The success so far of the spectacular and growing tribal opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline spurred three departments of the federal government to send a letter Friday inviting the nation’s 567 federally recognized tribes of American Indians and Alaska Natives to a series of meetings discussing the impact of infrastructure projects on their lands. The seven meetings—conducted jointly by the departments of Justice, Interior and the Army—will begin October 11 and continue until November 21.
Though sparked by the actions of the North Dakota Water Protectors to block the pipeline that would carry 470,000 barrels of Bakken Formation oil each day when completed, the White House move promises to be not just about DAPL but rather the bigger picture. In part, the letter states:
In particular, we have identified the following questions we seek your input on:
(1) How can Federal agencies better ensure meaningful tribal input into infrastructure-related reviews and decisions, to protect tribal lands, resources, and treaty rights within the existing statutory framework?
(2) Should the Federal agencies propose new legislation altering the statutory framework to promote these goals?
If you’re an Indian with even a smidgen of knowledge about the history of interactions between the United States and indigenous people on this continent, there’s every reason to be suspicious of such a letter. For more than two centuries as a nation (and a century and a half before becoming one), the general meaning of “consultations” by American governments with the people who had already been here for 300 or so generations has been: We Talk, You Listen.
The consequences, as every school-kid ought to know, have been disastrous. So wait-and-see is surely called for.
Nonetheless, the move has sparked some hope among the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation straddles North and South Dakota and whose drinking water and traditional ancestral lands would be endangered by a segment of the pipeline. To wit:
“The Obama Administration’s call for national reform on this issue is a historic moment," Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement, adding, "This invitation is a good start but the government has a lot more to do to permanently protect the millions of people who rely on the Missouri River for water and who are put at serious risk because of this pipeline."
There are still criticisms, fears, and skepticism. But many Indians have been quite pleased about the general direction President Obama has taken since arriving in Washington. Some of us, in fact, quite freely note that he has been the best president for Indians since … forever. Most especially gratifying has been his reinforcement of the “government-to-government” way of doing things first given lip service by Richard Nixon in 1971 and reinforced by President Clinton in 1996 and subsequently.
It’s not just a retreat from the rotten and ruthlessly destructive policies of the land- and resource-grabbing of the allotment and termination acts of the 19th and mid-20th centuries, but a fresh approach that has already produced good results—including settlements of some longstanding lawsuits. What Obama has shown is a willingness to do what most other presidents have rejected or only pretended: Listening to what Indians have to say rather than what other people have to say about us.
The specific mention of treaty rights in the letter from the three departments is especially encouraging. But it is also one of the most controversial. That’s because most treaties were violated and continue to be, many without redress. The manner in which this was done, via lies and chicanery, is more than can be dealt with in this commentary. But more than 40 years ago, in 1972, members of the American Indian Movement and other Indians engaged in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a march on Washington designed to bring attention to the fact that these treaties—part of U.S. law—had been ignored and stomped on almost since they were drawn up. Since then, only a few gains have been made in bringing justice to the people whom violations of those treaties have so deeply harmed.
One of the chief ways this has occurred is through the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. This extraction and burning don’t just harm Indians, of course. As scientists tell us—and Indian activists agree—the whole planet is endangered. But there is a special problem for the tribes.
DAPL is just one example. Although it’s not mapped to cross reservation lands, the land it does cross was once part of the Great Sioux Nation, guaranteed in perpetuity as Indian land by the Treaty of 1868 and violated in 1877, 1889, 1910, 1954, and 1958. As the Sioux themselves only discovered in the past month, a piece of that stolen land right where the new pipeline is being laid out passes through an indigenous burial site. When it was discovered, Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline builders, are said to have immediately bulldozed the site so it could not be further examined.
That is just one of the many complex issues that these consultations of the next two months should deal with.
