The grim brutality of America’s genocidal war against Native American’s has been thrust into the spotlight this week by the violent protests in Dakota on behalf of an Oil giant against the local Standing Rock Sioux Tribe…
Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Native American Protesters with Dogs and Pepper Spray
On September 3, the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they protested against the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction. If completed, the pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield to Illinois. The project has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada.
…this latest protest has been building from recent attacks against Native American’s by big business interests…
John McCain Fought For Native Religious Freedom, Then Sold Sacred Oak Flat
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has been the subject of intense criticism from Native activists and their supporters over the past year for his role in orchestrating the sale of Oak Flat, an Apache holy site located in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, to foreign mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. In December 2014, McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) added a rider onto the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, allowing the Oak Flat deal to slide through.
Members of the San Carlos Apache Nation know Oak Flat as Chich’il Biłdagoteel, a site where they gather food and medicinal plants and host dances and healing ceremonies. The area was once part of the old San Carlos reservation and functioned as a prisoner-of-war camp for the Apache during their decades-long struggle against the United States and Mexico. Not far from Oak Flat is a place called “Apache Leap“ where, in 1870, Apache warriors plunged over a cliff to their deaths rather than surrender to the United States cavalry. Today the site contains the memory of Apache leaders like Geronimo, Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, and the tribe believes it belongs to powerful Diyin, or holy people.
Congress’ move to sell off Oak Flat, which continues a long history of taking land from the Apache, provoked outrage and protests among Native activists and their supporters. Members of the San Carlos Apache Nation began an occupation of the site in February 2015, protesting the sale as an attack on religious freedom, and led a cross-country march from Arizona to Washington, D.C. that ended with a rally on the lawn of the Capitol building in July. In August, Adriano Tsinigine, a young Oak Flat supporter, tricked an unwitting Sen. McCain into taking a photo with a placard bearing the Apache slogan-turned-national-rallying-cry: “Protect Oak Flat.”
What Big Oil are doing to the Native American’s of Standing Rock is a fucking disgrace – they set dogs on protestors and pepper sprayed them.
The murderous history of America’s genocide against its first people lives and breathes right now, the injustice never leaves and it demands our support.
I stand with the indigenous people against the oppressor, always.
One of the worst things for me is that petroleum companies seem to be unaccountable. They seem to pollute anywhere they go (South America, Africa…) and get away with nothing more than a handslap. And now they are doing it in USA!
There are many depleted oil fields in America that look disgusting with nothing but derelict old oil rigs sitting where they once pumped oil.
Not a thing will ever grow there.
And you are correct, big oil just walk away to do the same some other place.
Hopefully, in time we will move past relying on oil, but not for many years ahead it seems.
And the treatment of the Native Americans is as bad as it gets and is a deplorable situation.
I have great sympathy for them.
About 4 -5 months ago I posted links to Sioux Sun dance songs being performed on the Daily Blog and the Standard. These were for a reason. Back in the 1970’s that tribe in particular had a very corrupt leader that was not nominated to lead them,…the man was a a very real corrupted thug , complete with goons who would execute certain other Sioux members who stood up against him. Many of these were the half castes.
Who helped themselves to all manner of funding and resources that should have gone to the collective good of tribal members.
This overflowed into a an armed stand off with state troopers that went on for months. It was resolved after a Sioux protester that had served a long time in the US Army was shot . Such was the sorrow of the loss of one of their people.
That guy you see to the left of the young woman also appears in a documentary put together by Sioux tribal members, its a long documentary that certainly is an eye opener to what goes on in modern times concerning some pretty serious charges of racism against them. And situations described as the article above.
They had 40-50 years of uranium mining on their land that when finally closed down is still highly toxic- and was never cleaned up as it was supposed to have been in the contract. These were vast areas. Not just a few acres.
Oh yes, … things haven’t changed much from the days of the nineteenth century , …still the same old crowd trying to take what isn’t theirs, by any means , with minimal consequence or reparation.
If you want a good look at how these big corporations view the public behind closed doors, have a look at a few documents online about the modern era protest movement among the Sioux against these types.
Its an eye opener.
I stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe too!! I watched this in horror. 21st century and people are fighting to protect the water. Water IS life, we cannot live or survive without it.
Derrick Jensen has focused his attention of this sort of thing for many years:
‘Premises of Endgame
Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.
Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources gold, oil, and so oncan be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Premise Three: Our way of living industrial civilizationis based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they controlin everyday language, to make moneyby destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crashor the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it downthe messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.
Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it activelyif we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about itthe violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture
civilization has been a culture of occupation.
Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth somethingor their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banksand the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
Premise Fourteen: From birth onand probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the casewe are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homesand our bodiesto be poisoned.
Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.
Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earthwhether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live herethe Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.
Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.
Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself drives social decisions.
Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of itif there were any heart leftyou would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.’
http://www.derrickjensen.org/endgame/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm
slumbergod So right you are, oil companies are also killing off rail where they can.
Road business is far more lucrative to them, as business profits are many to them as it encompasses uses of oil for road building Bitumen and tyre production and rail uses five times less fuel par tonne carried per km, so it’s just good business to kill rail for them, but devastating for the planets’ future prospects they are causing and not paying for damages to our future’s.
Big business, oil producers or others, they tend to do this all over the place, and this shows it again, they have NO respect for ordinary people’s rights and for their environment.
Native Americans have been almost annihilated as Maori were in New Zealand, with similar tactics, and despite of some “treaty” signed here in 1840, which was a con job from the start.
Before the ink ever dried on many agreements made with American Indian tribes, they set off to slaughter them, for often made up excuses.
And it is not finished yet, this virtual “genocide”, as it is these days business interests, again of the majority population, that will wipe the rest off the face of earth.
Maori here that think they have “settled” past grievances will be well advised to be on the constant alert and to not fall for all the temptations offered them.
NEVER will the greedy ones that want to exploit every last bit on this planet, every resource, every metre of earth, every drop of water and every breath of air, never will they cease to expand their interests, at the expense of others.
GREED rules the world, greed and nothing else, and under this government I see it all around me.
100% true Make,
Couldn’t have said it better myself, I have many wonderful Maori Brothers and sisters fighting to save our Gisborne to Napier rail line.
As a 72yr old pakeha, I am so full of respect for their deep sincerity shown me I feel both sad & honoured to be spirually connect to these once proud people who our early pakeha fathers called strong, impressive species, one that have a spiritual connection to all natural treasures around us all that in our world as pakehas have lost sight of sadly, as we have become corrupted by money.
Here’s the good news: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/295223-obama-administration-orders-nd-pipeline-construction-to-stop
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/taking-a-stand-at-standing-rock.html?_r=1
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