’re making an impression -- on the media, on passersby, and we hope, on the President,” 350.org said in a written statement. “We need to keep fighting this pipeline and any other plans to extract, ship and burn tar sands,” it added. The activities were part of a Global Climate Convergence, consisting of 10 days of action, from Earth Day to May Day, sporting the slogan, “People, planet, peace over profit!” according to the non-profit Fast for the Earth. One of the actions is a global call to fast during that period or on one of the days during the period. “We are writing a new history by standing on common ground by preventing the black snake of Keystone XL from risking our land and water,” said Cowboy Indian Alliance member Faith Spotted Eagle of the Yankton Sioux Tribe. “We’re here to show Obama, to show Washington, D.C., the very faces of the people that the decision of the KXL Pipeline represents,” said Native American rally-goer Dallas Goldtooth. Analysts said Obama may have postponed decision-making on the pipeline’s Presidential Permit to span the U.S.-Canadian border in order to protect fellow Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections. Candidates under scrutiny
The Associated Press reported Mary Landrieu, the Senate Energy Committee chairwoman, led 10 of her Democratic colleagues earlier this month in signing a letter urging Obama to approve the project. Among her co-signers were Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Warner of Virginia. All 11 face competitive votes this November. Two other Democratic Senate candidates — Michelle Nunn in Georgia and Natalie Tennant in West Virginia — already had endorsed Keystone XL. Alison Lundergan Grimes is the latest Democratic Senate candidate to call for building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, AP said April 25. However, South Dakota Democratic Senate challenger Rick Weiland recently came out against the pipeline, according to The Nation blog. “The pressure is on to appeal across lines of partisanship and ideology in a state that has not backed a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964,” blogger John Nichols wrote April 22. “But Weiland, a former congressional aide and regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has a long record of balancing economic and environmental concerns. And he is not prepared to avoid the issue. The Democratic contender declares flatly, ‘I’m opposed to it’,” Nichols wrote. Meanwhile the Sioux Falls Argus Leader filed federal Freedom of Information Act requests revealing that an employee of former Gov. Mike Rounds, who is seeking a Republican seat in the U.S. Senate, was involved in a scheme to finance the pipeline. The Information gleaned from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services showed that former state Tourism Secretary Richard Benda signed a contract in December 2009 with Joop Bollen, under the approval of Rounds, to transfer management of South Dakota’s EB-5 projects from the public International Business Institute to Bollen’s private, Aberdeen-based South Dakota Regional Center Inc. Bollen resigned his state job running EB-5 projects and signed the contract the same day to continue doing so at his new company. Benda committed suicide. “The EB-5 visa program, a longstanding federal program in which wealthy foreigners can get green cards for investing $500,000 into certain U.S. projects, is at the core of a still-unfolding scandal in South Dakota involving high-ranking politicians, powerful business interests and alleged criminality,” the Argus Leader stated. Early last year, South Dakota officials learned that a federal grand jury was investigating the program, which triggered a state investigation. Bollen made the initial application in May 2011 to include TransCanada as a qualifying EB-5 project, according to the Argus Leader. (Contact Talli Nauman, Health and Environment Editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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