‘We are protectors, not protesters’: why I’m fighting the North Dakota pipeline

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

The Dakota Access pipeline threatens to destroy our sacred ground. I am defending the land and water of my people, as my ancestors did before me

Our elders have told us that if the zuzeca sape, the black snake, comes across our land, our world will end. Zuzeca has come – in the form of the Dakota Access pipeline – and so I must fight.

I am Sicangu/Oglala Lakota, born in Rosebud, South Dakota, and writing from the frontline of the movement against the pipeline in Cannon Ball. I have been holding this ground with my Standing Rock Sioux tribe relatives since the spring. I am defending the land and water of my people, as my ancestors did before me.

The $3.8bn pipeline project is proposed to carry approximately 470,000 barrels per day of fracked oil from our Bakken oil fields, 1,172 miles through the country’s heartland, to Illinois. The pipeline will cross the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, where it threatens to contaminate our primary source of drinking water and damage the bordering Indigenous burial grounds, historic villages and sundance sites that surround the area in all directions. Those sites that were not desecrated when the area was flooded in 1948 by the construction of the Oahe dam are now in danger again. I have seen where their machines clawed through the earth that once held my relatives’ villages

This week, I have witnessed pipeline construction tear its way toward the waters of the Missouri river which flow into the Mississippi, threatening to pollute the aquifer that carries drinking water to 10 million people. I have seen where their machines clawed through the earth that once held my relatives’ villages. I have watched law enforcement officials protect the oil industry by dragging away my indigenous brothers and sisters who stood up for our people.

The fact that Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, would use the word “Dakota”, which means “friend” or “ally”, in the name of its project is disrespectful. This pipeline is a direct threat to all Dakota, Lakota and Nakota people, especially our future generations. And we are not the only ones. We know that burning this oil is changing our climate and Indigenous people all over the world are bearing the brunt of the catastrophes that causes.

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