Security staff hired by the Dakota Access Pipeline unleashed dogs on #NoDAPL resisters on September 3, 2016. Photo by Sacred Stone Camp
The use of dogs to attack indigenous people isn't a new tactic observes Steven Newcomb (Shawnee / Lenape) of the Indigenous Law Institute. He traces the Dakota Access Pipeline to the long-running attempts to dominate and subjugate indigenous nations:
On September 3, 2016, we saw an excellent illustration of a claimed right to coerce our nations into obedience: Private security personnel of Energy Transfer Partners using vicious dogs and pepper spray against Native people (women, children, and men), and non-Native opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) near Cannonball, North Dakota. The contrast between the Oceti Sakowin’s prayerful path of the Sacred Pipe, which seeks to protect the precious waters of Mother Earth, her life blood, and the greed-driven path of the Crude Oil Pipeline speaks volumes. That contrast encapsulates the centuries-long conflict between the mindset of the Seven Laws of the Oceti Sakowin (and the spiritual laws of other Original Nations), and the Seven Laws of Domination found in the meaning of Christendom’s Latin term “domo”: “to subjugate,” “to subdue,” “to force into subservience,” “to tame,” “to domesticate,” “to cultivate,” and “to till.” The Dakota Access Pipeline project aptly symbolizes the toxic path of the American Empire being “increased and spread” across the territories of our nations, leaving behind a wake of destruction and poison: Think of the lead in the bloodstreams and brains of children in Detroit, of the mercury in the fish all over the continent, of the lead in the waters of Indiana poisoning people there, of the radiation in the groundwater at Hanford Nuclear facility, the 287 chemicals detected in the umbilical cord blood samples that the Red Cross gathered from pregnant women. 180 of the chemicals are known to cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests. These and countless other kinds of examples are powerful indicators that the imperial trajectory of the almighty dollar does not revere and protect the beauty of the Fabric of Life.Read More:
Steven Newcomb: Vicious Dogs and Coercion Unleashed on Original Free Nations (Indian Country Today 9/7) Relevant Documents:
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order | Declaration of Tim Mentz, Sr. | Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe's Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Response | Dakota Access Response
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