Robert Redford Urges Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
He asks Americans to call the White House today at 202-456-1111 or send a message to whitehouse.gov/contact. Ask President Obama to support the peaceful protest and act on behalf of the 17 million Americans who depend on the Missouri River for their clean water.
Something all too familiar is happening in North Dakota right now: Once again, Native Americans are being asked to accept a raw deal.
The short version is this: a private energy company, Energy Transfer Partners, is building a pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois like a 1,200-mile zipper that cuts across four states. If completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline will carry nearly half a million barrels of oil each day across the watersheds the Standing Rock Sioux tribe use for drinking water. Now, thousands of Native Americans have gathered at one of the most controversial sections of the proposed pipeline’s path and are staging a 24/7 protest. They’ve created a settlement in the middle of their North Dakota home to try to prevent the pipeline from being finished.
The pipeline’s existence and its proposed path are each “legal,” of course. Permits were filed. Proposals were considered. A previous route much closer to Bismarck—a primarily white city—was scrapped amid concerns for its citizens’ health and well-being, and a new “more acceptable” route was carved through the home of the Standing Rock Sioux. In short, it’s the business as usual that helps private corporations get what they want in most of the United States, often at the expense of Native Americans.
But if this is legal, one must seriously question the laws of the land. They are laws that prioritize the profits of energy companies over the rights of people who actually have to live on the land, drink its water and eat its food.
The net result is that yet another Native American tribe is being asked to suffer yet again for the “good” of the rest of the country.
Written by Robert Redford
Video by Redford Center
He asks Americans to call the White House today at 202-456-1111 or send a message to whitehouse.gov/contact. Ask President Obama to support the peaceful protest and act on behalf of the 17 million Americans who depend on the Missouri River for their clean water.
Something all too familiar is happening in North Dakota right now: Once again, Native Americans are being asked to accept a raw deal.
The short version is this: a private energy company, Energy Transfer Partners, is building a pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois like a 1,200-mile zipper that cuts across four states. If completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline will carry nearly half a million barrels of oil each day across the watersheds the Standing Rock Sioux tribe use for drinking water. Now, thousands of Native Americans have gathered at one of the most controversial sections of the proposed pipeline’s path and are staging a 24/7 protest. They’ve created a settlement in the middle of their North Dakota home to try to prevent the pipeline from being finished.
The pipeline’s existence and its proposed path are each “legal,” of course. Permits were filed. Proposals were considered. A previous route much closer to Bismarck—a primarily white city—was scrapped amid concerns for its citizens’ health and well-being, and a new “more acceptable” route was carved through the home of the Standing Rock Sioux. In short, it’s the business as usual that helps private corporations get what they want in most of the United States, often at the expense of Native Americans.
But if this is legal, one must seriously question the laws of the land. They are laws that prioritize the profits of energy companies over the rights of people who actually have to live on the land, drink its water and eat its food.
The net result is that yet another Native American tribe is being asked to suffer yet again for the “good” of the rest of the country.
Written by Robert Redford
Video by Redford Center
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