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“Oceti Sakowin” is Lakota for “seven council fires,” referring to the seven bands of the Lakota people, also called the Great Sioux Nation. “Since time immemorial, the people of the Great Sioux Nation have lived, hunted, fished, and engaged in ceremonies adjacent to the Missouri River – Mni Sose in Lakota,” four of the seven tribal governments wrote to Joe Biden on the day before his inauguration. They asked for “quick, decisive action on the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).” DAPL is the 1,200 mile long pipeline that transports crude, fracked oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale fields to Illinois, en route to Texas. As one of his first acts in office in 2017, President Trump greenlit both the Keystone XL pipeline and DAPL. On his first day in office, Biden revoked the permit for Keystone XL, but left DAPL intact. On Wednesday, one week into his presidency, dubbed “Climate Day” by the White House, Biden announced sweeping executive actions to confront catastrophic climate disruption, but again did nothing on DAPL.
The Lakota letter listed the 19th-century treaties between the tribes and the U.S. government, adding, “after gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the government violated the treaties,” stripping “vast areas of land out of the Reservation.” For the original inhabitants of this land, American democracy brought not...Read More→
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