Update, February 2021: In November of 2016 my wife, my daughter, and one of our close friends drove our SUV over a thousand miles to Standing Rock reservation in the Dakotas. We were loaded with canned goods and medical supplies donated by friends to help support the Native American water protectors peacefully protesting a new oil pipeline being built across the fresh water supply for the reservation. Construction was underway minus the correct environmental studies, and the hope was to stop it before permanent damage to the environment occurred. The situation was tense. The weekend we were there law enforcement and hired corporate thugs engaged in horrific violence attempting to disrupt the pacifist effort. I wrote an article for a magazine upon our return. This is the text of that piece over four years later. It’s long and involved, but I’m putting it up on my blog because of President Biden’s recent controversial executive order to stop construction on the Keystone pipeline. It serves as a reminder of how dangerous these projects are and how difficult they are to stop once the oil and the money start flowing. The DAPL pipeline has leaked hundreds of gallons of oil since construction in 2016. After four years of court battles waged by the Great Sioux Nation, here’s where we are:
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated a key federal environmental law when it approved an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under the Missouri River and now must complete a full environmental impact statement, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC ruled on Jan. 26, 2021. But the court overruled a lower court ruling that the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile pipeline had to stop operating and empty its oil until that review was done. The decision partially upholds the March 2020 ruling by D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg, but the shutdown he ordered was not enacted pending the appeal.” Engineering News-Record, January 27, 2021
Oil and Water: A Story
By
Jim McGarrah
Mni Wiconi (Water is Life) – Great Sioux Nation
“The logic of capitalism leads to overexploitation of resources, both human and natural”
Bruntland Commission, 1987
I’m a storyteller by trade, not a journalist, but my stories are real, not fiction. More is required from me regarding evidence and observation and less from imagination than for a novelist. However, there are basic similarities in all stories regardless of their origin. Let me begin this story the way narratives do by creating a foundation for the plot, which requires conflict and a setting. In this case both things bear the burden of historical proof and the weight of sadness generated in a society governed by greed. These are the basics.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 ceded the land that now makes up much of Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and the Dakotas to nine different Native American tribes. The land was to make up their sovereign nations in perpetuity in return for allowing white settlers the freedom to follow the Oregon trail on the way west. As history bears out, the word perpetuity does not mean what the dictionary says if you are the U.S. government. It means until we want it. Consequently, the new treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 reduced one tribe’s—the Great Sioux Nation—property to east of the Missouri River. Further adding to the confusion was the fact that the Black Hills happened to be smack dab in the middle of it.
Anyone who has ever been to a cowboy movie or gotten as far as sixth grade history class knows the next part of my story. While General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Calvary were busy slaughtering Sioux women and children and purging tribes from their land for white settlers, they accidently discovered gold in the Black Hills. Gold—that shiny ore meaningless to the Sioux—could not be left in the ground because the Robber Barons of America, men with names we know still such as Astor, Carnegie, Mellon, Flagler, Morgan, Rockefeller, Schwab, and Vanderbilt needed gold in the 19th century to build an empire. It proved a simple matter of normalizing the horror of Manifest Destiny to direct Custer’s mission from land grab to genocide. Of course, Custer received his just reward at the Little Big Horn. But, stopping the barons was no more effective than stopping a locomotive with a Kleenex. The American Empire grew and the world of the Sioux diminished proportionally.
It terms of graphing a story, here begins what we call “the rising action.” You know the setting, and you need to understand the conflict. If you know any real history at all, you are aware of the genocide and pillage that followed. Now, a storyteller will complicate the dilemma, or conflict, by the interaction of protagonist and antagonist and move it toward a climax.
One Hundred years later in 20th century, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally taken land from the Sioux and ordered all told a restitution payment in excess of two hundred million dollars. The tribe refused the money and demanded that the land be returned to them. This land, while viewed by white America as a material resource to be exploited, is sacred to Native Americans and far more valuable in every way possible than money will ever be.
On the other hand, we have learned from experience that almost nothing is more important to corporate America’s sociopathic collection of banks, oil companies, and Wall Street investment offices than money in this 21st century. Consequently, when a huge oil reserve was discovered in the Bakken field of North Dakota, the major concern shifted from who owned the land to how to get oil out of it and across the country. This is where the conflict and rising action complicates, moving the narrative into a climax, or showdown, between protagonist, the Great Sioux Nation and antagonist, white corporate America.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,172-mile oil pipeline project that will transfer crude oil across four states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. From the Bakken fields of North Dakota, the pipeline will carry over 450,000 barrels per day of crude oil to Patoka, Illinois, and possibly on to near the Gulf Coast for refinement or export. The project will cost $3.7 billion. Will it create jobs? Yes. There will be 8,000 construction jobs for a few weeks. However, the idea that it will be an employment boon for Plains states citizens is a cruel hoax. The pipeline requires only forty permanent employees to operate.
The original route for the pipeline sent it through Bismarck, North Dakota. The white citizens of that good city refused to accept it because of the danger involved. A single spill could ruin drinking water for seventeen million people who rely on the Missouri River. But, oil companies say spills are rare and we all know from TV cable news that corporations never lie. Right? Wrong. Over 3,000 incidents of crude oil leaks or natural gas ruptures have occurred on U.S. pipelines since 2010. These incidents have killed 80 people, injured 389 more, and cost $2.8 billion in damages. They released toxic, polluting chemicals in local soil, waterways, and air as well. High Country News, a nonprofit news organization in Colorado, mapped each of the spills and that map is available to the public. If you’re interested enough in having an earth to live on, don’t take my word for it. Look it up.
Coupled with this “we-love-you and we’re-safe” corporate propaganda is the economic imperative. With all the oil from the Bakken fields in North Dakota waiting to be transported out somebody must be willing to gamble an investment against a very large payday. Of course, the usual oil companies have been willing such as Phillips 66, Marathon, and Sunoco. They are always willing because the government allows them huge tax breaks. If they lose money, they write it off and the taxpayer picks up the tab. I’ll give you an example. My figures won’t be exact because I’m writing them from memory, but the exact figures are a matter of public record and therefore common knowledge. The last year I remember looking was around 2010. Exxon oil showed profits for their stockholders of roughly over 30 billion dollars. How much corporate income tax did the company pay while you and I shelled out anywhere from 25-35% of our income? Nada. Not a dime. After write-offs, research losses, depreciation on equipment, etc., our government paid them a refund of 142 million dollars.
But oil companies are not alone when it comes to smelling easy money. Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, among several other financial institutions are dumping cash into the project, and unless you believe banks give money away for free, this indicates they expect a return. Hey, I bet you recognize at least one investor personally, Donald Trump. With cash on the line the pipeline must be built. Therefore, some people must bear the risk of disease and destruction. If white folk complain, then it creates bad public relations for institutions that profit from public goodwill. But who listens to Native Americans?
Now, you understand how the DAPL pipeline, or what the Sioux refer to as the Black Snake, began its journey across the Black Hills, those same Black Hills where gold was discovered a century and a half earlier. This is a new war being fought against an old enemy, Greed. One big difference stands out. While the antagonist’s tools remain the same, in this case a militarized police force employing war zone tactics, the Native American “water protectors” fight back with prayers instead of arrows and tomahawks.
The repression from authorities has been brutal as the pipeline nears the Missouri River, but for the last six months of 2016 camps made up of various tribes have resisted its forward progress non-violently with daily demonstrations, sit-ins, and ancient rituals. The movement exploded from a few dozen water protectors to thousands during the last months of 2016, and the siege line along Highway 1806 in North Dakota became more dangerous every day. The unarmed civilians could be shot with rubber bullets, pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, tazed, or beaten with clubs for simply standing on certain ground and praying. The camps were getting buzzed by military jets. Sound cannons shrieked at all hours to disrupt sleep and create chaos. Still, they prayed. Still, they chanted and danced. Still, the crowd grew as people of all races become aware of the tyranny. And still more Americans and the world become aware through social media much to the shame of corporate news networks such as ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS, which have ignored all news from the area to appease their corporate owners.
This is where I, as narrator, physically entered the story, during the third stage or climax, along with my wife Debbie, daughter Leslie, and good friend Rebe. In normal circumstances, a storyteller does not intrude upon his story. However, in this real situation an eyewitness account carries weight. Observation supersedes imagination. It is not a climax that I’m expecting to end well. The siege at Standing Rock had been proceeding apace for months with acute bouts of intensity between the unarmed water protectors and the hired corporate thugs that disguise themselves as police officers and sheriff’s deputies.
In early November, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered construction to halt temporarily to study further the implications of building the pipeline beneath a section of the Missouri River that affects the water supply for the tribe, as well as neighboring communities. This action will likely intensify the tension between the adversaries because it is temporary and not a solution. It will also be an expensive delay for the economic interests gambling on completion of the project for a profitable return.
Our little group of travelers had “no particular skin in the game” to quote one of my old man’s pearls of wisdom. We are not Native American. We are people who believe democracy is not a spectator sport and this opportunity to contribute simply presented itself. Consequently, through the organizing efforts of my daughter and Rebe, we managed to obtain medical supplies, warm clothing, and nonperishable food supplies. After loading everything we could into every nook and cramped cranny of an SUV, and mailing what we couldn’t carry, the four of us drove over a thousand miles and through a blizzard to arrive in Mandan, North Dakota, near the reservation. Here we joined forces with Rebe’s cousin, Gretchen Bell, who is an excellent photographer, and after a night’s rest in a motel full of oil field roughnecks, left for the camps of water protectors called Scared Stone and Oceti Sakowin just across the river from the siege forces of DAPL. It was Saturday, November 19, 2016.
Most of what happened during what I consider to be the climax of my story, or according to Flannery O’Connor the end of one dramatic action, has been reported in various ways by bloggers, journalists, pseudo-journalists, politicians, and the spin doctors that serve multiple law enforcement agencies. Here’s what I know happened for sure. I spent the morning and early afternoon unloading supplies we had transported into storage tents at Sacred Stone camp. People came and went, removing those supplies as needed free of charge. It was very cold and the wind ripped across the open plain causing me to take frequent breaks and warm myself by a fire next to a makeshift meeting house.
Around this fire an eclectic group of honest-hearted—I mean that sincerely in the utmost hippie sense—people from as far west as California and as far east as New Jersey came and went, sharing clothing, firewood, food, and advice with newcomers that were filtering in steadily. I spoke with an ancient Native American over coffee who was one of the camp founders about the dangers of the subzero winter that was fast approaching. Most of the housing consisted of flimsy tents, yurts, or teepees and many of the residents were accompanied by their children. The old man knew that should the bitter cold take a life during some future night’s sleep, the authorities would use that as an excuse to declare an emergency status and raze the camps. Everyone kept watchful eyes on their neighbors and shared equally all clothing, blankets, and fuel. This communal spirit was one of the key factors that not only held the camps together but made the experience of being there an exhilarating and spiritual one. For a short while, it was possible to imagine a better world.
As we finished our coffee, we were approached by a child, probably around ten years old who wanted to know the time. I happened to be carrying an old, cheap Mickey Mouse watch from some past Disney promotion as a lucky charm, and I gave it to her. You would have thought it was a Rolex studded with diamonds by the expression of gratitude on her face.
Leaving the fire, I spent the next few hours working with a volunteer nurse who inventoried supplies in the medical tent. From my own time in combat during the Vietnam War, I remembered the importance of triage in any situation where random violence might occur. She gracefully allowed me to organize a section of the tent for that express purpose. Thankfully, donations of bandages, antiseptics, NSAIDs, and local anesthesia had been pouring in because triage became important before the weekend was over.
I met up with Leslie, Rebe, and Gretchen—my wife remained at the motel as a precaution should we be arrested—and we journeyed the short distance to the largest camp Oceti Sawokin. The correct term for the people commonly known as Sioux is Oceti Sakowin, (Och-et-eeshak-oh-win), which translates to Seven Council Fires. The very first Sioux tribe was made up of Seven Council Fires. Each of these Council Fires was made up of individual bands, based on kinship, dialect and geographic proximity. Sharing a common fire is one thing that has always united the Sioux people. Keeping of the peta waken (sacred fire) continues as an important activity. On marches their history, coals from the previous council fire were carefully preserved and used to rekindle the council fire at the new campsite.
We had come to witness the sacred drum ceremony and hear the tribal elders speak in preparation for nonviolent activities scheduled for the roadblock on Highway 1806 during Sunday, November 20. The camp itself was a wonderland made up of over a hundred different tribes all flying their banners and providing a kaleidoscopic vision of color in the bright, frigid sunlight. What had begun as a small testament to the will of the reservation elders by a few members of the Sioux Nation had expanded and become a statement of historical importance greater than the sum of its parts. Thousands of people from every race and tribe gathered on the river bank, all of them there to say “this is where it must stop” meaning the violation of indigenous rights, the degradation of the earth, the expansion of greed—the oil from the Bakken field would not even be used to benefit Americans, but rather sold on a foreign market to increase the profits of a few billionaires—and the delusion that profit is more important than life on the planet.
Never had I seen or felt this much spirit of communal welfare and strength before, including the times I attended the great anti-war and civil rights rallies of the 1960’s. Something beyond the physical enveloped the whole camp, a primal energy that transcended the visceral cold and bareness of our surroundings. I was warm from the inside out. I felt young and strong even at the tired old age of seventy. When the drums began to echo in the air it was as if they sent a thread of electric power through us all, a bond that could not be explained but could not be broken. I rode the sound into a world of dreams wherethoughts shifted into flames rising from the scared campfire. The chants of the singers above the drums terrified and lifted me at the same time as if the cries of the banshees called to my Irish ancestors. Omnipotent and full of wonder. The rhythm of the dancers circling the fire mixed with the scent of smoking wet wood. Sweat seeped into my palms and the ash of stars sifted over the crowd. I stumbled over the revenants of a nation’s relinquished innocence and heard their genocidal screams. These ghosts of the past and the future inside my head spilled over the blistered land. Time disintegrated. The tribe was one and I was the tribe.
The spell shattered when I opened my eyes and found myself standing immediately behind Shailene Woodley. The young Hollywood starlet of several high-profile movies had joined the water protectors for the weekend activities. As many celebrities before her, she had chosen a cause outside the illusions of the cinema and committed herself to it whole-heartedly. I’m sure it helped her stay grounded in the real world and was therefore, beneficial to her. But I don’t begrudge Shailene this because her presence drove the news media to acknowledge finally after so long that this battle existed and so it benefitted the movement as well. She has been an excellent spokesperson for the Great Sioux Nation’s battle with corporate white America and ultimately for the finite resource—water—that so desperately needs protection from its two worst enemies, greed and stupidity.
As the ceremony ended, various speakers took turns with messages and instruction. The most important of these came from tribal elders. They invoked the ancient gods, informed us of the coming events and the rules for nonviolent engagement, and reminded us of the importance of watching over each other during the coming cold night. All that’s left of this climax is the disaster that occurred the very next day, Sunday, November 20. There are many versions you can research, but basically the facts are plain.
The water protectors who had been well-trained in nonviolent resistance descended upon the roadblock of burned-out vehicles at the bridge on Highway 1806 and faced off with corporate-hired mercenaries and law enforcement personnel. As the day wore on, the armed thugs’ patience grew thin. During the early evening, the temperature dropped into the teens, and the crowd of water protectors gathered on the narrow bridge. In front of them were guns, to the left and right of them was the river, and behind them on the highway another support group of women and the elderly gathered along the river bank. A few people stacked wood and built small fires on each side of the entrance to the bridge so those grouped in front of the roadblock could take turns warming themselves.
Using this as an excuse, the mercenaries turned water cannons directly on the crowd, not on the fires as they later stated. The use of these cannons as anti-personnel devices was illegal, but sociopathic behavior does not rely on legality. Many people were bruised by the water pressure and began developing hypothermia from being soaked. At the same time, several canisters of tear gas exploded on the bridge. People had nowhere to go but backward and that panicked rush would have trampled those behind them resulting in many casualties and possibly deaths. I want to acknowledge the courage and discipline of the water protectors at this point. Most of them stood or sat in place shrouded by thick clouds of noxious gas. Their lungs on fire, unable to breath, and blinded, they refused to rush over the weaker among them in an escape attempt. The mercenaries fired rubber bullets at random causing horrific injury. Some threw concussion grenades, and while these are non-lethal, they did result in catastrophic injury. One of the group lost her arm. Keep in mind that during all this not one single stone had been thrown at the armed agents facing them.
If my story were progressing as a normal one graphed by Freitag’s Triangle, I would believe the climax had been written and on the morning of November 21 it entered its denouement—literally, unraveling or conclusion—at which point the reader decides for or against the protagonist or perhaps the characters involved have reached the end of their dramatic action. However, this is not completely accurate. It’s true that after this major escalation of violence there were fewer and lesser physical skirmishes. The pipeline construction was halted temporarily by order of the Army Corps of Engineers and did not reach the January 1, 2017 deadline of completion. As of late in that month, oil was till not flowing.
However, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 18th. One of the many executive actions he has taken to increase his own personal wealth since taking office forced the Army Corps of Engineers to reverse their order to discontinue construction while the proper environmental studies were taking place. The pipeline was finished and oil began its flow to the Gulf of Mexico in March where it would be refined and shipped abroad for profit. The camps were dismantled and most of the people went home.
It’s now June and I’m six months into the conclusion of my story that may continue to unravel for years. It isn’t unusual for a denouement to extend well beyond the climax of a story. The DAPL pipeline—that leakproof marvel of technical ingenuity—has already sprung several minor leaks. Who knows when the first major catastrophe will occur. We only know for sure that if operation continues, it most certainly will happen. And, while the camps are no longer active as they were in the previous sense, resistance has not disappeared. Tribal elders continue to battle in the courts. Earlier this month they received a minor victory. But we all know that when Native Americans deal with the federal government, any victory is a major miracle. I’m going to share some parts of a recent article that appeared in the June 16, 2017 Bismark Tribune Daily from North Dakota. It concerns a district court decision just rendered that will force the correct and legal environmental studies to be done. How long this decision will stand, whether oil will continue to flow while courts decide, and where the outcome will lead is unknown at this time. Will the pipeline be shut down? Will it be rerouted in a safer location? Will Native Americans finally be respected as human beings? Regardless, the fight continues and high praise must be given to a tiny band of indigenous “water warriors” who have shown the wisdom and courage and self-sacrifice to protect us from ourselves.
Bismark Tribune Daily:
When considering who would be affected by the Dakota Access Pipeline, the federal government focused on two predominantly white counties rather than the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation downstream.
That analysis is now key to a newly ordered review of the pipeline, focusing on whether environmental justice was adequately considered for the low-income, minority community less than a mile south of the Lake Oahe crossing.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a Wednesday opinion the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not adequately consider how a spill would affect Native American tribes living just south of the pipeline.
The corps focused its environmental justice analysis on a half-mile buffer where the pipeline crosses a dammed section of the Missouri River. The review looked at two census tracts in Morton and Emmons counties, areas that are primarily white and relatively more affluent than other areas nearby.
If the analysis had extended another 0.05 miles — less than the length of a football field — it would have included Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Sioux County, the third poorest county in the country.
The corps’ rationale was that a half-mile is standard for gas pipelines and transportation projects.
But Boasberg questioned whether the buffer was large enough to account for spill effects and construction impacts. He suggested the tribe might suffer disproportionate harm in the case of a spill because of the tribe’s poverty, “distinct cultural practices” and some members’ reliance on hunting and fishing.
“The court is hard pressed to conclude that the corps” selection of a 0.5-mile buffer was reasonable,’ Boasberg wrote….
James Grijalva, a law professor at the University of North Dakota, said the lawsuit and protest may have been avoided if the company and the corps did a full environmental review.
“The court’s decision makes clear that the laws passed by Congress to protect human health and the environment must be respected, regardless of the monetary desires of the oil industry and government officials to fast-track energy projects,” said Grijalva, also director of the Tribal Environmental Law Project.
Robert Bullard, a professor of environmental policy at Texas Southern University, said he would have given the environmental justice assessment a grade of “F.”
“What the analysis did was gerrymandered and rendered the reservation of the closest population — native tribes — invisible,” he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency also criticized the half-mile buffer, advising the corps it should analyze areas impacted by a project, not only the area where construction occurs, Boasberg notes in his opinion…
A Department of Justice spokeswoman said the agency “intends to continue vigorously defending the government’s actions in this case.”
The judge has asked attorneys to submit arguments on what should happen during the review, including whether the pipeline should continue operating. The $3.8 billion pipeline from the Bakken to Illinois went into commercial service on June 1. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Jan Hasselman, an attorney for Earthjustice who represents the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said if the corps tries to “paper over” the flaws in the environmental assessment without doing a more thorough review, the matter may be headed toward another round of litigation.
“I believe the environmental justice analysis in the corps’ documents was probably the most appalling part of its decision,” Hasselman said.
The tribe’s position that when a permit is issued without full compliance of the law, it should be vacated, according to Hasselman.
“This pipeline should not be operating until there’s a full and fair analysis of those risks and consequences,” Hasselman said.
*All information shared is this essay is a matter of public knowledge and easily researched on the internet. I urge any who doubt my story to consider the available facts. It may require some time and effort and thought on your part. Damn, I hope so.
Jim McGarrah, Author 