Introduction
In 2015, Energy Transfer Partners began construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, designed to carry petroleum from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois. The pipeline would cross under the Missouri River and Lake Oahe, near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The construction would destroy ancestral burial grounds and other important Sioux cultural and historical sites on lands promised by treaty to the Sioux. Should the pipeline rupture, the resulting pollution would contaminate not only the local water supply but the entire Missouri River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. This document is a portion of the Standing Rock Sioux tribal nation鈥檚 resolution in opposition to the pipeline.
In April 2016, young people from Standing Rock, supported by Native Americans from surrounding communities, established a 鈥渨ater protectors鈥 camp to block construction of the pipeline. Using the slogans 鈥淲ater Is Life鈥 and 鈥#NoDAPL,鈥 they rallied support on social media. The encampments eventually swelled to several thousand people from all across the country and abroad. The actions of heavily armed police in October and November 2016 drew international media attention. In December, President Barack Obama ordered a stop to the project while the Army Corps of Engineers reconsidered the environmental impact. President Donald Trump reversed the decision.
The Dakota Access Pipeline was completed in April 2017 and began delivering oil. A U.S. District Court judge enjoined the pipeline in July 2020, ordering it shut down and drained, but the ordered was reversed on appeal. The pipeline continues to operate.
The water protector protest between April and December 2016 was the most galvanic event among Native Americans since the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973.
—Jace Weaver
. . . WHEREAS, the Standing Rock Indian Reservation was established as a permanent homeland for the Hunkpapa, Yanktonai, Cuthead and Blackfoot bands of the Great Sioux Nation; and . . .
WHEREAS, the Dakota Access Pipeline threatens public health and welfare on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation; and WHEREAS, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe relies on the waters of the life-giving Missouri River for our continued existence, and the Dakota Access Pipeline poses a serious risk to Mni Sose and to the very survival of our Tribe; and
WHEREAS, the horizontal direction drilling in the construction of the pipeline would destroy valuable cultural resources of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; and
WHEREAS, the Dakota Access Pipeline violates Article 2 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty1 which guarantees that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe shall enjoy the 鈥渦ndisturbed use and occupation鈥 of our permanent homeland, the Standing Rock Indian Reservation; . . .
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council hereby strongly opposes the Dakota Access Pipeline; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council call upon the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the river crossing permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline. . . .