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Jane Fonda gets arrested for climate protest, plans to do it again

by Salina60Xmqo Posted on October 11, 2019

Jane Fonda has joined many a protest in her eight decades on God’s green earth. She has marched with working mothers, supported the Black Panthers, and sat on an anti-aircraft gun in Vietnam. Now, the star of Barbarella, Monster-In-Law, and dozens more movies, TV shows, and exercise videos is lending her voice and influence in a new way to an old cause: climate change.

For the next 13 Fridays, the 81-year-old Academy Award winner will demonstrate on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to ask lawmakers to put an end to fossil fuel drilling. She’ll have to stop protesting in December so she can start filming the seventh season of Grace and Frankie, her Netflix comedy series.

Fonda is calling the protests “Fire Drill Fridays,” and they’re like a combination of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future protests and the activist group Extinction Rebellion’s civil disobedience. Fonda says she plans to protest each week until she is arrested. “I’m going to take my body, which is kind of famous and popular right now because of the [television] series and I’m going to go to D.C. and I’m going to have a rally every Friday,” the actress said in an interview with the Washington Post. “Greta said we have to behave like it’s a crisis,” she added. “We have to behave like our houses are on fire.”

True to her word, Fonda, sporting a red pea coat and a spiffy checkered cap, was arrested alongside other protesters on the steps of the Capitol building on Friday.

Assuming she’s released in time, Fonda will host online teach-ins on Thursday evenings that will include lectures from climate scientists and discussions about how environmental concerns overlap with social issues, in addition to her Friday protests, which will start every week at 11 a.m.

The eight-time Golden Globe winner has protested in the name of climate change before, at Standing Rock in 2016 and at regional protests on the West Coast, including the climate rally in Los Angeles last month. Now, her number one priority is “cutting all funding and permits for new developments for fossil fuel and exports and processing and refining.”

Celebrities are often keen to wade into activism, but it doesn’t always have the intended effect (and the media has a tendency to bungle the message). Yahoo News covered actress Shailene Woodley’s protests at Standing Rock thusly: “Shailene Woodley’s Mug Shot Is as Beautiful as Her Message.” Other celebs have advocated for eliminating straws but seem to have no problem flying private jets all over the damn place, a great way to fry the planet, reusable straws and all.

But Fonda’s multi-pronged approach, which pairs civil disobedience with education and raises awareness about student strikes, seems to be in line with what a bunch of experts told Grist is the right way for a celebrity to support environmental activists. As Barbarella herself would say, “Decarbonize or I’ll melt your face!”

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Jane Fonda gets arrested for climate protest, plans to do it again

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Texans could get a year in prison for protesting pipelines on their own land

by SilkeMUXAcj Posted on May 21, 2019

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Texans could get a year in prison for protesting pipelines on their own land

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The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

by RitaTweddle0 Posted on January 2, 2019

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When devastating wildfires were sweeping the West last fall, Ryan Zinke, who recently announced his resignation as Interior secretary, lay the blame for the blazes on a ragtag group of environmentalists. “We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow the harvest of timber,” Zinke said in an interview with Breitbart News.

Environmental activism has long put protesters at odds with government officials. But instead of dismissing climate-conscious demonstrators as hippies or “tree huggers,” government officials have begun using more dangerous labels — including “terrorist.”

It’s happening all over the world, from the U.S. to the Philippines to Brazil (which just yesterday inaugurated particularly anti-environmental/indigenous President Jair Bolsonaro). It even happened at the recent United Nations climate talks in Poland. More than two dozen climate activists headed to the summit in Katowice were deported or refused entry on the pretext of being national threats.

“I had absolutely no time to react,” said Zanna Vanrenterghem, a staff member at Climate Action Network Europe who was pulled off a train from Vienna to Katowice by border patrol agents. “The fact that this happened to 15 other people for similar reasons is very frightening. This is just a very small symptom of a larger disease.”

When it comes to justifying (and promoting) extreme actions, language matters. As Grist’s Kate Yoder wrote, earlier this year, labeling activists as “eco-terrorists” isn’t new. Charges of eco-terrorism peaked in the 1990s, but dissipated for the most part by 2012.

Now the term is starting to pick up steam again. And the consequences of treating environmentalists like terrorists can go to much further lengths than denying them entry to a climate conference.

Standing Rock was a turning point in the American war of words against climate activists.

In 2016, law enforcement agents used tear gas and water cannons (despite freezing temperatures) on Dakota Access pipeline protesters at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Since those protests, dozens of bills and executive orders have been introduced to suppress similar environmental demonstrations.

Activists say this is part of an aggressive campaign by fossil fuel companies and their government allies to increase criminal penalties for minor violations — such as trespassing on a pipeline easement — as a way of suppressing climate action. Eighty-four members of Congress sent a bipartisan letter to the Department of Justice last fall, asking officials to prosecute pipeline activists as “terrorists.” And bills introduced in Washington and North Carolina would have defined peaceful demonstrations as “economic terrorism.”

And as we know in the U.S., branding a group of people as “terrorists” is kind of a big deal.

The label of “terrorism” has always been contested and politicized. Advocates for human rights say that the term has been used to suppress criticism of the government or corporate interests. “Making antiterror laws, that’s the most rational, the most logical tool [governments] use against indigenous people and all those that are critical of government,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights indigenous peoples, during a panel discussion this spring at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Daniel Sheehan of the Lakota Law Project, which provided legal defense to Standing Rock protesters, likened modern cries of domestic terrorism to anti-communist rhetoric in U.S. history. “Instead of communist, they now call you a terrorist, anybody who’s opposing the capitalist system,” says Sheehan. “What you get is this thing called industrial terrorism, these statutes that say if you do anything which is a direct action to attempt to impede a corporation from being able to pursue its business and to make its profit, that is terrorism.”

As a result of protests at Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners — the developer behind the Dakota Access Pipeline — filed a civil suit for $900 million against Greenpeace and other environmental groups alleging acts of eco-terrorism. Greenpeace has called the suit a “textbook strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).”

“The fact that corporations are trying to frame environmental advocates in that way, it’s just a very clear example of how they’re trying to stigmatize it without addressing the concerns of the movement which are very legitimate,” says Rodrigo Estrada, senior communications specialist at Greenpeace. “In the end, this is about the protection of communities and the environment.”

While the backlash against Standing Rock protesters was iconic, it was far from the most serious consequence of anti-activist fear-mongering.

In February 2018, the President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines sought to label Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur, as a terrorist. Tauli-Corpuz’ job is to look into abuses against indigenous peoples and present her findings and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She’s been a vocal advocate for global action on climate change. And even before her tenure began in 2014, she has been a staunch defender of her tribe’s land, the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Tauli-Corpuz has also called attention to the killings of indigenous Lumad people, who have long defended their land from logging and mining interests.

President Duterte filed a petition to designate more than 600 people, including Tauli-Corpuz, as terrorists for their alleged connections to the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army. Duterte has also waged a bloody “war on drugs” (which some critics say has also been an excuse to eliminate his political opposition) that has led to thousands of alleged drug-dealers being killed by police and vigilantes.

In an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Tauli-Corpuz called the allegation of terrorism against her “entirely baseless and malicious.”

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“The government sees this as an opportunity to pursue people they don’t like. I am worried for my safety and the safety of others on the list, including several rights activists,” she said.

The charge against Tauli-Corpuz was dismissed last August after an international outcry. But many other activists remained on the president’s petition to designate individual leaders and the Communist Party of the Philippines as terrorists.

“The inclusion of human rights defenders, amongst them indigenous peoples, on the Government list amounts to intimidation and harassment of people who are peacefully defending their rights,” wrote Michel Forst, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

And governments don’t always stop at mere intimidation and harassment. 2017 proved to be the deadliest year on record for environmental activists, with the most killings perpetrated in Brazil and the Philippines. Nearly 200 activists were killed — an average of nearly four per week. The Guardian, which has attempted to track the growing number of protester deaths, reported that at least 83 environmental activists were killed in 2018.

Just last month, two members of Brazil’s landless activist group Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra were killed following comments from (then-candidate, now President) Jair Bolsonaro in which he called them “terrorists.” His comments have also been linked to assaults against members of Brazil’s indigenous groups, many of which are fighting to keep protected status for their lands. (In one of his first acts as President, Bolsonaro issued an executive order giving the anti-environmentalist Agriculture Ministry power to decide on indigenous lands.)

The activists’ murders in Brazil are the latest in a long line of alleged crimes against people who oppose Bolsonaro’s plans to ramp up deforestation in the Amazon. Brazilian activists fear Bolsonaro could inspire even more violence against environmentalists and indigenous peoples.

“Bolsonaro’s racist, fascist, genocidal government will not be enough to silence us,” said Dinamã Tuxá, coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, in an interview with Amazon Watch. Still, he hinted at the fact that President Bolsonaro’s word choices could be continue to result in loss of life for indigenous activists down the road.

“This violence has become institutionalized and has saturated state institutions,” he said.

Back in the U.S., protesters are worried law enforcement is planning to employ violent tactics to stop anti-pipeline demonstrations in 2019.

In September, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained emails in which U.S. government officials characterized pipeline opponents as “extremists” and violent criminals that could commit potential acts of “terrorism.” The documents suggested that police were organizing counter-terrorism tactics to clamp down on possible Keystone protests. (If construction on the embattled Keystone XL pipeline advances in the coming months, it will likely draw protests from indigenous and environmental activists.)

“Evidence that the federal government plans to treat Keystone XL protests with counterterrorism tactics, coupled with the recent memory of excessive uses of force and surveillance at the Standing Rock protests, raises immense concerns about the safety of indigenous and environmental protestors who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights,” wrote Jacob Hutt, a fellow at the ACLU, in a blog post for the organization.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, Estrada of Greenpeace says the alarmist language may be a sign of progress. “The more effective people are becoming in mobilizing, the more backlash they’re going to face … If you corner a wild animal, they’re going to come really hard back at you.”

“The more we can voice that these things are happening,” Estrada says, “the more strength that we can provide to those people that are on the frontlines of these very dangerous situations.”

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The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

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North Dakota tribes issue thousands of IDs to stop voter suppression

by LanoraEddie Posted on November 6, 2018

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If North Dakota tribal members show up to the polls today without proper ID, indigenous leaders are determined to make sure they’re still able to exercise their right to vote.

The Supreme Court recently declined to hear an appeal of the state’s new, restrictive voter ID law, which requires the listing of a valid residential address. Since many tribal members use P.O. boxes, the law has the potential to disenfranchise a large portion of the state’s Native community. But organizations have been rallying to help tribal members meet the requirement, even as late as Election Day.

“It’s an absolutely critical election. We won’t sit quietly and let our people be denied their right to vote,” Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Mike Faith said in a statement.

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In the days leading up to the midterm election, indigenous leaders rallied to issue thousands of new ID cards for would-be voters. The campaign, dubbed #StandingRockTheVote, is the result of a partnership between several North Dakota tribes and nonprofit advocacy organizations fighting voter suppression. As of last week, the Standing Rock Sioux, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and Three Affiliated Tribes had distributed more than 2,000 new ID cards to their members free of charge so that they won’t be turned away at the polls. Through a GoFundMe page, the group raised more than $230,000 for the initiative in 17 days. The Native American Rights Fund also donated $50,000.

“We are modeling how we can work together to ensure our Native vote is as a large as possible,” said Phyllis Young, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a field organizer for the coalition that is mobilizing voters.

Young is working alongside Four Directions, a nonprofit that supports Native voting rights, and Lakota People’s Law Project, which works to protect Lakota land and resources. Together they’ve devised a “failsafe” plan to make sure no native voters fall through the cracks on Election Day.

For anyone who still doesn’t have a qualifying ID when they show up to vote, tribal officials and volunteers will be present at polling places to issue documents on the spot that comply with voting laws. As long as voters in need of ID can verify their tribal membership and point out where they live on a map, officials will help them find a corresponding residential address and issue a letter verifying their eligibility.

Matt Samp, an organizer at Four Directions says his group successfully tested the method of issuing documents on the spot at the state auditor’s office last week. It’s a technique that hasn’t been tried before this year — and can work, in part, because North Dakota is the only state that doesn’t require voter registration.

“Our first effort has been getting people new IDs. We don’t want to have to use this letter one time, but if we have to we have it,” Samp said. “I shouldn’t have to be on the ground doing this, but that’s the law they made, so we’re complying with it.”

In 2016, members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa sued the state over the residential address requirement, arguing that the rule would disproportionately impact Native American voters who faced additional barriers to securing the necessary ID. Some critics contended that the law was aimed at suppressing the Native vote. Eighty-three percent of Sioux County, where the Standing Rock reservation is located, voted for Democratic candidate Heidi Heitkamp for in 2012. She ended up winning her Senate seat by just 3,000 votes, and her victory is largely attributed to the support she received from the indigenous community.

Daniel Hovland, chief judge for the U.S. District Court in North Dakota, initially ruled that the new voter ID law placed “excessively burdensome requirements” on the state’s Native American voters. That decision allowed people with mailing addresses on their IDs to vote in the primaries. But the state appealed, and a higher court sided with them this September, putting the restrictive law back into play for the midterm election. The Spirit Lake Tribe filed another suit in federal court asking for emergency relief from the mandate, but Judge Hovland denied their emergency request last week, on the grounds that such a last-minute change would cause “confusion.”

It’s unclear what the new law (and the efforts to issue new IDs to tribal members) might mean for the election. Heitkamp is running for reelection in a close race against Republican candidate Kevin Cramer. Although Heitkamp has been vocal about some issues important to tribes in North Dakota — like addressing the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women — she received criticism for failing to back Standing Rock opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Heitkamp’s campaign website also says she supports oil and coal.

But just because of Heitkamp’s stances have left a sour taste with some Native American voters doesn’t mean they won’t show up at the polls. Because of the lengths Young, Samp, and others have gone to get out the vote, Native Americans are now expected to have a higher-than-normal turnout in the North Dakota election on Tuesday.

“We’re trying to turn a challenge into an opportunity,” says Daniel Nelson, Program Director at the Lakota People’s Law Project, adding that the sentiment on the ground is actually pretty jubilant. “Democracy is alive and well at Standing Rock.”

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North Dakota tribes issue thousands of IDs to stop voter suppression

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‘He’s a political prisoner’: Standing Rock activists face years in jail

by MuhammadStillman Posted on June 23, 2018

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Standing Rock saved Little Feather’s life. Then the U.S. government took it from him.

Little Feather was one of thousands of Native Americans who traveled to North Dakota in 2016 to fight the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The 45-year-old member of the Chumash Nation was battling drug addiction at the time, said his wife, Leoyla Cowboy. But the “water protector” movement gave him a sense of purpose, a renewed connection to indigenous elders, and sobriety.

But last year as the oil pipeline began operations, authorities jailed him and charged him with felonies stemming from his involvement in the demonstrations. Little Feather’s case and the prosecution of hundreds of others is part of what activists say is an aggressive campaign by U.S. law enforcement to suppress indigenous and environmental movements, using drawn-out criminal cases and lengthy prison sentences.

“He has been taken from us, and it’s a huge void in our lives,” Cowboy, 44, told the Guardian in a recent interview after Little Feather, also known as Michael Giron, was sentenced to three years. “He is a political prisoner … We were protecting our land. It’s something we have to do, and we’re going to be met with this violence from these agencies, from the federal government, from the state.”

As Red Fawn Fallis prepares for her sentencing next week in the movement’s most high-profile prosecution, activists are speaking out about the toll the cases have taken — continuing to drag on and tear apart families — all as Standing Rock has almost entirely disappeared from headlines.

After Donald Trump took office and ordered expedited approval of the $3.7 billion pipeline last January, the crackdown on activists escalated. The cases stemmed from clashes with police in late 2016 when thousands gathered at Oceti Sakowin and other campsites by the pipeline, facing a highly militarized operation, brutal shows of force, mass arrests and widely condemned jail conditions.

Under Trump, who has had financial ties with the pipeline company, the U.S. Department of Justice has pressed forward with six cases against Native Americans. North Dakota prosecutors meanwhile have pursued more than 800 state cases against people at Standing Rock, including 165 still pending, according to the Water Protector Legal Collective, a legal support team.

“They needed these convictions to make examples of people,” said Rattler, another federal defendant who, like Little Feather, agreed to a plea deal. “We got their attention, and they are scared of us.”

Rattler, a Lakota Oglala man, and Little Feather were each charged with two felonies — civil disorder and use of fire to commit a felony — related to a standoff on Oct. 27, 2016, when police deployed pepper spray and armored vehicles in response to a roadblock set up by activists. More than 140 people were arrested.

The arson charges related to the fact that “several fires were set by unidentified protesters” to thwart police, as prosecutors wrote in one court filing.

If the men were convicted, they faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years. Activists argued the charges were excessive, and some thought the men would prevail in a courtroom, especially considering reporting by the Intercept, which uncovered how a private security firm had used military-style counter-terrorism methods to target and infiltrate the protests.

But the defendants and their attorneys ultimately had concerns about the risks of a trial. One survey of jury-eligible locals found that 82 percent to 94 percent had prejudged protesters as guilty or were biased against them.

“Having a fair trial in Bismarck was going to be impossible,” said Rattler, 45, whose legal name is Michael Markus. “If you go to court in North Dakota, you are going to get convicted.”

Wasté Win Young, a Standing Rock member who is still facing trespassing and rioting charges in North Dakota court, said she was now regularly targeted and racially profiled by locals and police in the area.

“It’s just surreal still living here,” she said, noting that the fossil fuel industry had a lot of influence in the area and that there was heavy local bias against the demonstrations. “They feel like their security, their well-being was threatened by the so-called violent protesters, which was not the case at all.”

Still, Young said she was not afraid to go to court: “I stood my ground and it was in honor of my ancestors and to protect their way of life.”

Red Fawn Fallis was originally accused of shooting at law enforcement, facing a potential life sentence. The case moved forward even after it was reported that a paid informant for the FBI had developed a romantic relationship with her during the protests and was the owner of the gun she allegedly fired. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charge in exchange for her pleading to lesser offenses, and on Monday, she is expected to receive a seven-year prison sentence.

The U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Rattler, who is expected to get three years in prison, said the pending case meant he was restricted from freely traveling to indigenous ceremonies and other events.

“That’s been going on for hundreds of years — the federal government telling indigenous people where they can and can’t go,” said Ollie, Rattler’s partner who requested not to use her full name. “They do it just because they can.”

Sandra Freeman, Rattler’s attorney, said it had been difficult coming to terms with the reality of his plea agreement: “He is someone who is a really gentle, non-violent person who has accepted significant, significant time in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.”

Despite everything, Rattler said he was glad he was involved in the movement and wanted to eventually continue the work: “I have no regrets about what I did.”

After Little Feather’s personal transformation at the Standing Rock camps, Cowboy said she was eager to start their lives together: “I have been praying for a person like Little Feather all my life.”

But her husband has been incarcerated since last March when police pulled them over and arrested him while the newlyweds were traveling to an indigenous march in Washington D.C.

With sentencing over, there was some relief in knowing he would eventually come home, Cowboy said. But she also recognized that there would be lasting consequences.

While she was inspired to see the momentum from Standing Rock spread to other fights, she said, it sometimes felt like those still suffering from the North Dakota movement had been left behind. “They are forgetting that we are still here.”

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‘He’s a political prisoner’: Standing Rock activists face years in jail

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Energy Transfer Partners has until April to develop an oil-spill response plan for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

by AmberMsq38 Posted on December 5, 2017

Today, the president signed two proclamations drastically cutting land from two federal monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by 80 percent and 45 percent, respectively.

When President Obama designated Bears Ears a national monument last year, it was a huge victory for five Utah tribes — the Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe, Hopi, and the Pueblo of Zuni — who came together in 2015 to push for the preservation of what they estimate are 100,000 cultural and ancestral sites, some dating back to 1300 AD, in the region.

“More than 150 years ago, the federal government removed our ancestors from Bears Ears at gunpoint and sent them on the Long Walk,” Navajo Nation Council Delegate Davis Filfred said in statement. “But we came back.”

The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives the president authority to establish national monuments, largely to thwart looting of archaeological sites. Trump is the first president to shrink a monument in decades.

The five tribes have said they will bring a legal case against the administration — the outcome could redefine the president’s powers to use the Antiquities Act. “We know how to fight and we will fight to defend Bears Ears,” Filfred said.

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Energy Transfer Partners has until April to develop an oil-spill response plan for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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A state agency filed a complaint against the security company that tracked and targeted DAPL opponents.

by NancyKnowlton29 Posted on June 28, 2017

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A state agency filed a complaint against the security company that tracked and targeted DAPL opponents.

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Oil Will Start Flowing Through the Dakota Pipeline Any Moment Now

by ShannaMoorman Posted on March 23, 2017

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As of this week, Bakken oil is expected to flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline under Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. This development comes as court proceedings continue over the high-profile battle over the pipeline that drew thousands of protestors to North Dakota last year. As law enforcement officers and Indigenous activists faced off near the construction site, the conflict played out in real time on social media, capturing international attention.

A District of Columbia court has yet to rule on the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes’ claims that the Army Corps of Engineers violated environmental, historic-preservation and religious-freedom laws in its approval of the pipeline. A ruling is likely still several weeks away. The tribes have tried for temporary restraining orders to stop the flow of oil until the case is decided, but judges have rejected those as well. Dakota Access, LLC, is required to update the court weekly on whether the pipeline operations have begun; on March 20, the company said they expected oil to flow this week.

The fact that the pipeline’s backers, Energy Transfer Partners, appears to be prevailing is not surprising. Although the Obama administration had put DAPL on hold in December and called for further environmental review, then-President-elect Donald Trump vowed to push the project through once he took office. But national attention the protests brought to the flaws of the current consultation process—the federal government’s responsibilities to consult with tribes before approving major infrastructure projects that affect tribal lands—may still bear fruit on future disputes. And recent legal proceedings remind us how difficult it is for tribes to argue for religious freedom in court.

Following Trump’s late-January executive order to allow the pipeline to be finished, the Cheyenne River Sioux, located just south of the Standing Rock Reservation, filed a motion for a restraining order against the pipeline. Unlike the Standing Rock Sioux complaint based more around environmental and historic preservation violations, Cheyenne River’s argument claims the government violated the Religious Freedom Reformation Act (RFRA). “The Lakota people believe that the mere existence of a crude oil pipeline under the waters of Lake Oahe will desecrate those waters and render them unsuitable for use in their religious sacraments,” court documents say.

RFRA has an unreliable track record for tribes in court. Congress created the law in 1993 in part as a response to two cases in which courts sided with the government. In 1988 Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association allowed the Forest Service to construct a logging road in California that would have disrupted an area sacred to several tribes. In 1990 Employment Division vs. Smith allowed two Native Americans in Oregon to be fired for failing a drug test because they had used peyote as an element of religious ceremony. But experts say RFRA’s original intention, to protect tribes from similar infringements, isn’t really bearing out in court. The most recent major failure was the case of the Snowbowl ski resort in Arizona in which reclaimed wastewater was being used to make snow on mountains sacred to several tribes. The tribes argued a violation of RFRA and ultimately lost.

RFRA has, however, worked for corporations such as Hobby Lobby. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled family-owned corporations should not be required to cover employees’ contraception because doing so may infringe on a company’s religious beliefs. Part of the challenge for tribes, says University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson, is one of translation. “Most Americans are not used to the nature of tribal religions, of having ceremonies on particular land areas as being significant to their religion,” Wilkinson says. Court documents show Cheyenne River’s attorneys explaining how the tribe views the pipeline:

“Although there can be no way of knowing when this prophesy emerged into the Lakota worldview, Lakota religious adherents now in their 50s and 60s were warned of the Black Snake by their elders as children. The Black Snake prophecy is a source of terror and existential threat in the Lakota worldview…. Lakota adherents believe that the Black Snake poses an existential threat because it will cause critical imbalance in an essential resource of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe: the natural, ritually pure waters of Lake Oahe.”

“You can kind of get that sense, there’s some question raised in opposing parties arguments of ‘Do they really believe this,'” says Monte Mills, a University of Montana law professor. In court in February, Judge James Boasberg reportedly questioned how a pipeline would desecrate the Missouri River if the oil itself never touched the water.

The most lasting impact of the Dakota Access battle might be greater federal attention to the process through which the U.S. government is supposed to consult tribal governments about proposed infrastructure projects that might impact those nations, says Wilkinson. “(Tribes) see consultation as almost a four-letter word,” Wilkinson says. “It’s so often just checking a box.” A 38-page memo from former Obama administration Interior Solicitor Hilary Tompkins in December described in detail the ways in which the government failed to consult tribes that may be affected by the pipeline. At one point, Tompkins notes that a draft Environmental Assessment for DAPL “failed to even identify the reservation on its maps and incorrectly said the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had no issue with the project.” (The Trump administration suspended the memo and removed it from the Interior website in February.)

Similarly, a 73-page report released in January by the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior about consultation—not limited to DAPL—highlighted flaws in the process, after seeking comment from 59 tribes across the country. The report includes problems with the way the federal government “tends to look at (infrastructure) projects in a segmented way…For example, in the Dakota Access Pipeline review, four different states, three separate districts of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Fish and Wildlife Service each looked at different parts of the project, but did not coordinate the impacts to Tribes.” That report requested further action from several federal agencies by April 2017, in establishing better consultation processes.

“Many federal statutes require consultations with states, counties and tribes,” Wilkinson says. “Maybe one way or another Standing Rock could be valuable as raising that issue.”

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Oil Will Start Flowing Through the Dakota Pipeline Any Moment Now

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Here’s how the Standing Rock Sioux will keep fighting Dakota Access — in court

by TyroneLEHyifj Posted on February 28, 2017

By some accounts, the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline now looks unwinnable. Standing Rock became a ghost town last week after police raided and razed the prayer camp that once hosted thousands of water protectors. Earlier this month, the Trump administration fast-tracked approval to build the final section of the pipeline and cancelled the environmental impact statement ordered by President Obama. Construction is nearing completion and oil could flow through the pipeline as early as March 6. For the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, time is running out — fast.

The Sioux’s best shot at stopping Dakota Access now lies in court. It may be a long shot, but a legal win is still possible, some advocates say.

A legal challenge filed by the tribe on Feb. 14 charges pipeline builder Dakota Access, LLC, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with a range of environmental, cultural, and treaty-based violations. It asks a federal judge to rule on whether the Army Corps broke laws and treaties by allowing construction of the last leg of the pipeline under Lake Oahe, a reservoir along the Missouri River in North Dakota.

“What you have is this well-supported decision from a past administration to do more and give a full consideration to treaty rights, and then the second administration throws it in the trash,” says Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, who’s representing the tribe in its lawsuit. “That’s just not how it works.”

“It’s absolutely not over,” says Kyle Powys Whyte, a professor of philosophy and community sustainability and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He’s been closely tracking the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and he thinks the tribes fighting the project have a good legal case. “Absolutely I think there’s a chance to stop this thing.”

One of the Sioux’s main legal complaints is that construction of the pipeline near its reservation and through sites it considers sacred would violate the tribe’s treaty rights — specifically, its rights under the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties. At the heart of the matter is the Sioux’s right to self-determination and tribal sovereignty. Tribes like the Sioux are independent, self-governing nations like any other in the world. And the sovereignty of tribal nations preexists the United States, just like the nations themselves.

Many Native Americans believe that this sovereignty is now under extreme threat. The administration of Donald Trump may be the most hostile to Indian tribes since that of Andrew Jackson, who caused the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, argues Matthew Fletcher, a professor of law at Michigan State University and a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

The tribe’s legal motion also charges that the Army Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act by terminating an environmental review of the pipeline, and violated the Clean Water Act as well.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has joined the Standing Rock Sioux in its legal challenge, and on Feb. 22, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed its own motion in the case, calling on the court to reject the Army Corps’ permit for pipeline construction. Several other allies, such as the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, have filed amicus briefs supporting the Standing Rock Sioux’s legal case.

Hasselman believes the Sioux have strong legal claims that could lead to the pipeline’s approval being overturned. If the current legal motion fails, he says the tribe will appeal in federal circuit court. Even if oil starts flowing in the pipeline in the interim, it could still be shut off down the line, Hasselman told the Bismarck Tribune.

And tribes are waging other legal battles against the pipeline too. On Feb. 9, the Cheyenne River Sioux filed a motion to temporarily halt construction on the grounds that the pipeline would violate their right to religious freedom by desecrating the sacred waters of Lake Oahe.

“I really hope that the case for religious freedom works,” Powys Whyte says. “This can’t possibly be a country where someone’s business idea can trample someone’s constitutional right to practice their religion.”

The Oglala Sioux Tribe joined the fray on Feb. 13 with its own lawsuit claiming that the pipeline threatened its treaty rights to safe drinking water.

The Cheyenne River Sioux’s religious claim was heard on Feb. 28, and a judge intends to rule on it by March 7. Other motions should be considered in the coming weeks. Still, it could take months, if not years, for all of these cases to move through the courts.

Even if pipeline opponents’ lawsuits are not successful in stopping the pipeline, Powys Whyte sees other gains that have come from the #NoDAPL fight. Standing Rock has provided a template for an indigenous-led movement against projects that pose threats to the environment and to tribes’ sovereignty — a template that could prove crucial to activists over the next four years. He points to two other battles for indigenous rights that will be heating up in coming months: the resistance against the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Tohono O’odham Nation’s staunch opposition to Trump building a border wall on their reservation in Arizona.

Powys Whyte urges non-indigenous environmentalists to get educated about Native American history and tribal rights, and to consult with tribes and incorporate their concerns into campaigns. “Part of the reason why non-indigenous activists are coming late to the Dakota Access fight is because they weren’t aware of the vulnerability and susceptibility Native tribes have,” Powys Whyte says. To learn more, he recommends reading the Native Appropriations blog and the Standing Rock syllabus.

“Literally, if more people supported democratic tribal sovereignty, we wouldn’t have something like the Dakota Access Pipeline happening,” Powys Whyte says.

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Here’s how the Standing Rock Sioux will keep fighting Dakota Access — in court

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Trump says he didn’t get a single phone call opposing his pipeline approvals.

by LavadaMarsden Posted on February 8, 2017

The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to withdraw $3 billion from the bank, in part because it is funding the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the city’s mayor said he would sign the measure.

The vote delivered a win for pipeline foes, albeit on a bleak day for the #NoDAPL movement. Earlier in the day, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it will allow construction of the pipeline’s final leg and forgo an environmental impact statement.

Before the vote, many Native speakers took the floor in support of divestment, including members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Tsimshian First Nation, and Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.

Seattle will withdraw its $3 billion when the city’s current contract with Wells Fargo expires in 2018. Meanwhile, council members will seek out a more socially responsible bank. Unfortunately, the pickings are somewhat slim, as Bank of America, Chase, CitiBank, ING, and a dozen other banks have all invested in the pipeline.

While $3 billion is just a small sliver of Wells Fargo’s annual deposit collection of $1.3 trillion, the council hopes its vote will send a message to other banks. Activism like this has worked before — in November, Norway’s largest bank sold all of its assets connected to Dakota Access. With any luck, more will follow.

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Trump says he didn’t get a single phone call opposing his pipeline approvals.

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