The following article is written by Brenda Brink, Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition Communications Action Team member. Brenda attended an event on March 3rd at Drake University in Des Moines, IA where Lakota youth discussed the Keystone XL Pipeline and the extractive oil industry.
Lakota Nation Organized to Stop the KXL “Black Snake”
Beads, blankets (often infected with small pox), guns, alcohol – what does this make you think of? Yes,
these were the trading tools of early colonizers.
On March 3, five Lakota youth, from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud homelands in South Dakota, updated
their audience at Drake University. Modern-day “trading tools” are Tempur-Pedic mattresses. Yes, a
video was shown of TransCanada (Keystone XL pipeline representatives) being shamed out of a meeting
with tribal leaders after having been discovered trying to bribe tribe members with Tempur-Pedic
mattresses.
A critical mass of tribal members on the reservations have started fighting back against the newest
extraction powers-that-be, saying, “We can’t drink oil!”, “Honor the Treaties” and “Respect Us or Expect
Us.”
This ability to stand firm is partly because of sovereignty treaties signed years ago and mostly
because of organizing skills learned through alliances with other Sacred Water groups.
Uranium mining has caused both three times the legal limit of radioactivity and five times the legal limit
of arsenic in many of the Pine Ridge Reservation water sources*, prompting even more determination
to protect their water, also called “first medicine” among Lakota, from further devastation. Even with
water piped in from Pierre, South Dakota, their buffalo, horses, antelope, gardens, and entire way of life
are in danger.
With this determination, the five Lakota youth who shared both cultural and environmental concerns
while at Drake, headed to Pennsylvania to support other anti-fracking, water protection efforts.
*Information about the toxic water on Pine Ridge Reservation: Owe Aku “Bring Back the Way” Sacred
Water Protection Teach-ins” YouTube, from 9/29/12, which features Debra White Plume, Oglala Lakota
Nation elder who exposed TransCanada bribes of tribal members.
More about the matriarchal Lakota on O.Y.A.T.E. Media Network on YouTube, ”OYATE Mednet”
Submitted by Brenda Brink