Three weeks ago, hundreds of upset protestors tore down a fence and interrupted the bulldozers from clearing ground on the proposed site of the Dakota access Pipeline.
They’d been told that the bulldozers were plowing under a historic graveyard and important cultural area for the Sioux Tribe.
Panicked rent-a-cops turned dogs loose on the crowds of outraged protesters, drawing blood.
The Tribes protested to the United Nations against cultural desecration. One thousand archeologists signed a letter to President Obama, objecting to the perceived destruction of rare artifacts.
Six days ago, seven archaeologists from the State Historical Society fanned out over the bulldozed area to access the damages. They walked back and forth over the cleared ground in the construction corridor. They found nothing. Their conclusion:
“No cultural material was observed in the inspected corridor. No human bone or other evidence of burials was recorded in the inventoried corridor,”
There’s no question but that the pipeline route runs near historic Native American cultural sites. During three or more prior archaeologists’ reviews, the scientists had identifed scores of important locations close by.
A tribal researcher, Tim Mentz, claims to have recently discovered almost thirty Native American gravesites, including the likely burial site of an important Chief, near the pipeline route.
Mentz took this picture of a diamond-shaped cairn that marked one grave.
Mentz and others have claimed that the recent pipeline work destroyed those graves. Standing Sioux Chairman David Archambault told the United Nations that “I am here because oil companies are causing the deliberate destruction of our sacred places and burials.”
The pipeline company have said they’d changed the pipeline route almost 200 times to avoid 509 cultural locations, including the sites that Mentz identified. Now the State’s team of seven archaeologists are supporting the pipeline’s claims they successfully avoided these newly discovered sites during recent ground work.
Mentz has said that the Pipeline and State archaeologists simply are not schooled on recognizing Native American cultural sites, and have walked right past these locations.
The State has countered that in fact they have already mapped those sites, and those areas would be, and were avoided.
ABC reported here on the Society’s findings: abcnews.go.com/…
In the last few days, pipeline owner Dakota Access has purchased the Cannonball Ranch, which contains these cultural sites. Published articles state this purchase may violate North Dakota law which forbids corporate ownership of farmlands.