JUUstice Washington

A Unitarian Universalist State Action Network

Standing Rock withdraws from ongoing environmental assessment of Dakota Access Pipeline

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The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has withdrawn as a cooperating agency from the U.S Federal government’s ongoing environmental assessment of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) operations.

Standing Rock attributed their decision to the lack of transparency by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who are conducting the court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the pipeline in the area, as well as Energy Transfer’s, the pipeline operator, refusal to engage with tribe. According to tribal leaders, Standing Rock’s Tribal Emergency Response Commission (TERC) has yet to see the entire copy of the pipeline’s emergency plan in case a crude oil spill occurs.

Read more here.

Flood public comments to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline!

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The fight to stop the Dakota Access pipeline isn’t over, and you can help right now! This month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will take public comment on DAPL’s fatally flawed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Sign up to be first in line to tell the Corps to conduct a proper environmental review — without interference from the fossil fuel industry. Sign up here to receive notification when public comments open.

Reclaiming Native Truth – Lessons Learned from Standing Rock

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The movement at Standing Rock significantly undermined the systemic erasure of Native peoples from the dominant American narrative. At a time when most Americans continued to believe that Native Americans and Nations no longer exist in the United States, Americans were presented with a movement that forced a new conversation around values, identity, and our collective connection to the Earth around us and the lands we live on.

Suddenly, Native Americans were no longer simply characters from the past that occasionally pop out of oblivion and into a Western movie or a museum. Instead, Americans watched as contemporary Native Americans populated the daily news diet with articulate, powerful narratives concerning the sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe—and all Tribal Nations—as well the collective threat that climate change and losing our drinking water poses to us all.

Read more here:  RNT – Standing Rock Report

Indigenous Standing Rock Activist Imprisoned for Resisting Grand Jury

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FOLLOWING PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S executive order to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, activists and organizers are escalating calls for similar actions to shutter other major pipelines. They are addressing projects like Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline, which run through and devastate Indigenous lands and lives, threatening water sources and our collective futures. Just this month, celebrities joined Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in urging the president to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline.

While Biden’s action on Keystone XL and court rulings over Dakota Access constitute victories for the Indigenous-led climate movement, water protectors who stood on the front lines of these battles continue to face grave repression and punitive consequences from the government.

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After Court Rules Dakota Access Pipeline Operating Illegally, Dems Demand Biden It Shut Down

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Five Democratic lawmakers on Friday encouraged President Joe Biden to order an immediate shutdown of the Dakota Access pipeline after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week delivered a victory to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe by ruling that DAPL is operating illegally.

The three-judge panel upheld a lower court’s ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted an easement for DAPL to cross a federal reservoir along the Missouri River, less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

The court ordered a full environmental impact statement examining the threats posed by the oil pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, as the Democrats’ letter to Biden notes, “rightfully fears an oil spill could disproportionately affect their drinking water, as well as hunting and fishing rights.”

Read more here.