Lakota youth paraded across the Missouri River Bridge in Mobridge, South Dakota, on March 26 to raise awareness of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Photo courtesy Waniya Locke

Hunkpapa and others ride in defiance of Dakota Access Pipeline
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor
www.nsweekly.com

FT. YATES, N.D. –– Some 60 riders mounted horseback on April 1 to ride 25 miles north from the capital of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation here on the Missouri River, to the community of Cannon Ball, where they inaugurated a spirit camp in defiance of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline.

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 in Iowa to Illinois, according to the 2-year-old proposal by Houston-based Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66.

“Because the Dakota Access Pipeline will cross over the Ogallala Aquifer (one of the largest aquifers in the world) and under the Missouri River twice (the longest river in the United States), the possible contamination of these water sources makes the Dakota Access pipeline a national threat,” spirit camp organizers said in a written statement.

“The construction of Dakota Access will threaten everything from farming and drinking water to entire ecosystems, wildlife and food sources surrounding the Missouri. The nesting of bald eagles and piping plovers as well as the quality of wild rice and medicinal plants like sweet grass are just a few of the species at stake here,” they argued.

Lakota youth also paraded across the Missouri River Bridge in Mobridge on March 26 to raise awareness of the fight against Dakota Access Pipeline.

The Iowa Utilities Board received a letter from the Iowa Tribe of Nebraska and Kansas on March 31, recommending that the pipeline promoters voluntarily withdraw their filing for permission “and in its place, issue a formal apology … to all tribes for their attempted interference in the … government-to-government relationships in consultation as established by our treaties and confirmed by law.”

The letter, signed by Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Lance M. Foster, in White Cloud, Kansas, states that he will otherwise file for the board to disregard pipeline company briefs “as unnecessarily provocative and lacking in proper authority.”

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

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