The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe recently won a major legal victory in federal court which may have the power to force the shutdown of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. District Judge James Boasberg ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration failed to conduct an adequate environmental review of the pipeline, after President Trump ordered the Army Corps to fast-track and green-light its approval. The judge requested additional briefings next week on whether the pipeline should be shut off until the completion of a full review of a potential oil spill’s impacts on fishing and hunting rights, as well as environmental justice. The pipeline faced months of massive resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, members of hundreds of other indigenous tribes from across the Americas, as well as non-Native allies. We speak with Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II and Nick Tilsen, executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to the battle over the Dakota Access pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a major legal victory in federal court in June, which may have the power to force the shutdown of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled the Trump administration failed to conduct an adequate environmental review of the pipeline, after President Trump ordered the Army Corps to fast-track and green-light its approval. The judge requested additional briefings on whether the pipeline should be shut off until the completion of a full review of a potential oil spill’s impacts on fishing and hunting rights, as well as environmental justice. The pipeline faced months of massive resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, members of hundreds of other indigenous tribes from across the Americas, as well as non-Native allies.
Speaking at a rally, President Trump said, a few weeks ago, he signed the memo green-lighting the Dakota Access pipeline with his eyes closed.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m pleased to announce that the Dakota Access pipeline, which I just mentioned, is now officially open for business, a $3.8 billion investment in American infrastructure that was stalled. And nobody thought any politician would have the guts to approve that final leg. And I just closed my eyes and said, "Do it." ...
You know, when I approved it—it’s up. It’s running. It’s beautiful. It’s great. Everybody’s happy. The sun is still shining. The water is clean. But, you know, when I approved it, I thought I’d take a lot of heat. And I took none, actually none. People respected that I approved it. But I take so much heat for nonsense that it probably overrode—it probably overrode the other. It’s like a decoy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I recently spoke withe Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault when he was here in New York. He was joined by Nick Tilsen, executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I asked Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault about the tribe’s lawsuit challenging the Dakota Access pipeline.
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: From the very beginning, we asked the Corps of Engineers, "What impact will this pipeline have on our people?" And the Corps of Engineers never could answer that. Their response is, "We’re doing an environmental assessment, and we’re going to see what impact it will have on the environment." And there’s no impact. That’s their—that’s what they state. So when we say, "Well, we need to do a further look and see what really happens when infrastructure projects have an impact on our people"—and we’ve experienced many infrastructure projects in the past, such as a railroad system. The railroad system facilitated the near-extinction of buffalo herds. When we were at 70 million buffalo in 1800, by 1889 we’re down to less than a hundred. And it was the railroad track system that did that. There’s interstates. There’s telecommunications. There’s dams. All these infrastructure projects have a significant impact on us. So that’s the question we asked. And to get the answer, it required a full, in-depth environmental impact statement. So, we were able to, with the past administration, say, "Let’s at least do the environmental impact statement." With this administration, the EA: "There’s not going to be any impact to you or to your people," which we know is—if or when this pipeline breaks, we will be the first impacted.
AMY GOODMAN: There were leaks even before it went operational?
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: Yes, there were.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what that means? It wasn’t operational, so how were there leaks?
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: Yeah, they started putting pipeline—like, where the valves—to test the valves, they put oil through the pipelines. And it leaked significant amounts, even though it was a test. So, we understood and we knew that there were going to be leaks. It wasn’t even fully operational, and they were already experiencing leaks and getting fined for 200,000 gallons of oil being leaked. And so—and then they said, "We’ll clean it up, and we fixed it. It’s OK now." But, you know, that just goes to show that this pipeline is not clean. It’s not pretty. It’s not a beautiful thing. It’s something that’s going to come back and haunt—not us, maybe not us today, but the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Dave Archambault, can you respond to what President Trump said? He just closed his eyes and signed it.
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: Yeah, when President Trump comes out with statements like that, it just is revealing his true character. It tells America what kind of person he is, when we all know that his first agenda was to sign this presidential memorandum. He was actually calling it an executive order, and then they switched it to a presidential memorandum. But it’s because he has his own interest in this pipeline. He was sponsored, with his campaign, by Kelcy Warren. He had shares for Energy Transfer Partners. He had political interests. All the people who support him are saying this has to be done. So, for him to say, "I blindly did this," it’s a complete lie, and it tells what kind of character this man really has.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Tilsen, your response when you heard President Trump say he did this with his eyes closed, signing off on the final permit to allow the Dakota Access pipeline to be built under the Missouri River, and then that there was no response afterward?
NICK TILSEN: Yeah, I mean, I think that the reality of him signing with his eyes closed, that’s probably the truth. It’s probably what he did do. I mean, he’s been a—he’s been a prop of the energy companies, who are having their heyday. And that’s just the reality. I mean, we’ve seen, you know, one of the biggest outcries in protest in decades, and historical amounts of protest, in Dakota Access. And for him to—for him to say that there was—that it was met with no response is a total lie. That’s one of his—another alternative facts that he has, when the reality is, you know, tens of thousands of people sacrificed. We sacrificed our freedoms to protect this water. We sacrificed everything that we had. And it was women and children and families, and indigenous people with our allies from all over the country and all over the world. People around the world understand what happened at Standing Rock.
And I think this is a constant sort of PR thing that says, "Oh, nobody cares." But the reality is, people do care and that, now, you know, there’s an established movement in this country. There’s an established indigenous rights movement. It’s starting to converge with these other movements. And he’s not going to be able to say—you know, he’s going to be able to say those things all he wants, but there’s a growing movement across this country, and people are crying out in many different ways. And so, I think, you know, the president, Trump, saying these kinds of things is not true, and there’s millions of people who know it’s not true. But we have to continue to have our voices be the loudest ones in the room.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about an explosive new investigation by The Intercept that reveals how international private security firm TigerSwan targeted Dakota Access water protectors with military-style counter-terrorism measures. TigerSwan began as a U.S. military and State Department contractor, hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. The investigation based on leaked internal documents, which show how TigerSwan collaborated closely with law enforcement agencies to surveil and target the nonviolent indigenous-led movement. In the documents, TigerSwan also repeatedly calls the water protectors "insurgents" and the movement "an ideologically driven insurgency," even uses words like "jihadi." Chairman Dave Archambault?
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: You know, it just goes to show who law enforcement is going to listen to. And law enforcement listens to the political leaders. And the political leaders are bought by corporations. So, in North Dakota, we have a senator who has interests in the oil fields. We have a—
AMY GOODMAN: Who is that?
DAVE ARCHAMBAULT II: Senator Hoeven. He has an interest in the wells, that he owns. We have Senator Cramer and Senator—or, Congressman Cramer and Senator Heitkamp. They receive some of the largest amounts of contributions from the fossil fuel industry. We have a governor—at that time, Governor Dalrymple—who had some intermixings with China oil. And so, this whole political leadership in North Dakota will say, "We have to have this pipeline go in." And because they’re saying this, they’re only going to listen to the corporation and the company. And they’re going to give direction to the law enforcement.
And it’s frustrating to me, because we had countless meetings with law enforcement. And we let them know that there’s infiltrators. This is not all the demonstrators who are creating this. We don’t know who all the people are. All along, they’re listening to the company’s security, private security firms. They’re working hand in hand with the company’s private security firms. They’re having daily meetings, daily briefings, with the company’s security firms and ignoring completely tribal leadership. And all we were doing is trying to make sure that safety was the number one priority, where these guys, if the reports from TigerSwan—on TigerSwan are true, they weren’t—they weren’t looking out for safety. They were looking to incite and to harm. And that’s disturbing.
AMY GOODMAN: When we were there Labor Day weekend, when I first met you out there at the camps, you know, we could see the planes. And whenever I would point them out and ask, people would say, "Oh, they’re just surveilling us." It became business as usual. And, Nick, I was wondering if you could talk about this and the significance of when you have these private paramilitary firms—TigerSwan founded by a Delta Force member, former Delta Force member—where you have these companies, as Chairman Dave was just describing, working with local law enforcement and the effect it has. I mean, then I’d like to go into your own personal history and your remarkable family history. But what this means?
NICK TILSEN: I mean, I don’t think anybody is surprised, so any—any water protectors that were out there. These reports that are coming out basically prove—they prove that this is the—this is the modern form of COINTELPRO. That’s what it is.
AMY GOODMAN: The Counterintelligence Program of the FBI—
NICK TILSEN: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —that targeted Black Panthers and people of color for years under Hoover.
NICK TILSEN: I mean, I don’t think anybody is surprised, so any—any water protectors that were out there. These reports that are coming out basically prove—they prove that this is the—this is the modern form of COINTELPRO. That’s what it is.
AMY GOODMAN: The Counterintelligence Program of the FBI—
NICK TILSEN: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —that targeted Black Panthers and people of color for years under Hoover.
NICK TILSEN: This is a modern, contracted version of it, who’s designed in using basically all of the lessons that they have been building off of fighting terrorism, but using it on their own people. And this is—this is real. Like, in the camp and all the organizing and all the stuff that we did, we knew that this was happening. We couldn’t prove that it was happening, but we knew that, to an element, it was happening. We would show up at these protests. We’d have security officers and police who knew us by first name, who knew where we came from, who knew where in the camp we were staying. There was all kinds of stuff that happened during that time.
And I think the reality is, like the American public needs to realize that, you know, when we were organizing the camp, we were not allowed to fly our own planes over. We were not allowed to have our own observations. And we thought about doing that. We thought about getting resources to be able to do that. There was a no-fly zone. So there was a no-fly zone in place over the camp. Meanwhile, counterintelligence companies are allowed to come and surveil—survey us. This is the—this is a misuse of the democracy. And this is a fundamental issue of our time.
I’m glad that these reports are coming out now, and not 20 years from now, because them coming out now lets the broader movements that are now converging together understand that this is happening. And this is something that the public has have a public outcry over. To use—to use counterintelligence tactics against peaceful water protectors who are expressing our constitutional rights to—for freedom of speech, this is—this is an outrage. And I think that, moving forward, we have to be—we have to be diligent. Like the movement has to be diligent in recognizing that this is a reality. And those that support us have to recognize what we’re fighting against. You know, we show up with our prayers. We show up with our bodies. We show up with our children and our families to these protests. And these guys are showing up with all the technology that’s possible and all the weaponry that’s possible. And this is a—this is a fight over the future of this country.
AMY GOODMAN: They have automatic weapons and actually MRAPs, right? These are military technology. You know, it seems like recycling today is sending the weapons back from Afghanistan and Iraq and giving them to the police departments and sheriff departments of our country.
NICK TILSEN: Absolutely. And I think this also represents a misuse of power. I mean, the former governor, you know, created a militarized state on purpose. He created—he created the militarized state. And the narrative is still the same. We showed up there. We showed up there in peaceful ways, in protest. And we were—we were compounded with violence. There was dogs that were attacked on our people. This happened, in the 21st century, in this country. And these are some of the realities, you know, that we’re faced with.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Tilsen of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. We’ll be back with him and Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault in a minute.*
To be continued...
IK
Kin 42: White Electric Wind
I activate in order to communicate
Bonding breath
I seal the input of spirit
With the electric tone of service
I am guided by the power of death.
The seventh mental sphere can only be accessed through the evolution of the third dimensional
entity into a planetoid type of being whose crown center is the noosphere itself.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Anahata Chakra (Silio Plasma)
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