At our Draft Environmental Impact Statement hearing
last October, Joelle read the first half of a letter Kandi sent and I read the second half.
Robinson, Joelle "Hi. My name is Joelle Robinson and I'm from Seattle. I am here as my own concerned citizen, but I'm reading today on behalf of Candy Monsette (sic), who is a member of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota. And she is with the
Native Energy and Climate Campaign and also the Indigenous Environmental Network. This is a public comment on the DEIS for Westway and Imperium. In my home town of New Town, North Dakota, life has changed forever because of fracking and the lust for oil. The horrible thing is that it's changed for the worst. This is no modern day (inaudible). This oil booming, as in fracking, has become devastating for us and no amount of money can ever give us back what has been lost. Many in our own communities have died because of accidents. With the hundreds of tracks that are taking over the roads, our land is being sterilized, our water poisoned, and our air tainted imperatively. Our culture has taken a back seat to strangers populating the land, many with our contentions. Rape of both men and women is on the rise, along with things we've never dealt with before such as sex trafficking of young teenagers. Heroine abuse runs rampant as the big city drug cartels move in and our once quiet town of 1500 is now a dangerous and scary place to be, let alone to raise a child. My daughter is 15 months old and my heart aches that I do not even want her to be at home for fear of what she would be exposed to. Murder is not a word we came across in our town before the oil boom. Now we will just wait for the next and the next as many have been murdered -- yes, murdered in our little communities --
I can finish the sentence and then hand it to my colleague?
MR. KEILLOR: Yeah, we'll have to have you wrap up immediately, and we'll get to the next speaker.
In our little communities much of it is associated with drugs and the gangs that follow the money."
"about how this perception can adversely affect values.
Damike(sic), Tammy Continuing with Candy(sic)’s letter.
Our own people are becoming addicts and need treatment but they continue to be arrested and sent to jail while the two perpetrators of the crimes keep slipping away, only to bring more drugs, guns, and crime. I can’t even begin to describe to you the heaviness in my heart, having buried my brother’s beautiful 28-year-old step-daughter just a few weeks ago who could not stop using heroine, which destroyed her body so much we had to have a closed casket. We found my little cousin’s body in the lake this spring. He disappeared last fall after last being seen with two known MS-13 gang members. His death was ruled an accidental drowning and the case was open and shut. Just this past week two armed robberies occurred at two separate downtown businesses on our little main street. Take these words that have been read here today and quadruple the horrors and maybe then you might be able to begin to get a sense of what’s happening to us in our communities on Fort Berthold in North Dakota as a direct result of our country’s addiction to fossil fuels and fracking. It’s sick and it’s sad, and I would never in my life wish this kind of horror on anyone else, if you have a choice to do what you can do now to help us stop this kind of devastation from spreading. We need help. Will you help us? Do not support fracking. The social and environmental impacts from it are negatively life altering, and those impacts are spreading across this country like a disease. Please, from one compassionate human being to another, help us and do not support fracking. (Speaking Indian). Thank you."
emphasis mine:
Yes, WA Dept of Ecology actually wrote (Speaking Indian).
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