Tribes hold Trump feet to fire on tar-sands pipeline permit

Monday, September 30, 2019  

GREAT FALLS, Montana – Counsel for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Ft. Belknap Indian Community held U.S. President Donald Trump’s feet to the fire in a federal court case here September 12, as the chief executive’s defense argued to dismiss the native nations’ lawsuit against him for permitting the TC (TransCanada) Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL Pipeline.

Litigating on behalf of the tribal governments, the Native American Rights Fund summoned an argument for the Constitutional law of treaty enforcement during this, the most recent hearing over Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Trump, which is being heard by federal Judge Brian Morris, in the Great Falls Division of Montana U.S. District Court.

“The presidents of Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Fort Belknap Indian Community were in federal court to invoke their sacred inheritance from these treaties—because the KXL Pipeline is exactly the kind of depredation the tribes sought to prevent,” NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth explained after the hearing held at the Great Falls Municipal Courthouse.

Rosebud Sioux Tribal President Rodney Bordeaux led the attending Sicangu Oyate delegation, which included members of the Sicangu Treaty Council, Tribal Councilor Lisa White Pipe and Tribal Attorney General’s Office counsel. Ft Belknap President Andy Werk and Ft. Peck Tribal Council members Marva Chapman and Jestin Dupree attended, among other dignitaries.

“When the tribes negotiated their treaties, they gave millions of acres of land to the United States—including, ironically, the land on which the courthouse now stands. In return, they asked that the United States protect their lands from trespass and their resources from destruction,” Landreth elaborated.

The Canadian pipeline company is bound and determined to carry on its $10-billion attempt to build the pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border through unceded 1851 and 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.

Changing its name from TransCanada Corp. to TC Energy Corp. during a decade-long labyrinth of permitting problems, the developer seeks approval of the private infrastructure project in order to transport the tar-sands from the mine fields of ancestral Athabascan homelands in Canada to the refineries and export shipping facilities on Texas’ Gulf of Mexico.

The corporation triumphed over environmental, water and property rights advocates opposing construction of the southern part of the line from the Texas Gulf Coast to Steele City, Nebraska.

The corporate literature says that diluting the tar with lighter petroleum products to make a liquid called dilbit, which allows it to flow in a pipeline, is the safest way to move the heavy crude down south and abroad.

However, its Keystone I Pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf spilled more than a dozen times in 2011, the first year of operations. The U.S. State Department under Secretary John Kerry and former President Barack Obama, denied the Presidential Permit for the KXL to cross into U.S. territory on the grounds that it was not in “the national interest.”

Successor Trump, acting on a presidential campaign promise, ordered the State Department’s reversal of the permit decision and achieved his goal within two months of taking office. During the campaign, he held $250,000-$500,000-worth of stock in TransCanada Pipelines, Ltd., according to a 2015 personal public financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The reversal prompted not only Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Trump, but also a lawsuit by the Indigenous Environmental Network and the North Coast Rivers Alliance, as well as a subsequent one from the Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club.

Like the tribal governments, the organizations expressed concern for treaty rights and the potential of water and air pollution. All of the suits were introduced in Morris’ venue.

However, when the judge responded by ordering the State Department to explain why it reversed the permit decision, Trump cancelled the permit and, in 2019, issued an unprecedented substitute executive permit for the border crossing construction instead.

His lawyers argued that his actions did not violate any treaty and the judge should throw out the Rosebud claims, because Trump only authorized the border crossing construction, not the unceded treaty land buildout.

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

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