Nearly 200 demonstrators expressed indignation with corporate greed, environmental degradation and failures by the United States government to honor Native American treaties during a rally held Saturday in Durango.
Protesters marched 1½ miles from Fort Lewis College to Santa Rita Park, holding signs and chanting slogans like, “You can’t drink oil, keep it in the soil.”
They gathered in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and more than 200 other Native American tribes that have united to block an oil pipeline from being built north of the Sioux’s reservation and under a dammed section of the Missouri River – sacred lands that were flooded 50 years ago and contain cultural artifacts and drinking water for the tribe.
“They woke up the sleeping giant. They don’t realize it, but we’re all standing together,” said Dawn Dullknife Teller, who traveled from Farmington to attended Saturday’s rally. “We need to protect our water.”
The $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which is already more than halfway completed, will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily through four states (1,172 miles), from the oil fields in North Dakota to a connection point in Patoka, Illinois.
A federal court on Friday denied a temporary injunction to halt construction of the pipeline, but federal agencies, including the Obama Administration, ordered work to stop for further review.
Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, declined to comment for this article.
Fort Lewis College offers free tuition to Native American students as part of a land agreement struck more than 100 years ago with the state of Colorado. As a result, about 1,200 students – or one-third of the college’s student body – is Native American and represent some 150 tribes from across the country.
It is important to protect land treaties and water rights promised to Native Americans, said Tokeya Waci U Richardson, a junior studying psychology and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
The Sioux were promised a clean water supply, he said, but man-made systems like pipelines will eventually break.
Construction of the pipeline can also disrupt burial sites and other cultural artifices, and if not handled properly, it is a violation of the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act.
“We fight so much for things like the tuition waiver because it’s all we have – it’s all that was promised to us,” he said. “Governments want to take things like that away as soon as it doesn’t benefit them.”
The Gold King Mine spill made Durango residents keenly aware of the adverse impacts human activity can have on waterways, said Ruthie Edd, a senior at Fort Lewis College who is Navajo (Diné). Residents can therefore empathize with the Sioux people and what they are fighting to protect, she said.
“The pipeline is something that can have that possibility,” she said.
Opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline represents a turning point in the fight to protect native lands, its people and their treaties, said Kay Holmes, assistant professor in FLC’s Native American and indigenous studies department.
“For over 500 years, native people have been pushed off their land and silenced – treaty after treaty broken,” she said. “But today we are witnessing history. ... The world has heard us. Mother Earth cannot take anymore abuse. The people of this country have much to learn from its indigenous people, and many are listening.”
shane@durangoherald.com
