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Youth water protectors take center stage
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Water protector, O’Shea Greyeyes (Diné/Cherokee), holds his hands up before a line of militarized police the day before protest camps at Standing Rock, North Dakota were razed in resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline, February 23, 2017. (Jenni Monet) |
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Five years ago this week, militarized police and National Guard troops in North Dakota razed the protest camps at Standing Rock. Bulldozers were used to level tiny houses and officers slashed teepees open like fresh kill. Some water protectors exposed to the intrusion shot their hands in the air, shouting “Don’t shoot!” Officers standing mere feet away could be seen hovering over the last remaining campers, their high-powered guns pointed at their faces. The raid was mentioned at that day’s White House press briefing after reporters asked if the situation was being monitored by President Donald Trump. “Of course,” said the press secretary.
During his first week in office in January 2017, Trump wasted little time revamping the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) while delivering blows to a months-long movement to try and stop it. By executive order, he overturned an earlier decision by the Obama administration to pause the crude-oil line until a federal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) could be conducted. But the review never happened and oil started flowing beneath treaty-protected water bodies that spring. It’s still flowing despite one court hearing after another declaring that the DAPL has been operating illegally in absence of the EIS, and without meeting a federally mandated permit – a clear violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand these lower court determinations about the EIS when it denied a petition to hear Dakota Access v. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, et al. The rejection means that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) must finally move forward with the delayed environmental review of the DAPL, though the pipeline will not be forced to shut down in the meantime as was previously court-ordered. |
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For water protectors, the news is seen as another small win within a much bigger battle; they still want the project nixed because of credible threats the pipeline poses for poisoning their water supply – Lake Oahe and the Missouri River. “This is a victory for Standing Rock, but the fight is not over,” said Janet Alkire, the newly-elected Chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. (The DAPL litigation has so far spanned three tribal and U.S. presidential administrations.) “The Supreme Court’s announcement demonstrates that we were correct all along,” she said in a press release. |
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Alkire- an Air Force Veteran and the first women elected to lead the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in more than six decades – is not embracing the EIS process; in fact as one of her first acts in office last month, she withdrew the tribe as a “cooperating agency” with the USACE after it was revealed the agency hired a firm that filed an amicus brief in association with a petroleum lobby in direct opposition to Standing Rock’s pipeline fight. (Wow.)
According to Alkire, she now has a meeting set with the Corps next week, March 2 – and here’s where things get interesting: She’ll also be meeting with none other than newly-appointed Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Micheal Connor, who descends from a lineage of Indigenous water protectors.
An enrolled citizen of Taos Pueblo, Connor, 58, was raised under his grandfather, Patricio Romero, who served as Pueblo governor and helped establish the tribe’s water rights task force. The era was marked by the unprecedented return of the sacred Blue Lake in 1970 – “symbolically the source of all life and the retreat of souls after death,” according to tribal leaders in describing their religious site, the water. This shaped Connor’s career path. |
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White House photo taken July 8, 1970. From left, Jim Mirabal, Taos Pueblo Tribal Council member; Walter Hickle, Secretary of the Interior; Taos Pueblo Governor Quirino Romer; President Richard Nixon; Paul Bernal, Taos Pueblo Tribal Council secretary. Nixon and Hickle gave tribal leaders support for the tribe’s claims to Blue Lake. Nixon did not sign the Blue Lake Bill until December 1970, after senate approval. |
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Decades later when he was nominated to serve as the second in command to the Secretary of the Interior Department in 2013 – at that time, the highest-ranking Native American at the DOI – Connor centered the significance of water in his confirmation testimony. “Water sustains both the lives of our citizens and the economic activity that is the foundation of our communities.”
As Assistant Secretary of the Army, Connor is now poised to make #LandBack history like his forebears in convincing President Biden to protect promised waterways and shut down the DAPL, a corporate energy project built upon broken treaties, environmental racism, and violent government collusion. Whether he will make the bold determination that Standing Rock wants may depend on how well water protectors court him.
Few are aware of Connor’s background. When he was short-listed along with Deb Haaland to become “the first Native American cabinet secretary” in November 2020, progressive activists diminished his decades-long track record of water wins for Indian Country as a way to boost Haaland’s chances. Some labeled him as “corporate.” Others attacked journalists who dared to compare his expertise to Haaland’s relatively thin policy record. No one acknowledged his leadership at the DOI when the department, through its Solicitor, Hilary Tompkins, concluded that the DAPL was in violation of Standing Rock’s 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The December 2016 opinion is what led to the Department of Army to temporarily halt the pipeline – a major victory at the time. |
| If any of this has weighed on Connor, he hasn’t showed it. He addressed the National Congress of American Indians during its annual winter session about the need to improve the Army Corps’ relationship with Indian Country. “There has been tension in the way the Corps has historically gone about the rest of its portfolio, permitting activities that impact the interests of tribes and tribal treaty rights,” he said. “We want to improve these relationships.” |
Micheal L. Connor (Taos) United States Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works |
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Whether these improvements begin with stopping the Dakota Access pipeline is as riveting a prospect as the timeline of the movement at Standing Rock, itself – a fight that quite simply has never faltered. In every way it matches the 64-year-long perseverance of Taos Pueblo to reclaim its holy Blue Lake.
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Shared by: Native Sun News Today
March 31, 2022