Featured image: Aymara people outside the courthouse in Puno on June 28, 2017, during final hearings of the trial. Walter Aduviri was sentenced to seven years for protesting against a Canadian mining project.
This past month, eighteen Aymara community leaders endured the final stages of a trial that had them facing up to 28 years in prison and massive fines for their alleged roles in the 2011 ‘Aymarazo’ protests against the Santa Ana silver mine on the Peru-Bolivia border. The group of Aymara leaders stood accused of obstructing public services, disturbing the peace, and committing aggravated extortion against the state.
Seventeen of the accused were acquitted of all charges; however, on July 18, Walter Aduviri was sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to pay a 2 million sol fine (over $600,000). His lawyer, Martín Ticona, speaking to the crowds in Puno after final sentencing, indicated irregularities in the judicial process and said that they will appeal Aduviri’s sentencing. The prosecutor, Juan Monzón Mamani, also intends to appeal the decision for reasons that are not yet clear.
Aymara Branded as Criminals for Resistance against Mining
Initially, 100 Aymara had criminal investigations brought against them after the ‘Aymarazo’ protests in the southeastern region of Puno. The investigations were dropped against 82 of the Aymara, leaving just eighteen to stand trial. They had all been equally charged with obstruction of public services, disturbing the peace, and aggravated extortion. On June 28, the accusations were withdrawn against eight leaders—including Francisca Sarmiento, the only woman charged—due to lack of evidence. Ten went on to face sentencing; but only Aduviri was found guilty, for the charge of disturbing the peace.
Photo: DHUMA
“They say that the Aymarazo is an emblematic case, and that should mean justice for our leaders, and compliance with the law of prior consultation,” an Aymara man explains in a video by PUNO organization Human Rights and Environment (DHUMA, its acronym in Spanish). “And the government has decided that because of the protest they must prosecute our leaders, so what is our response? That we must organize ourselves as Aymara communities and indigenous and rural communities in general.”
The accused have paid a heavy price over the past six years – not only in terms of time and money spent to attend numerous court hearings and the heavy threat of 28-year prison sentences. They have also had to cope with the psychological trauma of criminalization, and the Aymara population at large have struggled with a dominant public narrative stigmatizing the Aymara population as alleged “criminals” or with labels such as “anti-development,” according to local organizations and activists.
The ‘Aymarazo’ protests in 2011
Rumors of the proposed mine began to circulate as early as 2004. Communities were immediately concerned about the proposed mine because of its sensitive location. Mining operations are inherently water-intensive and Santa Ana could also contaminate drinking water, affecting agriculture, livelihoods and food security for hundreds.
“We’ve come here today to say clearly that the Santa Ana Mine was going to operate in an area where there are many rivers,” a woman at a recent demonstration reiterated to DHUMA. The Callacami River runs through the area and if it’s contaminated, the pollution could even reach the town of Desaguadero, [near] Lake Titicaca, and the whole lake could be polluted, affecting the entire region and even Bolivia.”
While communities had found out about the mine through rumors in 2004, it was not until 2007 that the news became official when the government authorized the Santa Ana mine. Communities began to carry out a series of public petitions, administrative complaints and procedures directed at local and regional government and environmental authorities. When their concerns remained unaddressed, demonstrations began to be organized in communities and towns all along the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia, and in the city of Puno, where this steady resistance came to a head with the events known as the Aymarazo in March to June of 2011.
Those protests culminated over several days in May in a mass mobilization in Puno of more than 15,000 Aymara people from all over the south of Peru, paralyzing parts of the city for days. Communities were calling for not just cancellation of the Santa Ana mine, but cancellation of all mining concessions since 2011, and a moratorium on future concessions, according to Rodrigo Lauracio, a lawyer with DHUMA, in an extensive interview with the authors. Indigenous territory in Puno province has seen a massive increase in permits for extractive projects over the past two decades, he said, consistent with nationwide trends.
“This was a social protest not just by communities in the district of Huacallani [where the concession is] who were directly affected, but by many communities who would be indirectly affected,” said Lauracio. “In the environmental impact study only three communities were considered, but in reality many communities [were affected].”
Bear Creek Mining Corp.’s public presentation of the company’s environmental impact study in February 2011, badly translated into Aymara in an undersized hearing room, only deepened public fears, according to Lauracio.
“It’s important to note that this mining project was proposed in the territory of rural Aymara indigenous communities,” he said. “They had many concerns to do with impacts on their territory, and above all on the water… Many of these concerns were not resolved by the mining company at this time.”
Aftermath of the Mobilizations
The Aymarazo protests forced the government’s hand: They rescinded the controversial Decree 083 that gave Bear Creek authorization to proceed, effectively stopping the project.
Repressive criminal proceedings are just one of the consequences of the Aymarazo mobilizations. But the repeal of the Santa Ana decree is also a factor in another lawsuit. In 2014, the company responded to that move by filing a $1.2 billion case against Peru at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes. Bear Creek contends that Peru violated the terms of its trade agreement with Canada by not allowing the mine to go forward. The hearings, which are ongoing, take place in a closed court in a highly undemocratic process.
Bear Creek asserts that the Aymarazo protests were politically motivated. However, DHUMA and other supporting organizations say that communities rejected the project in order to protect their water sources, and because neither Bear Creek nor the Peruvian state followed correct legal procedures. The company’s attempt at community outreach manipulated communities and both the state and the corporation implemented their policies and plans with a complete lack of transparency, according to Lauracio, failing to even comply with national and international law on free, prior and informed consent.
Repressive Policies and Multiple Abuses of Power
Peru has seen an increase in free trade agreements and a relaxing of environmental protection in recent years. These policies aim to facilitate the entry of transnational corporations and international investment into Peru, and mining and extractive industries have increased across the country.
There has also been an increase in “… public policies that create new crimes against people who participate in social protests,” observed Lauracio. Peru’s wave of neoliberal and repressive policies not only gives extractive industry a helping hand but creates further mechanisms to criminalize resistance to extractivism in the courts. These mechanisms are designed to prevent further protests like the Aymarazo and help pave the way for future extractive projects.
Police stand on guard outside the courthouse. Photo: DHUMA
The repressive tactics of criminal proceedings go along with other forms of state criminalization. These are also present in the Aymarazo – such as the smear campaigns against social protests and those who organize and participate in them as violent criminals or “backwards” or “against development.” The state also intervened in Aymarazo protests in ways that sparked violence, such as the declaration of a state of emergency, which allowed increased repressive tactics and violence on the part of the armed forces and caused trauma, injuries and death.
These dynamics are not just playing out in Puno, but across Peru, which currently has 39 mining conflicts registered by the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America. In the same week as the Aymarazo sentence, three community leaders from Espinar, Cusco, also faced sentencing in a trial for charges relating to protests calling for mining company compliance with environmental and health regulations. The criminal charges are related to protests over mining in 2012 in which five people were killed by Peruvian police during a declared state of emergency. The three have been acquitted—but they’ve gone through five years of unfair criminal proceedings.
In another example of policies that criminalize and harm people, Peru modified its laws in 2014 to create a loophole that allows police officers to kill people in situations of social protests. The police are also permitted to contract with corporations to provide private security services.
On one side, Bear Creek still has Santa Ana mine featured on its website (no doubt in the hope that its share price doesn’t drop, as it did after the 2011 protests) and the Peruvian state may be forced to pay $1.2 billion to Bear Creek, and could reissue the Santa Ana permit. On the other side, the Peruvian state seeks to jail Walter Aduviri and criminalize anti-mining resistance in a bid to silence future protests. Furthermore, they are demanding exaggerated fines, with an initial demand against the 18 for over $2 million, and Aduviri now sentenced to pay $600,000. To put that amount into context, the monthly minimum wage in Peru is around $270 – it would take 185 years of minimum wages to pay Aduviri’s fine.
The Politics of the Guilty Verdict against Aduviri
Aduviri has said that the trial is politically motivated, and that he is the target of political persecution. He ran for governor of the Puno province in 2014 on a platform many said was controversial, and has been branded as using the movement as a leadership platform to gain votes, by those seeking to discredit the demands of the 2011 protests.
Walter Aduviri campaigning in 2014. Source: YouTube
While he may be acquitted of the charge of extorting the state, he is charged with being the ringleader of not only the protest, but acts of destruction of state property that happened during the Aymarazo in 2011: his guilty verdict for the charge of disturbances labels him as autor mediato— indirect perpetrator or perpetrator-by-means. His being part of the leadership of a movement, his politics, and the widespread support he receives in Puno, seem to be included in the condemning judgment.
Outside the courthouse on July 6, the day of provisional sentencing, hundreds of Aymara mobilized in support of Aduviri, crying, “If there’s no solution, Quechuazo y Aymarazo! [more protests].” Aduviri declared his innocence in a press conference on July 7. On July 18, the day of the final sentencing, he addressed crowds in Puno in a fiery speech, interrupted by shouts of slogans denouncing the prosecutors and judges as biased. Aduviri is not in jail because the sentence can’t be executed while his appeal is ongoing.
With the verdict in the ICSID case due in September of this year, and Aduviri’s harsh sentence, the situation is a confluence of the state’s policy to criminalize anti-mining protests, and the toxic impacts of the tools of corporate power, like free trade agreements, when protests cause a mining project to be halted.
The massive “Canada 150” celebrations of July 1 are finally over, leaving little in their wake but hangovers, a multi-million dollar price tag and mountains of trash.
But for some Indigenous peoples in Canada, the festivities remain a visceral reminder of their continued dispossession from ancestral lands and waters. That’s especially true for those on the frontlines of megaprojects — pipelines, hydro dams, oil and gas wells, liquefied natural gas terminals and mines — that infringe on Indigenous land rights.
DeSmog Canada caught up with three Indigenous people directly involved in local struggles to resist such projects.
Beatrice Hunter
Beatrice Hunter is an Inuk woman living in Labrador. In May, she was arrested and jailed while defending ancestral territories threatened by Nalcor’s Muskrat Falls project. Hunter was released after 10 days in a men’s prison following a decision by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Have you returned to the site since thecourt ruling?
Yeah, I returned on Canada Day. It was my way of saying that I am not Canadian, I am Inuk. It was my way of saying that what the government is doing is not right.
How was the experience being back there?
It was good to be back there. It was excellent. Ever since I went to the gate last year with other Labradorians, it’s almost felt like a calling. It feels like you’re actually doing something and you’re not just sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. You’re trying to change it yourself. It was excellent to be with other Labrador Land Protectors.
Obviously there’s been a lot of talk about Canada 150. What do you make of it in the context of Muskrat Falls?
It’s very upsetting and heartbreaking when the Canadian government doesn’t listen to you when obviously the natives of this land were the first peoples here. It shows a lack of respect for Indigenous nations across the country and for them to not admit the wrongs that have been done through the years. It’s another slap in the face.
The federal government has also been talking a lot about “reconciliation.” Do you feel there’s been any progress on that in the last few years?
I feel personally that nothing has actually been happening. It’s the same old story: they make promises and then don’t follow through with them.
What outcome do you and other land protectors hope for?
The best outcome will be to shut Muskrat down. And I still feel the same way. Everybody talks about it being too late, but I feel it’s never too late. The damage is already done but we can try and fix the damage. There’s been billions of dollars been done on the project. Why aren’t government officials and leaders and politicians being audited for it? They obviously have something to hide. If they didn’t have anything to hide, they would just come out with all the information.
Do you plan to keep going to the site?
Yes! Of course! I’m not going to stop. We can’t stop. We have to try to change it. We can’t let big corporations and politicians get away with this because it’s always going to happen if we let them.
Any last words?
I just want to let everybody know that I’m going to keep fighting. That’s what I want everyone to know. Myself and the Labrador Land Protectors are going to keep fighting. We can’t give up. It’s the future. We’re fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. We’re fighting for our children. We’re fighting for our grandchildren. We’re fighting for our ancestors that weren’t strong enough to go up against the big corporations and governments. I feel it’s like white supremacy. That’s what it feels like to me. Everywhere you look: on TV, on radio, you hear white supremacy. Everywhere. It has to change.
Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie
Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie is an Anishinaabe woman living in Manitoba. She is a student at the University of Winnipeg, co-founder of Red Rising Magazine, previously served as the vice-president of external affairs for the students’ association and has been involved with the campaign to pressure the institution to divest from fossil fuels.
What do you make of Canada 150 in the context of pipelines and ongoing extraction projects in Manitoba?
I definitely think that Canada 150 is trying to instill this pride of ‘who we are?’ and ‘what is the Canadian identity?’ The fact is that part of the Canadian identity is that extraction of natural resources in their economy. Now, they’re instilling this pride where you have to be prideful of being Canadian which also includes being protective of these types of industries. That’s where it gets really convoluted. We need to dismantle that narrative.
What would you say to settlers and settler politicians?
You have to share responsibilities to these communities and respect Indigenous rights. You’ve done a horrible job historically on this. And you can’t just be approving pipelines using the Canadian identity as a justification of infringing on those Indigenous rights, and therefore having to present that to the Canadian public and government. It’s all fine and dandy that you want to celebrate who you are. However, we still have a lot of conflict that needs to get resolved.
What does that look like specifically for you?
Part of that is respecting Indigenous rights to the land and UNDRIP: free, prior and informed consent in terms of any development on our traditional territories. Even though Justin Trudeau is saying ‘yes,’ there’s no ‘yes’ from the actual majority of Indigenous communities that are going to be directly affected. I’m not going to say that there is 100 per cent consensus within the Indigenous communities on pipelines.
But part of the fiduciary duty to the best interests of Indigenous peoples is you actually having to see there’s a huge demographic of Indigenous peoples that are saying ‘no.’ We have a right to say ‘no’ and a consultation with us isn’t about getting to a ‘yes.’ It’s about meaningful dialogue and respecting the fact that we can say ‘no’ and that doesn’t change with consultation and engagement.
There are other procedures and other things that need to be in place to ensure that pipeline is able to go through. And they haven’t met those. They haven’t met Indigenous rights or the court challenge that’s going on. To assume this pipeline’s going to be jammed down our throats is highly disrespectful on the part of a government that says they want to reconcile with Indigenous communities.
Any final thoughts?
Canada 150 isn’t a celebration for me, as an Indigenous woman. I see it as a celebration for them, to instill pride in their identities. But part of their identity is still being a colonizer, and colonizing me. The historical understanding of taking pride in Canada for all the “good” things it’s done does not erase the actual history of genocide in this country. I think that’s a big thing that Canadians need to accept.
Caleb Behn
Caleb Behn is an Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree man living in British Columbia. He was the focus of the 2015 documentary “Fractured Land” and previously worked as a lawyer. Behn has frequently criticized the Site C dam — which, if built, would greatly impact the West Moberly First Nation, where his mother is from.
What do you make of Canada 150?
People have to recognize — and it should be quite obvious — that Canada 150 is a brand. Behind the superficial and contrived nature of Canada 150, you see something darker and more painful for Indigenous people.
It’s like from Calvin and Hobbes: they throw down the transmogrifier on colonization and genocide and missing and murdered Indigenous women and rape of the land and chronic representation of Indigenous people in the justice system and massive dispossession of lands and resources. And that becomes — through this magic rebranding exercise — some series of images and motifs and memes that sanitize and normalize what is abuse of relationships and law and land and people.
How does this tie in with the struggles over Site C?
From my perspective in northeast B.C. looking at Site C: behind this sanitized, non-abusive narrative that brands Canada and this 150 year grand experiment of colonization, you have actual tangible violations of good accounting principles, representation in the political process, systemically problematic and dangerous developments.
This urgency that Indigenous people are feeling is an urgency that the dominant colonial society should have felt from its very inception 150 years ago because it was grounded in the deployment of extractive technology and the violation of appropriate relations with human and non-human beings and environments.
That is hyper-relevant for the 21st century. That’s why Site C, Muskrat Falls, Line 3, fossil fuels, violation of law, disrespect of treaties, abuse is all interconnected.
There’s a lot of talk about acknowledging Indigenous rights to land. What do you think this looks like?
Land is such a weak word. It’s the violation of something truly sacred. But then to dress that up as something to be celebrated or unquestionably adopted and marketed within this decaying, decrepit, spiritually and physically contaminated time: that should be the clarion call for all human beings, especially in Canada.
Any final thoughts?
I hope your readers appreciate that as you celebrate the nation-state of Canada and somehow ignore the genocide and the rape and the violation of peoples, principles and land: even if you can get that far internally colonized and simplistically adopting a mindset and model, it’s in your best interest individually and collectively to still question what it is that’s being sold to you and what it is you’re witnessing.
I know what the red stands for in that flag. And I know what the white stands for in that flag. You see so many people unquestionably celebrating. It was really sad. And to see how many Indigenous people and other solid settler allies with their head firmly extracted from their ass are criticizing and engaging that — to me, that was the only real hope in that.
An investigation by Survival International has revealed that the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the parent organization of New York’s Bronx Zoo, is funding the abuse and eviction of Bayaka “Pygmies” and other rainforest tribes in the Republic of Congo.
WCS manages and helped create a national park on Bayaka land without the tribe’s consent, and has formed a partnership with two logging companies working on their land. WCS is also funding anti-poaching squads which prevent the Bayaka from entering their ancestral lands, and Survival International has documented dozens of instances of harassment, beatings and even torture.
The Bayaka are frequently accused of “poaching” when they they hunt to feed their families. Tribal people have complained that this diverts action away from tackling the true poachers – criminals conspiring with corrupt officials.
Victims have included children, the elderly and disabled people. In 2012, for example, a severely disabled tribal man was assaulted by guards. In May 2016, one man was hospitalized after he and four others were brutally beaten by guards. Forest camps are frequently destroyed, and tribal people are attacked and tortured for accessing land which they have been dependent on and managed for generations.
A Bayaka man said: “If you go into the park they will get you and take you to prison. Even outside the park they say ‘We’re going to kill you. Get out, get out, get out.’”
Logging in the region continues at unsustainable levels, according to reports by independent researchers and advocacy groups, including Greenpeace. Many observers including the United Nations and Congolese organization l’Observatoire congolais des droits de l’homme, have been warning about the consequences of ecoguard abuse since at least 2004, but no effective action has been taken.
In 2005, a Bayaka man reported that: “We met another white man [from WCS] who came to tell us to stop hunting and that the wildlife guards would make sure we did. Now we are afraid to go far in the forest in case the wildlife guards catch us.”
Watch: Apfela describes how wildlife guards, supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society, brutally attacked her.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Conservation in the Congo Basin is based on land theft. National parks are created on indigenous peoples’ territories without their consent: It’s land-grabbing (with a “green” label) and the big conservation organizations, like WCS, are guilty of supporting it. Survival International is doing all it can to stop this “green colonialism.” It’s time for conservationists to respect land rights, stop stealing tribal peoples’ ancestral homelands, and obtain proper permission for every project they seek to carry out on tribal land.”
Background briefing
-WCS is one of the world’s oldest conservation organizations, founded in 1895.
-WCS backed the creation of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in 1993 without the Bayaka’s consent. It manages the park to this day.
– The organization runs an annual “Teddy Roosevelt Award” for conservation. In 2017, the award generated controversy when it was presented to Gabon’s president Ali Bongo, who has been widely criticized for his government’s record of human rights abuse. According to some reports, Bongo donated $3.5m in exchange for the award.
– The Bronx Zoo and the conservation organization that would become WCS were founded by eugenicist author Madison Grant. Infamously, they brought a “Pygmy” man, Ota Benga, to the zoo in the early 1900s. He was exhibited to the public, and encouraged to live in the zoo’s monkey house. He committed suicide in 1916.
– Bayaka people in the Central African Republic and Republic of Congo wrote open letters to WCS and its funders in 2016.
– The abuse of Bayaka by WCS-supported squads has been documented for at least 18 years, but the organization has failed to take effective action to stop it.
WCS is not the only multinational NGO implicated in the abuse of tribal peoples. Many of the big conservation organizations are partnering with industry and tourism and destroying the environment’s best allies.
It’s a con. And it’s harming conservation. Survival International is leading the fight against these abuses, for tribes, for nature, for all humanity.
“Pygmy” is an umbrella term commonly used to refer to the hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin and elsewhere in Central Africa. The word is considered pejorative and avoided by some tribespeople, but used by others as a convenient and easily recognized way of describing themselves.
Some names have been changed to protect tribal people’s identity.
Springfield, LA – Following legal victories for the Tribes at Standing Rock, Water Protectors in Southern Louisiana will open the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp tomorrow. The launch marks the next fight to protect Indigenous rights, life-giving water and to stop Energy Transfer Partners from committing acts of environmental injustice.
The Indigenous Environmental Network announced the opening of the camp with a video, highlighting, Cherri Foytlin who represents IEN’s interests in the Bayou. The video explains the connection between the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access Pipeline, the Houma tribe, and all people who will be impacted by these pipelines, and why completion of the Bayou Bridge pipeline must be stopped.
Watch the video below, and learn more about the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp and the lead organizers rising up on the frontlines of the fighting for environmental justice to protect Indigenous rights, clean water, and rapidly disappearing wetlands on the Gulf Coast.
The following is a statement from Monique Verdin, councilwoman of the Houma Nation:
“I’m not sure if we are at the head or the tail of the black snake; But we already got enough pipelines, 83,000 miles running through Louisiana. Miles of old infrastructure, built across the Mississippi River Delta’s coast decades ago, surrounded by a disappearing landscape in some of the most vulnerable territories in the world, enduring rising tides and more frequent, powerful and unpredictable weather conditions. Louisiana has sacrificed enough, we don’t need another risk of oil in our waters. It’s one thing if you can’t fish. It’s another thing if you can’t drink water. Over 300,000 people depend on the Bayou Lafourche, for their drinking water in the heart of Houma territory. We don’t need another pipeline. We need clean water.”
The following is a statement from Cherri Foytlin, of BOLD Lousiana:
“The corporation Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) has proven themselves to be untrustworthy in regards to their moral responsibility to preserve both human and ecological rights. Whereby they have obfuscated the truth, sabotaged democracy, destroyed our lands and water, and even hired mercenaries to injure our people, we have but one recourse, and that is to say ‘you shall not pass.’ No Bayou Bridge! We will stop ETP. They are not welcome here – not in our bayous, not in our wetlands, not in our Basin, not under our lands or through our waters. Period.”
Featured image by Lucas Reynolds. Judge James Boasberg’s 91-page decision says U.S. Army Corps ‘did not adequately consider’ oil spill impacts; no ruling on whether to keep DAPL operational
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the law in its fast-tracked approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a U.S. District Court Judge in Washington D.C. has ruled. Judge James Boasberg said the Corps did not consider key components of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in granting the Lake Oahe easement under the Missouri River when directed to do so by President Donald Trump shortly after his swearing-in.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, with the Cheyenne River Sioux as interveners, had challenged the approval on the grounds that adequate environmental study had not been conducted. Boasberg agreed on many points, though he did not rule on whether the pipeline should remain operational. It has been carrying oil since June 1.
“Although the Corps substantially complied with NEPA in many areas, the Court agrees that it did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial,” Boasberg said in his 91-page decision. “To remedy those violations, the Corps will have to reconsider those sections of its environmental analysis upon remand by the Court. Whether Dakota Access must cease pipeline operations during that remand presents a separate question of the appropriate remedy, which will be the subject of further briefing.”
A status conference will be held next week, according to the environmental law firm EarthJustice, which is representing the tribes in this case. Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s builders, did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
“This is a major victory for the Tribe and we commend the courts for upholding the law and doing the right thing,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II in a statement. “The previous administration painstakingly considered the impacts of this pipeline and President Trump hastily dismissed these careful environmental considerations in favor of political and personal interests. We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence, and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operations immediately. ”
The fight over the 1,172-mile-long pipeline that runs hotly contested through four states has been the source of controversy since it was first proposed. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe became the flashpoint for the issue when thousands of water protectors and hundreds of tribes gathered at camps along the Missouri River over the summer of 2016. They were protesting the routing of the pipeline through treaty lands—especially in light of the fact that it had been rerouted from more affluent Bismarck for the same reason the tribe didn’t want it nearby, because of the danger to drinking water—in a conflict that involved a militarized police force.
“This decision marks an important turning point. Until now, the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have been disregarded by the builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Trump Administration—prompting a well-deserved global outcry,” said Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman in a statement. “The federal courts have stepped in where our political systems have failed to protect the rights of Native communities.”
