Members of the Cowboy Indian Alliance rode horseback into the National Mall on April 22, 2014, and set up camp for a week of resistance in Washington, D.C. Photo by Aldo Seoane
Northern Great Plains people key in defeating Keystone XL Pipeline proposal
By Native Sun News Staff In 2008, the U.S. State Department granted the TransCanada Corp. permission to build its Keystone 1 Pipeline across the Canadian border into the United States. The route ran through all the eastern-border counties of North and South Dakota, carrying diluted bitumen (dilbit) or tar-sands solution from the mines in Alberta Province to Illinois, via Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. The company then applied for a second permit to build the Keystone XL, aka Gulf Coast or Cushing Extension, to pump the very heavy crude in toxic solution 1,179 miles through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, then on to the Gulf of Mexico for refining and export. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, and the Yankton Sioux Tribe lost a federal court bid to enjoin the construction of Keystone 1 when a judge dismissed their claim on Sept. 29, 2009, for lack of jurisdiction. Over the next seven years, tribes and grassroots organizations joined in planning direct actions to protest the Keystone XL route across 1851 and 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory. This photo page shows just some of the many actions taken by the tribes that led to success, when President Barack Obama rejected the KXL pipeline on Nov. 6, 2015.
Throughout 2010, tribes and grassroots organizations joined in planning direct actions to protest the Keystone XL route across 1851 and 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory on the grounds that the so-called “Black Snake” threatened treaty rights, water, land, air, food and cultural heritage. Image from Walk in Beauty
Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle of the Oceti Sakowin, joined other spiritual leaders in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 28, 2015 to ask that Obama reject the pipeline through the Great Sioux Nation. Photo courtesy Indigenous Environmental Network
Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: Northern Great Plains people key in defeating Keystone XL Pipeline proposal Editor’s note: Native Sun News thanks the many photographers who generously contributed their work to our six years of concerted coverage of this issue. Copyright permission Native Sun News
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