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Lakota refusing XL Pipeline Trucks Entry to Pine Ridge Reservation?

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 10:18pm

No major media outlet has picked this up, so I guess we'll see. Here's the FaceBook page for the Lakota's radio station:

Calling all Lakota men on the Pine Ridge Reservation to come to Wanblee SD. XL Pipeline trucks are being held there at the border by our Lakota Oyate, OST Police and State Troopers in an effort to keep them from entering our territory. Even the state troopers told the trucks they have to turn around and cannot bring thier pipeline or other materials on to our reservation. The XL Pipeline trucks are refusing to turn around claiming they have corperate rights that supreceed any other laws.
PLEASE SHARE FB FAMILY WITH EVERYONE!!

There have been rallies before:

This morning a group of people met him for a rally just north of Manderson, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

"This pipeline will cross over 200 streams, lakes, creeks, and springs from Montana through Texas, endangering our precious, finite drinking water in this country," Debra White Plume said.

But that's not the only reason these people are upset about the pipeline.

"What Transcanada is doing is they're bullying U.S. Citizens with threats of eminent domain, and that is outrageous," Weis said.

And that's bringing people from different backgrounds together.

"The non-Indians on this waterline finally realized how we felt when the government has taken our land. And now it's happening to them," Rosebud Sioux Chief Spotted Tail said.

"They've always been real heavy handed about it. Right off the bat they let us know that they have the power of eminent domain and they will use it," Paul Seamans said.

"It's something to see when you see the Indian and the non-Indian standing shoulder to shoulder fighting this tar-sand pipeline," Chief Spotted Tail said.

"That is a very powerful alliance and one I wouldn't want to mess with." Weis said.

The issue as the tribe's governing body sees it:

By threading the South Dakota portion of the Keystone XL pipeline route between Pine Ridge and the nearby Rosebud reservation, whose water supply connects to that of the Oglalas, it appears TransCanada was trying to avoid dealing with the Sioux tribes, according to Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele, who set up the meeting. “However, the company did not realize that the route crosses the Oglala Sioux Rural Water Supply System,” said Steele. “The OSRWSS consists of a core pipeline and related facilities, including a reservation delivery system, that are held in trust by the United States for the Oglala Sioux Tribe.”

They didn't realize or they didn't care.

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Submitted by jawbone on

corporations the right to supercede national laws if they result in the corporatiion losing money they've invested to do some kind of project. State and local anti-pollution laws have been subject to this in the past, again iirc.

Does NAFTA take precedent over water rights? Which, in the West and Southwest of the US, are sacred as well as utterly necessary to survive in dry regions.

However, in the US, the American Indians have reservations with sovereignty over their lands.

How will that turn out? It will have to go to the Supreme Court, currently packed with Corpratists, placed there not only by R presidents but the current DINO president?

I need to do some web hunting on this, but have RLl approintments to go to today.