At noon on Thanksgiving Day, 300 people gathered at Bear Mountain State Park near Poughkeepsie, NY for a demonstration primarily intended to show solidarity with the Native American Water Keepers at Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Protestors there are trying to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline which would pass through their territory, desecrate an ancient sacred burial ground, and pose a risk their water supply.
Many of the demonstrators also carried signs protesting pipeline constructions closer to home, including Spectra-AIM, a 42 inch high-pressure gas pipeline, which, if completed, would pass within 105 feet of critical structures at the Indian Point nuclear plant. Others protested the Pilgrim pipelines, two 170 mile long pipelines from Albany, NY to Linden, NJ running through scores of suburban residential communities in the New York, New Jersey, area. Still other signs protested the "bomb trains," trains of railroad tank cars carrying Bakken crude oil through the same communities. Baaken crude is explosive and a 2013 derailment caused 47 deaths and destroyed most of the village of Lac-Magantic, Quebec. Protestors say that a similar explosion in this more densely populated area would cause many more deaths and much more damage. Still other signs carried the message of the “Keep It In the Ground” movement calling for replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy as the only way to prevent the coming disastrous consequences of Global Climate Change caused by Global Warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The demonstration began with a prayer service led by leaders of the local Native American tribe, the Ramapaugh or Uncaugue Tribe. There was very little speechmaking. The group leader, Tom O'Reilly, recognized the members of the committee that helped them plan the demonstration and then made an announcement. The original plan was to walk from the Bear Mountain Inn to the Bear Mountain Bridge across the Hudson River and form a human chain on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway. The Native Americans would perform a brief water blessing ceremony at the center of the bridge and we would then walk back to the Inn. The Bear Mountain Park police cooperated with us in every way, but a bureaucrat at the New York State Bridge Authority stalled until the very last minute before informing us that he would not grant a permit to walk across the bridge.
Plan B was to walk the one mile path around Hessian Lake, a beautiful mountain lake in a wooded area of Bear Mountain State Park. The march was led by a Buddhist priest beating a marching cadence on a drum. A few feet behind him was a Catholic priest carrying an American flag mounted upside down on its staff, an internationally recognized symbol of distress. Except for the drumbeat the march was conducted in silence. Arriving back at the southern end of the lake where we started the group gathered once more as the Native Americans performed the water blessing ceremony.
A local restaurant owner offered to provide free Thanksgiving dinner to any us who did not have other plans. About 20 people went with him and the rest of us dispersed to have Thanksgiving dinner with our families.
One fact that is not well known about the Standing Rock protest is that the route originally proposed for the pipeline would have crossed the Missouri River a short distance above Bismarck, ND. Because of concerns that a pipeline accident could pollute the water supply of that city, the pipeline route was moved south to the area where the Standing Rock tribe draws its water. Some have described this as a blatant example of environmental racism.
Also, on Friday, September 2nd the tribe filed papers asking for protection of part of the land in the path of the pipeline as a sacred burial site based on the recent discovery of rock cairns and rock circles associated with such sites. The very next day, September 3, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the pipeline company sent a crew of bulldozers to dig up the markers and desecrate the site and before the ND State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) had a chance to examine them. When protesters tried to stop the bulldozers, pipeline security forces attacked them with pepper spray and dogs.
Before the Dakota Access company can complete the pipeline they need one more permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for their final crossing of the Missouri River. People from all over the country have sent e-mails, letters, phone calls and petitions to President Obama asking him to block this final permit. It is not yet clear what he will do, nor what will happen with the new administration taking over in January.
My prayers, good wishes, and thanks go out to the Standing Rock Lakota for this effort to oppose the colossal, unmitigated greed of big oil.