[Southern California Permaculture] Environmentally speaking/What the Trump Victory Means for Standing Rock

Wed Nov 16 07:21:50 PST 2016

What the Trump Victory Means for Standing Rock

<http://www.yesmagazine.org/@@also-by?author=Jenni+Monet>Jenni 
Monet posted Nov 09, 2016 - <http://www.yesmagazine.org/>YES! Magazine

The Sioux tribe is facing a pro-oil 
president-elect with personal investments riding 
on the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline.

The Dakota Access Pipeline was earlier diverted 
from the community of Bismarck and has now has 
been directly installed two miles above the 
Standing Rock tribes water source. The Missouri 
River is pure here. It flows from Montana and 
into the Mississippi. This is the water source 
for 10 million people and will affect 10 states 
drinking water. It will also flow directly into 
the ocean when the pipeline bursts because all 
oil pipeline eventually burst. True we need our 
own oil source but this oil is being shipped to other countries.

Less than 12 hours after Donald Trump walked onto 
a New York City stage as the newly elected 
president, the stock price for Energy Transfer 
Equity shot up 15 percent. Among that company’s 
holdings is Energy Transfer Partners, operator of 
the controversial Dakota Access pipeline. 
Protesters near the Standing Rock Sioux 
Reservation continue to fight completion of the 
$3.8 billion project. But the jump in share price 
indicates an immediate pro-energy confidence in Trump.

And that confidence is not unfounded.

In Bismarck, North Dakota, Donald Trump gave a 
speech in May that would help secure his seat as 
America’s 45th president. The candidate was 
lagging 30 delegates to become the Republican 
nominee. His decision to address oil 
entrepreneurs in North Dakota was political 
strategy. At a petroleum conference, Trump 
introduced his energy plan for the first time: 
more fossil fuels, fewer regulations, and a vow 
to undo many of President Obama’s climate 
initiatives. Trump would meet the required 
1,237-delegate threshold to go on and win the 
presidency, a startling upset for an outsider who 
has disrupted the political establishment.

[]

What a Trump victory may spell for the continued 
battle over the Dakota Access pipelineand for 
indigenous rights, in generalis alarming.

For starters, President-elect Trump would stand 
to personally profit from the project. His 
campaign energy adviser, Harold Hamm, would also 
see gains. Hamm is the CEO of Continental 
Resources, which has plans to flow its supply of 
Bakken fracked crude through the pipeline. With 
Trump’s recent victory, Hamm is also on the short 
list of becoming U.S. energy secretary.

As Politico reports, Trump is also seriously 
considering 74-year-old Forrest Lucas, of oil 
products company Lucas Oil, 
<http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/forrest-lucas-trump-interior-secretary-228364>as 
a top contender for interior secretary, along 
with “Drill, Baby, Drill” Sarah Palin.

This political changeover has come at a critical 
time in the struggle at Standing Rock.

All sides, for and against the pipeline, have 
vowed to stand their ground. The battle to stop 
the project and protect the Missouri River has 
recently intensified, growing into one of the 
largest indigenous rights movements in the world.

Last week, construction reached the river. Plans 
call to bury the pipeline 92 feet below the 
river’s surface. The Missouri is the Standing 
Rock Sioux tribe’s prime water source; 18 million 
other people depend on it downstream.  This 
political changeover has come at a critical time 
in the struggle at Standing Rock.

On Tuesday, pipeline operators Energy Transfer 
Partners announced plans to advance its project 
despite earlier calls from the Obama 
administration to halt construction. According to 
a statement released Wednesday, the U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineers had recently repeated this 
request in the midst of more violence between 
police and protesters erupting on lands belonging to the Corps.

“We asked Dakota Access pipeline on Nov.  4 to 
honor the administration’s request for a 
voluntary shut down by stopping work for a 30-day 
period to allow for de-escalation,” said Colonel 
John Henderson, the Army Corps district 
commander. “Dakota Access did not agree to this request.”

The U.S. government is reassessing permits and 
has said it’s looking at possible rerouting; the 
pipeline route currently needs to traverse 
easements on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lands.

On Tuesday, Energy Transfer said it is 
“mobilizing horizontal drilling equipment” for 
tunneling under Lake Oahe, a basin on the 
Missouri River, near where thousands of 
protesters are camped out to protect the water.

That the energy company chose Election Day to 
announce its brazen defiance of federal appeals 
is worth mentioninga day when the focus of most 
Americans would not be the pipeline, but on the race for the White House.

“Dakota Access remains confident that it will 
receive the easement for these two strips of land 
adjacent to Lake Oahe in a time frame that will 
not result in any significant delay in proceeding 
with drilling activities under Lake Oahe,” read a statement from the company.

Energy Transfer noted plans to start traversing 
the water within two weeks in an effort to meet 
its end of the year construction deadlinesa 
signal that it has no intention to negotiate, slow down, or reroute.

“We are concerned over recent statements from 
DAPL,” said Col. Henderson.  In his remarks, he 
once again urged the pipeline company to stop 
construction and leave the area. “We again ask 
DAPL to voluntarily cease operations in this area 
as their absence will help reduce these tensions.”

But now that Trump has won the election and has 
said he would steer energy policy toward more oil 
production rather than less, plans to ignore the 
Obama administration and advance the pipeline so 
swiftly doesn’t seem so brazen at after all. Just prescient.

According to his Public Financial Disclosure 
Report, Trump disclosed between $500,000 and $1 
million in investments in ETP. He also disclosed 
$50,000 to $100,000 in investments in Phillips 
66, which would own one-quarter of the Dakota Access pipeline once complete.

Between now and January 20, 2017, when Trump is 
officially sworn into office, it will be up to 
the Obama administrationthrough its three 
agencies, the Department of Justice, the 
Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineersto deny the permits to Energy 
Transfer and Dakota Access, if the pipeline is to be halted.

“In this time of uncertainty, President Obama 
still has the power to give our children hope,” 
said Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave 
Archambault II. In a statement today, the tribal 
leader described the results of last night’s 
election this way: “We as a country have so much work to do.”

The question now becomes: What happens after Jan. 20?

Among Trump’s campaign promises has been a vow to 
rescind President Obama’s key climate policies, 
including reviving construction of the disrupted 
Keystone XL pipeline. That pipeline would bring 
petroleum from Canada’s oil sands to Gulf Coast 
refineries. Obama eventually stepped in and 
stopped the Keystone, a move widely celebrated 
for his commitment in addressing these environmental issues.

But what separates Keystone from Dakota Access are boundaries.

Keystone is an international issue because it 
crosses into Canada, so the State Department has 
authority over the proposal, unlike the Dakota Access pipeline.
“In this time of uncertainty, President Obama 
still has the power to give our children hope.”

Dakota Access is entirely domestic, beginning in 
North Dakota and crossing South Dakota and Iowa 
until it reaches a plant nearly 1,200 miles away 
in south central Illinois. The federal government 
has final oversight because the pipeline crosses 
interstate waterways, like the Missouri River. 
But even then, only 3 percent of the Dakota 
Access pipeline crosses federal lands. It also 
narrowly avoids falling under tribal jurisdiction by a half-mile.

The one constant factor delaying the pipeline 
process is the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s 
assertion of its sovereign right to protect the interests of its water.

But under a Trump presidency, even this right could be under attack.

In the final months of his campaign, Native 
American leaders canceled a planned meeting with 
Trump after the then-candidate repeatedly 
referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as 
“Pocahontas,” a jab about her contested claims of having Cherokee ancestry.

Trump has a history of insulting Native 
Americans, including tribal leaders he saw as 
competition for casino interests on the East 
Coast. “They don't look like Indians to me,” 
Trump once said in a congressional hearing. 
Meanwhile, in 2000, Trump was fined $500,000 for 
financing ads that portrayed Apache tribal 
members as criminals in their quest to open a casino.

“This is like Andrew Jackson’s victory,” quipped 
Rudy Giuliani, speaking to MSNBC’s Chris 
Matthews. The former New York City mayor was 
jovially referencing how Trump had appeared to 
beat the establishment in the way Jackson did in 
1827. “The people are rising up against a 
government they find to be dysfunctional,” he said.

But the reference to Jackson could not have been 
more directly aimed at Standing Rockand all of 
Indian Country. Jackson’s presidential legacy was 
violently forcing Native peoples from their homelands.
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Jenni Monet wrote this article for 
<http://www.yesmagazine.org/>YES! Magazine. Jenni 
is an award-winning journalist and tribal member 
of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She’s also 
executive producer and host of the podcast Still Here.

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