TigerSwan is one of several security firms under investigation for its work guarding the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota while potentially without a permit. Besides this recent work on the Standing Rock Sioux protests in North Dakota, this company has offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and is run by a special forces Army veteran.
Law enforcement and private security at the North Dakota pipeline protests have faced criticism for maintaining a militarized presence in the area. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and National Lawyer’s Guild have filed multiple open records requests to learn more about the extent of this militarization, and over 133,000 citizens have signed a petition calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene and quell the backlash.
The Federal Aviation Administration has also implemented a no-fly zone, which bars anyone but law enforcement from flying within a 4-mile radius and 3500 feet above the ground in the protest area. Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer on the scenes in North Dakota with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said on Facebook that “DAPL private security planes and choppers were flying all day” within the designated no-fly zone.
Donnell Hushka, the designated public information officer for the North Dakota Tactical Operation Center, which is tasked with overseeing the no-fly zone, did not respond to repeated queries about designated private entities allowed to fly in no-fly zone airspace.
What is TigerSwan?
TigerSwan has offices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, India, and Latin America and has headquarters in North Carolina. In the past year, TigerSwan won two U.S. Department of State contracts worth over $7 million to operate in Afghanistan, according to USASpending.gov.
TigerSwan, however, claims on its website that the contract is worth $25 million, and said in a press release that the State Department contract called for the company to “monitor, assess, and advise current and future nation building and stability initiatives in Afghanistan.” Since 2008, TigerSwan has won about $57.7 million worth of U.S. government contracts and subcontracts for security services.
Company founder and CEOJames Reese, a veteran of the elite Army Delta Force, served as the “lead advisor for Special Operations to the Director of the CIA for planning, operations and integration for the invasion of Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom” in Iraq, according to his company biography. Army Delta partakes in mostly covert and high-stakes missions and is part of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the latter well known for killing Osama Bin Laden.
One of TigerSwan’s advisory board members, Charles Pittman, has direct ties to the oil and gas industry. Pittman “served as President of Amoco Egypt Oil Company, Amoco Eurasia Petroleum Company, and Regional President BP Amoco plc. (covering the Middle East, the Caspian Sea region, Egypt, and India),” according to his company biography.
“It is sad, but not surprising, that this firm has ties to the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange, told DeSmog. “It is another terrifying example of how our violent interventions abroad come home to haunt us in the form of repression and violation of our civil rights.”
The North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Private Investigation and Security Board are also conducting parallel investigations to the one recently completed by Morton County. TigerSwan did not comment on questions posed about their contract.
From acclaimed documentary filmmaker Shannon Kring comes END OF THE LINE, the incredible story of a group of indigenous women willing to risk their lives to stop the Dakota Access oil pipeline construction that desecrated their ancient burial and prayer sites and threatens their land, water, and very existence.
But there was another prophecy: the women, as the guardians of the waters and protectors of all life, would rise.
They are the brave survivors. Among them, the descendant of the female warrior who fought the US Cavalry alongside Sitting Bull. The great-grandmother who was fired upon at Wounded Knee in 1973. The lifelong activist who became a part of the system in order to defeat it.
They are the daughters and granddaughters of brave survivors. People who escaped genocide, only to be robbed of their lands and herded onto reservations. Children who were taken from their families and placed in non-Native boarding schools and foster homes where they suffered further abuse. Today, these women tell their own tragic stories. Stories ranging from forced sterilization to substandard medical care.
Yet somehow the spirit of these women has not been broken. The women of Standing Rock vow to protect Mother Earth and all her inhabitants. It is their responsibility to the ancestors and to the seven generations to come. This is their last stand.
End of the Line is being crowdfunded on Indiegogo. Show your support here.
New York City – Today at 9:00 AM, New Yorkers rallied to demand action from Senator Charles Schumer to stop the construction of a high pressure, fracked-gas pipeline that poses a major threat to more than 20 million people. Two hundred and fifty people gathered and heard from health professionals, indigenous leaders and residents of the Hudson Valley where the pipeline is being built. Fifteen people were arrested after refusing to leave unless Senator Schumer took action. Allied organizations held solidarity actions at Senator Schumer’s offices in Peekskill, Rochester, Binghamton, Albany, Long Island, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Washington DC. Groups in Massachusetts, where the pipeline is also being built, gathered to pressure Senators Markey and Warren.
Several groups read a statement from Courtney Williams, a Peekskill resident whose home and children’s school is in the blast radius of the pipeline. “Senator Schumer, I speak on behalf of the HUNDREDS of people at every one of your offices in New York and the millions threatened by this pipeline: You must stop making excuses for your inaction. Spectra’s AIM Pipeline is a man-made and entirely avoidable disaster in the making and YOU have the power to stop it!” Leigha Eyster, a born-and-raised resident of Yorktown Heights where another section of the pipeline is being built, was present at the rally as well: “I’m here to take a stand against the AIM Pipeline project. It’s a great risk to my community and to New York City as well. We’re here because we need Senator Schumer to act. We need him to go to FERC Commissioner Norman Bay, we need him to go to President Obama, and we need to see action, not just words.”
Spectra Energy’s AIM project is a 42” gas pipeline that is only 105 feet from Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant’s safety infrastructure and 400 feet from an elementary school. The pipeline would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England, despite a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General that shows no need for this gas. Pipelines are prone to accidents; according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), there were roughly six pipeline incidents every week in the United States in 2015, and the number of pipeline incidents is increasing with newer pipelines. Spectra’s AIM Pipeline poses a serious threat to public health and safety, not only to those who live in the immediate area, but to all New Yorkers. As Peekskill resident Nancy Vann said, “There is simply no safe way to put this pipeline into operation next to Indian Point.”
Furthermore, this project locks us into more fossil fuel use at a time when we must move toward renewable energy for the sake of our climate. Senator Schumer has filed his opposition to this project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but FERC still has not halted construction. Resist Spectra and allies from across the state are demanding that Senator Schumer go to President Obama, go to FERC Chairperson Norman Bay, and ask his colleagues in the Senate to oppose this project. They are also demanding that Schumer meet with Senators in other states and conduct a press conference demanding that FERC issue a “stop work” order NOW.
Peekskill is not the only part of the state that is being overrun by fracked gas infrastructure. Rallies in other parts of the state called on the Senator to be a voice for those who have been shut out of the process, and for communities where gas projects are being built against the communities’ wishes. “The Spectra Pipeline Project must be stopped if our children are to inherit a planet with clean water, clean air, and a livable climate,” said Renee Scholz from Mothers Out Front in Rochester. “I live in Rochester and recognize that this is an emergency not only for the 20 million people within the evacuation zone, but also for our state, country and planet. Senator Schumer is in a position to demand FERC issue a stop work order permit so this project is halted immediately, and I beg him to do so, now, before it is too late.”
In Binghampton, Lisa Marshall from Mothers Out Front spoke at a solidarity rally. “As a scientist and as a mom, I have no choice but to get on my knees and beg Senator Schumer to stop this project.” Diane Folk from Corning, NY, agreed: “As a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, I have to take a stand to improve the environment of our nation.”
In Buffalo, 35 people gathered at Senator Schumer’s Buffalo office, where David Reilly Ph.D Professor at Niagara University spoke. “We—the people—need to learn from Standing Rock. We need to reject the impulse to push our risks to another neighborhood, to another location. We need to say NO to the idea that these fossil fuels should ever leave the ground. We need to be unified in our message—from the Spectra opposition to the Northern Access Pipeline to the Dakota Pipeline—that we refuse to give in to the pressure from fossil fuel industries.”
In Peekskill, 40 people gathered, sang and rallied outside Schumer’s Peekskill office, where Erik Lindberg of Peekskill spoke. “Senator Schumer has never held a press conference on this issue that threatens millions of his constituents. This is a man who has held press conferences and introduced legislation on everything from dish detergent pods to powdered caffeine to robo calls interrupting family dinner. Yet, he has never had a press conference on the risks of the AIM pipeline.”
“We fought Kinder Morgan’s pipeline that was slated to cross Rensselaer and Albany counties – and we won. Now we are supporting other New York communities that are fighting pipelines. Our climate demands that we take action. Senator Schumer, we need to you to take immediate action to stop the Spectra AIM Pipeline,” said Ruth Foster, member of Stop NY Fracked Gas Pipeline, a group from the Capital Region that held a rally in Albany.
Andra Leimanis spoke in Syracuse: “We ask that Senator Schumer step up his opposition to the Spectra AIM Pipeline before it’s too late. It’s time to GO BIG: call President Obama, hold press conferences alongside others in congress who have constituents endangered by FERC’s reckless pipeline approvals. Building more pipelines when we need to be rapidly reducing the amount of carbon and methane released into the atmosphere is dangerous. Building a pipeline next to an aging nuclear facility is insanity.”
Concerned New Yorkers gathered at Schumer’s Long Island office in Melville as well. “Schumer has spoken out against this pipeline and has written a letter to FERC but we need more action. We need him to actually stop this. He keeps telling us that he’s done what he can but that’s not acceptable. He needs to do more. It’s ridiculous to think otherwise.” Kevin O’Keeffe, Long Island resident involved in stopping the Port Ambrose LNG facility in 2015.
Finally, allies in Massachusetts rallied at the offices of Senator Warren and Senator Markey. “We here in Central Mass opposing the Northeast Access project know it’s time to join together across pipeline projects to say no to these projects that hurt local communities and us all while making money for the fossil fuel industry” said Michelle Wenderlich, local organizer for Food & Water Watch.
The people have spoken. The time is NOW for Senator Chuck Schumer to lead on this issue to protect all New Yorkers.
Early October 10, four water protectors crawled inside lengths of pipeline along the Hudson River to stop Spectra Energy from dragging its 42-inch diameter, high pressure, fracked-methane gas pipeline under the Hudson River alongside the aging and failing Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. Spectra Energy’s proposed AIM Pipeline would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England, despite a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General that shows no need for this gas.
In New York, if completed, the AIM Pipeline would carry gas through residential communities and within 105 feet of critical safety facilities at Indian Point, endangering 20 million people in its blast radius. The water protectors also took this action in solidarity with the Standing Rock Tribe water protectors, and their allies, standing up against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Enbridg, which recently announced that it will purchase Spectra energy, is also a $1.5 billion investor in Dakota Access.
The protectors have been inside the pipeline for more than seven hours. Two support people were also arrested on site and charged with criminal trespass; a third support person was arrested on public property merely on suspicion of illegal activity by association.
Rebecca Berlin, born and raised in Yorktown where the AIM pipeline would connect to the rest of Spectra’s planned pipeline buildout, was one of the protectors who crawled inside the pipe. “Pipelines carrying filthy fossil fuels are putting communities at risk all over the United States – from North Dakota to New York and elsewhere,” she said. “The AIM pipeline must be stopped. Spectra is endangering the community I’ve lived in my entire life. Spectra is putting our wetlands, our children and our lives in danger in order to make profit from selling Liquid Natural Gas, a finite resource and fossil fuel, overseas. We cannot continue to consume so much of earth’s natural resources at the expense of our communities’ well-being. I want to stop Spectra because my community’s health, safety, and wildlife is more important than profit.”
Today’s action is the latest in an ongoing effort to stop Spectra Energy from constructing their Algonquin Incremental Market Expansion project. On August 3rd, both New York Senators wrote to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), calling for an immediate halt to construction of the pipeline; FERC denied the Senators’ request. On February 29, 2016, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo called for an immediate halt to construction while the state conducts an independent risk assessment, although this review was later revealed to be potentially compromised by gas lobbyists close to Cuomo. FERC also denied the Governor’s request. Without further support from elected officials, residents and advocates took matters into their own hands today to directly stop construction.
Mackenzie Wilkins said: “Spectra’s AIM Pipeline, like the Dakota Access Pipeline, and like all oil and gas lines, is a huge health and safety risk to the communities it passes through. If completed, the line would pass within 150 feet of schools, homes, and the Indian Point nuclear power plant and would lock us into decades more of fracking, water and air contamination, and climate destabilizing methane emissions. I am taking action to support communities along Spectra’s Pipeline that are fighting for a more just, sane, and sustainable world.”
Dave Publow said: “There is no reasonable argument for installing a gargantuan gas pipeline–in effect a perpetual pipe bomb–next to a decrepit nuclear power plant. Yet this is what Texas-based Spectra Energy and international Enbridge are doing, and neither of these companies have any connection to our community. Also, we have no functioning regulatory structure that places the safety of our community first. FERC is a rubber stamp machine long removed from accountability. The state permitting process is now based on legal trickery and insider deals. And since the system has failed us, we will have to do this ourselves.”
Janet Gonzalez, a Westchester County resident said: “I’m taking action against Spectra because our country is heading into an energy crisis. We imperil our future by depending on a depleting finite resource. Fracked gas, tar sands, and deep water drilling are the bottom of the resource pyramid. We must transition to a post carbon world with renewables. Otherwise, we risk cooking the planet.”
Judy Allen, one of two arrested support people, said: “Putting a 42” pipeline of fracked gas next to a nuclear plant a mile from the junction of two earthquake faults in the Hudson River is criminally insane.”
FERC has the legal authority to issue a stop work order, yet continues to ignore elected officials’ repeated calls to protect public safety. Two weeks ago, more than 180 organizations representing communities across America called on leaders in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee to hold congressional hearings into FERC’s extensive history of bias and abuse, a proposal that has already received positive feedback from Committee Democrats.
This is the zero hour for the pipeline – Spectra Energy wants to run gas through the pipeline by November 1, which means that it has to be stopped now. Residents and advocates are calling on Senator Charles Schumer to use his influence to stop the pipeline once and for all, and will soon be following today’s action with an action at his office.
More videos from water protectors inside the pipeline:
With a Thanksgiving holiday release of “Moana,” Disney’s Polynesian cartoon extravaganza can simultaneously expand its lucrative enterprise of exploiting marginalized, indigenous peoples (Pocahontas, Lilo and Stitch, Frozen) while perpetuating American amnesia.
A note about Thanksgiving: Early feasts of giving thanks celebrated some notable atrocities committed against Native peoples, including the 1637 massacre of 700 Pequot Indians by white Christians and the 1676 butchering and beheading of Wampanoag Sachem Metacom, whose severed head was then displayed on a pike for 25 years at Plymouth. Ultimately it was President Abraham Lincoln who declared it a national holiday in 1863, less than a year after he ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota men, which remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
Given the pre-Halloween rollout of the Maui skin suit so that children would unwittingly promote “Moana” like human billboards, I doubt the choice of a release date was any less thought out. Some of the most experienced and powerful business minds in the world own and operate Disney — they’re not the type to leave a hundred-something million-dollar investment to chance.
Opening dates, promotion, and merchandising are carefully planned well in advance to achieve maximum financial gain. The skin suit and Thanksgiving release shouldn’t be thought of as unintended cultural faux pas — these were calculated risks. To give the benefit of the doubt to a $50-billion corporate predator waiting to vacuum up a few billion more off of our culture(s) is to agree with the offense.
Most indigenous peoples under U.S. control, certainly Hawaiians, have yet to carve out a meaningful space to represent ourselves, what we value and our reality in mass media and film largely because America’s master narrative relies on our subjugation. The truth of what matters to us undermines the colonizer’s imagineered innocence. The narrative of Hawai’i as “the Aloha State” is a perfect example — every non-Maoli living and vacationing here is able to do so because of the theft of our nationhood and the complete appropriation and subversion of our land and culture.
While there are certainly other oppressed groups, our oppressions aren’t any more equal than our successes. Hawaiian world—indigenous world is all buss up, and our narratives are convoluted. But the settler world isn’t, and neither is its story.
Our hopes, dreams and struggles are inconvenient to what Disney has chosen to produce about us. Worse yet, we’re expected to shut up and enjoy the ride everyone’s taking on our back. Yes, some of our own people, grateful for any acknowledgment, don’t recognize an insult or culture theft when they see it. Others will happily join in with the massive, commodifying monstrosity of “Moana” and buy Moana gear and computer games. (I heard that the Ala Moana Disney Store is already well-stocked.)
One Maori writer, who likes the Maui skin suit, said it’s like dressing up as Santa Claus. He’s not far off, seeing as how we’re the ones doing all the giving. He reminded me of something funny that Haunani-Kay Trask, one of our beloved sovereignty leaders, once said to me: “Yah, the haole, they stole everything we gave them.”
Being culturally poached and misrepresented isn’t flattering — it’s a threat. The historical fact is that colonization in the Pacific, and everywhere for that matter, has had catastrophic consequences for indigenous peoples in every conceivable way. And native collaboration, while highly problematic, doesn’t legitimize hijacking or pimping our knowledge, heritage and identity.
Having said that, not knowing who the members are of the Oceanic Story Trust, a group that was hand picked by Disney to shepherd the cultural content and merchandising, we can’t ask these Pacific Mouseketeers what the capital F they were thinking when they helped Disney strip mine our culture(s) for the sole purpose of making a profit.
Although bad publicity in the form of complaints that the skin suit is racist motivated Disney to take it off the shelf, they did it with a condescending, “We regret that the Maui costume has offended some,” version of an apology. I suppose that’s the best we can expect from an entity whose bottom line is protecting its investment.
But Hawaiians and other indigenous Pacific Islanders are the ones who need to think hard about what something of this magnitude will mean. Given that it’s shaping up to become this region’s cultural heist of the century (so far), we may want to try to make native sense of the intent and the processes at work here, especially us Hawaiians.
I say especially Hawaiians because so much is being done to us politically, materially, culturally and spiritually these past few years. From the mass desecration project of the Thirty Meter Telescope to the Obama administration’s determination to force feed us federal recognition against our will, ours is a never-ending struggle to simply survive in our homeland as who we are.
The cultural imperialism of Disney mirrors the military imperialism of the United States and the other industries it uses to erase our indigenous belonging: tourism and real estate. Disney’s Aulani Resort, and now its “Moana,” secures its place in the economically enforced ethnocide and culturcide that is steadily replacing us with settlers.
If the promotional trailer is anything like the film, Disney’s about to get even richer by exploiting and mocking us in deeply genealogical and spiritual ways—turning Tutu Pele into an ugly lava monster and Maui into a ridiculous, clowning sidekick. The noted psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer Frantz Fanon was so on the mark when he said, “… Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.”
Disney has reduced us and our world to a cartoon at a time when our political future is hanging in the balance, when Hawaiians absolutely need to be heard and taken seriously, not distracted by or silenced for entertainment. Disney is trying to do to our culture and identity what America is doing to our land and nationhood: we are being carved up, sold off, and drained of our mana.
Since the Maui skin suit debacle, Disney’s 21st century iteration of the white supremacist ideology that informed people like British Major General Horatio Gordon Robley, a proud collector of Maori heads, and that guy who tried to sell a Hawaiian kupuna skull on E-Bay, I’ve been thinking in metaphors. I’m looking at what’s happening right now, but looking, too, at the horizon, at what’s coming toward us, imagining what might follow, hoping that whatever it is, Hawaiians and all Pacific Islanders can face it together instead of letting it further divide us.
I have no doubt that Disney’s “Moana” will materially and psychologically aid and abet the colonial project of indigenous erasure and removal. It’s a cultural tsunami and it will impact the entire region. However, unlike natural disasters, this man-made disaster will play out over many months and years and will continue for as long as Disney can suck the marrow from our spiritual and cultural bones.
Anne Keala Kelly is the award winning filmmaker of “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai‘i,” and a journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and Indian Country Today, and on the Pacifica Network and Al Jazeera.
