Bears Ears: Leave it as it is

It was the first national monument to grow out of the thinking, study, support, and political power of Native American nations.

[On May 6, 1903, not a hundred feet from where I was standing at the canyon’s edge, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech that environmentalists—a word yet to be invented—would come to deem as important as Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It was a perfect match of subject and stage. In the open air on the canyon’s ledge, the president declaimed on the miracle of nature he was trying to save. The five words the speech is most remembered for would become synonymous with the Grand Canyon, and become a touchstone for protecting other wild landscapes.

“Leave it as it is,” Roosevelt told the crowd. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see….”]

REGINA LOPEZ-WHITESKUNK WAS A COUNCILWOMAN OF THE UTE MOUNTAIN UTE DURING THE CAMPAIGN TO ESTABLISH BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT. “WE KNEW WE WERE SPEAKING FOR NATIVE AMERICANS, BUT WHAT WE DIDN’T ANTICIPATE WAS BECOMING LEADERS FOR THE PEOPLE OF UTAH BEYOND THE TRIBES.” | PHOTO BY JUSTIN CLIFTON

Land Grab: Trump’s Campaign Against Bears Ears National Monument | Sierra

Onis “Tray” Glen, EPA Administrator of Region 4, Alabama, New York Biosolids, Colorado Farmers | And Another Pile of yet the Same.

[Thirty years ago, the treated remnants of a city’s sewage—known as “biosolids” to those in the industry—usually went into the ocean. But in 1988, the government realized this wasn’t the best idea and gave municipalities three years to figure out where else their sludge could go. In addition to finding a new place to put it, the EPA ruled a portion of the biosolids had to be used in a way that would benefit the environment.

New York City, which already had a population over 7 million, had been dumping its sewage 106 miles out in the ocean. (This was an improvement on the 12 miles out it was dumping sewage in 1987, but still not ideal.) A solution needed to be found, and fast.

So the city decided to turn the sludge into fertilizer. The EPA ruled that, after treatment, biosolids are perfectly safe to use on plants, and often, are better for the plants than chemical fertilizers. They are rich in nutrients that help plants grow, and the application of biosolids to the soil has been known to stimulate root growth and help the soil better retain water.

Although they accepted sludge from other locations, states feared the material from New York City would be disease-ridden and toxic. Alabama outright rejected the biosolids, and in Oklahoma, even after farmers begged for the material, a plan to ship 1150 tons of biosolids to the state was defeated due to public outcry. “No part of Oklahoma will be sacred,” wrote Tim Cagg, the chairman of Concerned Citizens for a Clean Environment. “These profit seekers will not be around when we must clean up the damage in years to come.”

Eventually, some farmers in Colorado said they would try it. Just before before Earth Day 1992, 17 train cars filled with several thousand tons of big city biosolids left the station and headed to a new life on Lamar, Co. farms. “At first people wanted to flee the land when they found out New York’s sewage was on the way,” farmer Douglas Tallman said at the time. Tallman’s enthusiasm for the product got him nicknamed “Sludge Judge” in local politics.

Initially, only three or four farms volunteered to take the waste. But then the farmers started to notice some changes. One farmer’s wheat crop yield increased by a third after using biosolids. The sludge also appeared to keep away aphids, prairie dogs, and other pests. Soon, there was a waiting list for farmers who wanted to get their hands on New York biosolids.

New York kept producing, and the farmers kept buying. Trains were now running twice a month to Colorado. The longest train the state received was 153 cars of the stuff. At its peak, 10,000 acres a year were being covered with sludge from the big city, but the demand was so great, 50,000 to 75,000 acres could have been covered if there had been enough product.

The one problem, though, was the cost. Shipping waste on a rail line wasn’t cheap, and the city started looking for other options. Despite demand, in 2012, the train stopped running….] New York City’s Poop Train | Mental Floss

So, how is this connected to Alabama? Because the New York Poop train started transporting biosolids once again. Last year.

[The treated sewage – euphemistically known in the industry as “biosolids” – has plagued residents with a terrible stench, flies and concerns that spilled sludge has leaked into waterways.

“On a hot day, the odor and flies are horrific,” said Charles Nix, mayor of West Jefferson, a town near the landfill that accepts the waste. “It’s better in winter time but if the wind blows in the wrong direction you get the smell. It’s like dead, rotting animals.

Last year, Big Sky Environmental, a landfill west of Birmingham, got permissionfrom Alabama authorities to accept sewage waste, despite objections from residents. Initially, the waste was taken down from New York and New Jersey to a rail spur near West Jefferson, where it was loaded on to trucks that rumbled through the town toward the landfill…. Jefferson county, where West Jefferson sits, decided the use of the rail spur was a violation of zoning laws, so the transport operation shifted the the nearby town of Parrish, which in turn sought to eject the malodorous cargo. Amid the squabble, the sewage sludge backed up in railcars in Birmingham, causing the mayor’s office to complain about the “death smell”.

The outsourcing of New York and New Jersey’s waste to Alabama revived memories of the “poop train” that ferried New York’s waste to farmers in Colorado until 2012. Since the Environmental Protection Agency decided in 1988 that it was not a great idea to simply pump it into the ocean, where to put New York’s fecal matter has become a constant challenge – the city creates around 1,200 tons of sewage every day.

Billions of gallons of raw sewage still spills into New York harbor each year but the waters around the largest US cities are significantly cleaner than in the 1980s and the metropolis has touted its water treatment processes. Last year, it quietly decided Alabama should be the resting point for some of its waste.

Stung by the outcry, New York has severed its links to Big Sky Environmental, although city officials failed to answer questions on how much sewage was still being transported to other states…. Around 7% of New York City’s treated sewage went to the Alabama landfill, according to a city spokesman, adding that a recent inspection by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management found “no odor or leaks”.] Alabama Kicks up a Stink Over Shipments of New York Poo | The Guardian

Now, let’s bring Onis Trey Glenn into the picture.

[The guy who oversees the whole Southeastern arm of the Environmental Protection Agency – the man charged with making sure your water is clean enough to drink and your air doesn’t smell like the caboose of a North Birmingham poop train – is on the job.

Oh, man. I’m kidding. You need to worry. You sooo need to worry.] EPA Director Paid by “Poop Train” Conductor | Alabama.com

[Back in August 2017, Onis “Trey” Glenn was appointed as EPA Region 4 administrator, which oversees the agency’s mission in eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. You may recall that Glenn was the director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management from 2005–2009.

While he was pushing for the job as director of ADEM, Glenn approved invoices for engineering firm Malcolm Pirnie (which has since changed its named to Arcadis). It just so happened that at the time, Malcolm Pirnie executive Scott Phillips was chair of the Environmental Management Commission and therefore responsible for selecting the next ADEM director. In 2007, the Alabama Ethics Commission unanimously concluded that Glenn violated state ethics laws in order to get the job at ADEM, though he ultimately escaped criminal charges.

Glenn also billed his family’s private plane trip to Disney World to a PR firm — which he said he eventually paid back. It was so bad that former ADEM attorney David Ludder (who now represents Gasp on several legal matters) urged the EMC to pass a rule banning Glenn from receiving gifts from companies regulated by the agency.] Who Does Trey Glenn Work For | GASPGROUP.com

More coverage: Alabamians Are Sick of New York’s Crap | New York Magazine

 

 

A Reckoning for Our Species

Timothy Morton wants humanity to give up some of its core beliefs, from the fantasy that we can control the planet to the notion that we are ‘above’ other beings.

[Morton’s terminology is “slowly infecting all the humanities”, says his friend and fellow thinker Graham Harman. Though many academics have a reputation for writing exclusively for their colleagues down the hall, Morton’s peculiar conceptual vocabulary – “dark ecology”, “the strange stranger”, “the mesh” – has been picked up by writers in a cornucopia of fields, from literature and epistemology to legal theory and religion. Last year, he was included in a much-discussed list of the 50 most influential living philosophers. His ideas have also percolated into traditional media outlets such as Newsweek, the New Yorker and the New York Times….

Morton’s theories might sound bizarre, but they are in tune with the most earth-shaking idea to emerge in the 21st century: that we are entering a new phase in the history of the planet – a phase that Morton and many others now call the “Anthropocene”.]

Read the full story here | The Guardian

The Oil Rush that Wasn’t

[…. these fuels are being produced on less than half of the approximately 27 million acres of public lands under lease to energy companies. Through the 2015 fiscal year, a record 7,950 drilling permits on federal leases were not being used. And last year, the industry bid on less than one-third of the federal acreage offered for lease by the B.L.M., even though the industry identified most of the lands auctioned for energy exploration. What’s not sold can be bought by energy developers at bargain-basement prices — $2 an acre for the next two years.

Even so, federal onshore oil production increased by more than 70 percent from the fiscal years 2006 to 2015, and the number of producing leases on federal land has never been higher. The facts are that the United States already has abundant oil and gas available, the industry has chosen not to drill on leases they already own and is not even bidding on what the government is offering.]

On Poisoned Land | Contaminated Life on the Dine’ (Navajo) Reservation

A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council warns of the Navajo Nation as a case study in irresponsible nuclear resource extraction:

“For decades the Navajo Nation has been especially affected by boom-and-bust uranium mining. On Navajo land alone, nearly four million tons of uranium ore were extracted from 1944 to 1986; left behind were more than 500 abandoned uranium mines, four inactive uranium milling sites, a former dump site, and the widespread contamination of land and water. Only recently has the government attempted to assess and mitigate this contamination, but full reclamation of the land is unlikely.”

According to an international water charity, DigDeep, Navajo people are 67 times more likely than other Americans to live without running water or a toilet. In practice, this means families across the Navajo Nation have to wash their children’s hair in small washtubs. They have to haul all drinking and washing water from the closest towns and cities, with round trips sometimes reaching 100 miles. The tasks required for even the smallest of families are time-consuming and strenuous.

Read the full story here | Gabriel Scarlett

In September 2014, at Window Rock, Ariz., the Obama administration reached a settlement with the Navajo Nation after years of litigation over mismanagement of lease revenues and royalties from mining, ranching, and timber harvesting on Navajo trust lands. The United States will award the Navajo $554 million to settle claims arising from the federal government’s mismanagement of tribal trust funds dating back to 1946, making this the single largest settlement between the United States government and an American Indian tribe, reported The New York Times.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday, January 18, 2017, it reached a legal settlement with Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoran Inc. (NYSE: FCX) to clean up 94 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. The U.S. government will cover half of the costs of the clean-up settlement. Read the article here | Phoenix Business Journal

“This historic settlement will clean up almost 20 percent of the abandoned mines on the Navajo Nation,” said Acting Regional Administrator Alexis Strauss for the EPA Pacific Southwest. “Cleaning up the uranium contamination continues to be a top environmental priority for our regional office.”

The U.S. government and mining companies mined radioactive uranium from hundreds of mines on Navajo lands from the end of World War II and throughout the Cold War.

The last mine shut down in 1986.

Ain’t No Black Snake or Water… | Indian Country and Fossil Fuels

As it seems right now, the leadership -in distinction from the native populus- of a number of native American tribes fear that federal government under Donald Trump will seize chunks of their lands to exploit the lands’ rich fossil fuel resources. Instead of them doing it. It sounds a bit like it is not about the recent native narrative involving honoring and respecting the land. Or the natural balance of things.

Or the wish of, what it would seem, the majority of native Americans living in reservations.

“Alaska Indigenous” posted an article on January 21, 2016, where they talk about the federal government’s coordinated efforts, in 2016, to pave the road to a possible seizure of native lands for their fossil fuel deposits. It goes like this:

Saglutupiaġataq’s [“the compulsive liar” in Iñupiatun] administration apparently began mobilizing to pursue the privatization of Indian lands as early as October 2016 with the formation of his 27 member Native American Affairs Coalition. The Coalition is chaired by “Cherokee” pretendian Rep. Markwayne Mullin. Like the termination policy of more than 60 years ago, the Coalition contends that impoverished tribes are saddled by federal regulations that stymie self-reliance and prosperity. Tribal lands should be privatized, it argues, so that American Indians can pursue development projects that lift them out of poverty.

Saglutupiaġataq has tapped Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke for secretary of the Interior, the federal agency overseeing the Borough of Indian Affairs. Zinke is a known fraudster with little integrity. Scientific American characterizes Zinke as a “mixed bag” with an anti-environment, pro-industry voting record. It is unlikely that he will be a friend to Indian Country or to Alaska Natives.

A few months ago, as I was following news and policy in Indian Country in the southwest, I read about  Donald Trump’s three visits to Navajo nation during his election campaign in 2016. Navajo Times, among other native media outlets, mentioned Trump’s particular interest in energy talks with the Navajo Nation’s leadership. Then Trump won the election, and the Navajo sent a delegation to the inauguration for further talks and to celebrate the Republican victory.

Looking a bit more carefully into what could be seen as an oxymoron (first nations allying with what would -at first glance- seem like the opposite of their native interests), I found out that the Navajo were not the only ones to walk toward that direction. It was also the Mountain Utes, the Cherokee, some Alaskan native tribes, and more. 

The Energy Wealth of Indian Nations | LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources

The AI article goes on:

Saglutupiaġataq released his “America first” energy plan hours after being sworn into office. It states the following:

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.

Saglutupiaġataq released his “America first” energy plan hours after being sworn into office. It states the following:

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.

Now, you may wonder about how federal government could possibly seize Indian land just like that. Well, let’s see…

The termination era of 1953 to 1968 involved Congress stripping tribes of their lands and criminal jurisdiction. The policy was thinly disguised as an attempt to lift American Indians and Alaska Natives out of poverty by assimilating them into mainstream society. However the real goal was to privatize and ransack American Indian and Alaska Native lands.

From the American Indian Relief Council:

From 1953-1964 109 tribes were terminated and federal responsibility and jurisdiction was turned over to state governments. Approximately 2,500,000 acres of trust land was removed from protected status and 12,000 Native Americans lost tribal affiliation. The lands were sold to non-Indians the tribes lost official recognition by the U.S. government….Public Law 280 which was passed in 1953 turned power over to state governments to enforce most of the regular criminal laws on reservations as they were doing in other parts of the state. (Federally Recognized Tribes Should Brace for Possible Termination Policy Under Trump

American Indian reservations are federally owned lands held “in trust” for tribes. The “vast untapped domestic energy reserves” referred to in Saglutupiaġataq’s energy plan are largely within American Indian reservations. These lands would need to be sold or leased to private sector corporations by the federal government in order for development to proceed. But first, tribal jurisdiction over those lands would need to be terminated by Congress and vested in states.

H. Rept. 113-263 | NATIVE AMERICAN ENERGY ACT | 113th Congress (2013-2014)

Going back to Trump and his continuous approaches to native American leadership figures before the election:

A group of advisers to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews.

The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership – a politically explosive idea that could upend more than century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations.

The tribes have rights to use the land, but they do not own it. They can drill it and reap the profits, but only under regulations that are far more burdensome than those applied to private property.

“We should take tribal land away from public treatment,” said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a Cherokee tribe member who is co-chairing Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition. “As long as we can do it without unintended consequences, I think we will have broad support around Indian country.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The proposed path to deregulated drilling – privatizing reservations – could prove even more divisive. Many Native Americans view such efforts as a violation of tribal self-determination and culture.

“Our spiritual leaders are opposed to the privatization of our lands, which means the commoditization of the nature, water, air we hold sacred,” said Tom Goldtooth, a member of both the Navajo and the Dakota tribes who runs the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Privatization has been the goal since colonization – to strip Native Nations of their sovereignty.”

Reservations governed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs are intended in part to keep Native American lands off the private real estate market, preventing sales to non-Indians. An official at the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

The legal underpinnings for reservations date to treaties made between 1778 and 1871 to end wars between indigenous Indians and European settlers. Tribal governments decide how land and resources are allotted among tribe members.

Leaders of Trump’s coalition did not provide details of how they propose to allocate ownership of the land or mineral rights – or to ensure they remained under Indian control. (Trump Advisors Aim to Privatize Oil-Rich Indian Reservations | REUTERS)

 

If “Yes” Had a Superlative

7) Be prepared to experience race as the racial minority

I had been in other contexts where I was a racial minority (say Latin America or Nepal), where I was celebrated for my race or at least acknowledged as neutral. This is different on “The Rez”.

The reality is that most whites coming onto native land over the last 100 years have been exploiting, whether intentionally or not, these indigenous communities. Additionally, the last time there was serious activism on these reservations many of the whites trying to get involved were FBI informants. While all races are genuinely invited to all the camps at Standing Rock, as a white person you will find yourself having to prove yourself to be an exception to the rule. Ironically, this is how I imagine what it is like being a racial minority in America in general, where you have to continuously prove yourself to be the exception to stereotypes imposed on you by the majority culture. If you are paying the slightest bit of attention, you will experience what it is like to be a racial minority with an attached sense of “otherness”, and this will likely change how you view the world.

https://upliftconnect.com/12-ways-standing-rock/

The Art of Illegal Cattle Grazing, Defaced Petroglyphs and Ditch-digging

After Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada in 2014, the BLM stayed out of the area for two years. After returning in June, they found vandalized petroglyphs and 22 miles of illegal irrigation trenching built through the desert, bringing the issue of protecting Gold Butte as a national monument to the forefront.

Full story | HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

Wall Street, Canada, Japan and Europe Invest in Dakota Access Pipeline | Rick Perry and then Some Finalized the Deal in Congress

The warriors will need all the help they can get.

Kelcey Warren | Founder and CEO of Energey Transfer Partnership LLC

One question would be, how is it possible for the Injun folk resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline construction practically alone, while the overwhelming majority of Americans sit comfortably aside, merely praising or condemning the audacity of a handful of tribes to protest in the middle of nowhere. The issue was masterfully framed to divert focus to a harmless and, to some, even entertaining third page subtle mention -until dogs attacked human beings, and thousands instead of hundreds started gathering-; not even a spectacle (barely portrayed in the mainstream media, if at all). So, here it is (MONEY TRAIL EXPOSED | Marc Belisle for Reverbpress):

[Dakota Access LLC, the company that owns the pipeline, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Texas company, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Kelcey Warren is the founder, chairman and CEO of ETP. Warren is listed by Forbes as one of the top 400 richest Americans, worth over $4 billion. In 2015, Bloomberg published an exposé on Warren, describing how he was “having fun in the oil bust.” Buried deep beneath descriptions of his lavish lifestyle and supposed brilliance for being positioned to corner the market on transporting fuel from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) when oil prices crashed, was this tidbit about his business model,

Energy Transfer Partners is one of four master limited partnerships over which Warren has effective control. MLPs, used primarily by energy companies, don’t pay income taxes. Instead, investors holding units—the rough equivalent of shares—pay taxes on the quarterly cash distributions they receive.

That gives MLPs a lower cost of capital for acquisitions and construction projects. But they have to crank out those cash payments to keep unitholders happy, which means they must keep acquiring new properties or expanding existing ones. “You must grow until you die,” Warren says. He touched on the topic during Energy Transfer’s quarterly earnings conference call earlier this month. He said he was “a little frustrated right now” because he had expected that cheap oil and narrow natural gas processing margins would have created more takeover bargains.

…………………..

So, who is investing in this black snake? Citibank is acting as the accountant for three companies in the ETP network that will fund the project, Democracy Now reported. Energy Transfer Partners, Sunoco Logistics, and Energy Transfer Equity have each launched a line of credit. Research by Little Sis revealed that 38 banks have invested in those credit lines in amounts ranging from $30 million to $589.5 million for a total of $10.25 billion. These banks include such Wall Street usual suspects as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Citibank.

 But the investors also include a wide array of foreign banks, responsible for roughly half of the overall investment. The two largest investors, each with over half a billion in the pot, are two of Japan’s biggest banks, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho Bank. Other big investments come from some of the biggest banks in Canada, France, Britain as well as Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. The pattern that I notice is that these are central banks in countries that are stalwarts of the Western alliance, who also don’t produce much of their own oil.

This brings us to one of the fishiest aspects of this pipeline.

In a 2014 presentation delivered to officials in Iowa, one of the four states the pipeline will run through, the company claimed the pipeline would “Increase America’s Energy Independence. 100% Domestic produced crude supports 100% domestic consumption.” There is zero wiggle-room within that statement. The company promised that all of its product would be piped to domestic US markets when it convinced officials to allow the pipeline.

Yet, in a bizarrely fortuitous coincidence, in December, 2015, Congress lifted a ban on the export of crude oil that had been in place for over 40 years. The Intercept‘s Lee Fang reported that the company now refuses to defend its initial “100% domestic consumption” promise.

“We will not own the oil that is transported through the pipeline. We are like FedEx. We will deliver the oil to the refineries for the producers,” said Vicki Granado, Energy Transfer Partner’s spokesperson.
The bill that changed ETP from a champion of domestic consumption to a darling of foreign banks with no responsibility whatsoever to where the crude is going was H.R. 2029. In February, 2015, ETP hired former Texas governor Rick Perry onto the board of directors while he was facing felony corruption charges (which were later dismissed), claiming that there were “no arrangements or understandings” between Perry and the board. Yet, Perry almost immediately went to work lobbying Congress to pass H.R. 2029 and lift the ban on crude exports. Meanwhile, Kelcy Warren made his largest publicly acknowledged political gift when he donated at least $6 million to Opportunity and Freedom PAC, a Super PAC supporting Rick Perry’s 2016 bid for the presidency.

H.R. 2029 was sponsored by Charlie Dent, Republican House Rep for Pennsylvania’s 15th District. According to OpenSecrets‘ analysis of filings, Dent’s largest contributor in 2016 is the German chemical corporation BASF SE. The financial adviser to BASF SE is the German giant, Deutsche Bank, which has over a quarter of a billion dollars invested in the Dakota Access pipeline.

When H.R. 2029 passed the Senate, Oklahoma Senator and leader of the well funded climate change denialist caucus, James “I have a snowball” Inhofe lauded the bill:

“It is about time Congress acted to lift the ban on oil exports,” Inhofe said. “Over the past forty years, Oklahoma’s oil producers have been at a disadvantage because they haven’t been able to trade oil like the rest of the world. This has contributed to the thousands of job losses Oklahoma has recently endured and today’s passage of a bill to lift the ban will help stem that tide while decreasing the price of gasoline at the pump.”

With all of this evidence that prominent political actors received kickbacks for the Dakota Access pipeline, one can’t help but wonder how much other influence peddling went into the approval for this pipeline, which snakes through 4 states, had to get approval by multiple federal agencies, and was freed to export by an Act of Congress. One wonders, with so much Wall Street money flowing into the project, if it is even remotely possible that the activists of the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies can get a fair hearing in our Justice system, which has already ignored their concerns and allowed a private company to attack them with dogs. With so much foreign money flowing into the project, one wonders not only whether Native American sovereignty–a deadly serious issue with a traumatic history–is at stake, but whether the sovereignty of the United States generally is under pressure.

This pipeline is a monstrosity of globalist corporate influence stomping on the sovereignty of Native Americans and threatening their land. A few thousand Native Americans and allies are the only ones standing between the bulldozers and American democracy which has done precious little for them, and the environment. Their case heads to federal court on Friday after Dakota Access allegedly bulldozed a sacred Sioux burial site the tribe specifically asked the government to protect. North Dakota’s governor Jack Dalrymple is deploying the National Guard to the site of protests on Friday. And with so much global money invested in the pipeline, and the government seemingly asleep at the wheel, it’s hard to escape the sinking feeling that the tribe is going to need all the help they can get.]

Standing Rock | A Professor’s Plea to Keep this Pure, and Non-Violent | Still…

[Odysseas Elytis | Axion Esti -excerpt]

A lone swallow amidst the precious Spring,
it takes painful labor to turn the Sun,
the dead by the thousands to grind on the wheels,
and the living their blood to shed.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

God, my Master Builder, You too amidst the lilacs,
God, my Master Builder, You too inhaled the scent of Resurrection

_________________________________________________________________

[In the southern heart of North Dakota, we may be witnessing the beginning of a national and international pan-Indian renewal of First Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, Native Americans. Anything that helps rebuild Indian pride, cultural confidence and a firm and solid assertion of Native American rights is a good thing for all of us, for all Americans.It is past time to bring the Two Cultures into legal and cultural parity, and to end the long train of domination by the Recent Americans over the Original Americans.

Still….]

CLAY JENKINSON: Standing Rock — A Plea To Keep This Pure — And Non-Violent