The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has a paypal account for donations www.standingrock.org. If you would like to send supplies you can send them to: Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Attn: Johnelle Leingang PO Box D Fort Yates ND 58538.
Tell President Obama to designate the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument!
Ranging from desert grasslands to lush, coniferous forest, the proposed Grand Canyon watershed encompasses a wild, rugged array of towering cliffs, deeply incised tributary canyons, and numerous springs that flow into Grand Canyon National Park's Colorado River.
Unfortunately, ill-conceived uranium mining, logging, and other human activity threatens the Grand Canyon watershed. Naming it as a national monument would protect this unique American icon for generations to enjoy!
Tell President Obama to protect this natural, cultural and archeological treasure by naming the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument.
Chairman called on the Army Corps to reaffirm their position of no forcible removal
Cannon Ball, N.D.—The following statement from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Chairman, Dave Archambault II, can be quoted in part or in full.
“Today, Gov. Dalrymple issued an executive order calling for mandatory evacuation of all campers located on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) lands, also known as the Oceti Sakowin camp. This state executive order is a menacing action meant to cause fear, and is a blatant attempt by the state and local officials to usurp and circumvent federal authority. The USACE has clearly stated that it does not intend to forcibly remove campers from federal property. The Governor cites harsh weather conditions and the threat to human life. As I have stated previously, the most dangerous thing we can do is force well-situated campers from their shelters and into the cold. If the true concern is for public safety than the Governor should clear the blockade and the county law enforcement should cease all use of flash grenades, high-pressure water cannons in freezing temperatures, dog kennels for temporary human jails, and any harmful weaponry against human beings. This is a clear stretch of state emergency management authority and a further attempt to abuse and humiliate the water protectors. The State has since clarified that they won’t be deploying law enforcement to forcibly remove campers, but we are wary that this executive order will enable further human rights violations.”
The Chairman called on the Army Corps to affirm their previous statement regarding no forcible removal.
Water Protectors stand near Highway 1806 in Standing Rock as a police spotlight casts a blinding light in the distance. (Photo: Dark Sevier)
On Monday, November 28, 2016, an evacuation order was issued by the governor of the North Dakota, calling for the end of the largest convergence of Native resisters in modern times. That convergence, known on social media as #NoDAPL and often simply referred to as “Standing Rock” — a place whose history and legacy have now been permanently expanded to encompass this moment in time — has existed in defiance of colonial violence for months now. It is a convergence that has been assailed and slandered in news reports that take the word of law enforcement as gospel, despite the factual evidence that law enforcement has a chronic tendencyto dehumanize and kill us. That tendency is the story of our existence since first contact. So is the resistance with which it has been met. Now multiple levels of government are once again acting in concert to write their preferred ending to another chapter of that story.
In essence, the “emergency evacuation” order from Gov. Jack Dalrymple echoes therecently feigned concerns of the Army Corps of Engineers, stating that the area’s plunging temperatures and heavy snowfall pose an unacceptable safety hazard to the Water Protectors. (Such concerns for our people’s warmth were notably lacking when law enforcement blasted Protectors with water cannons in sub-zero temperatures.) The details and language of those orders can be read elsewhere, but I will tell you, unequivocally, what the public must understand about them: These proclamations have nothing to do with Native safety or survival. Our well-being has never been a priority within these United States. If it were, we would not live as we live and die as we die. We would not be killed at a higher rate by police than any other group. We would not have been subjected to such violence on the front-lines of Standing Rock or any other site of Native resistance. Every rubber bullet that has struck Native flesh, every blast of freezing water that has battered Indigenous bodies at skin-ripping velocities and every cloud of tear gas — everything you’ve seen retells the story of how little they care about our survival. Our people having been facing a brutal storm in Standing Rock for some time now. The notion that some threat of death and suffering is now officially relevant, now that it’s posed by nature as opposed to law enforcement’s tools of torture and repression, is an insult to us all — including each of you. The truth could not be plainer. The path of the pipeline (redirected from a 90 percent white community’s backyard), the repression and the constant threat of an all-out siege are more evidence than anyone should need, for they are merely part of a larger pattern of evidence. The Army Corps made its recent statement as a PR maneuver. By issuing an eviction date, even without the threat of force, it has skirted any liability for whatever law enforcement does next. The Army Corps declared December 5 the day on which our people will be deemed intruders on the stolen land the Corps governs. Like the governor, the Corps was sure to couch its decision in feigned concern for our people. The position it made clear was as simple as it was spineless: If our people freeze, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves, because we were warned. And if our people are further barbarized by law enforcement, it will have been by our own choice, because we were given fair warning. After a full day of public outcry, the Army Corps clarified that it had no specific plans for the removal of our Water Protectors. Its statement was more of a proclamation justifying any ugly consequences of resisting yet another displacement.
As Native people, we know this refrain. It is in fact the mechanism by which this government has always sought to manage the Indigenous people who its extermination efforts failed to wipe from the continent. After every mass murder and every geographical reshuffling, the same cycle has repeated itself. Our people are forced to accept false boundaries and containment, or assimilation, because we are offered no other choice. We are pushed into spaces that are not seen as limiting expansion — until those lands or waters are found to have significant value. When the prospect of wealth is detected, those lands and waters are also looted, leaving disease and devastation in the wake of still more violence against both land and human beings. These systems of colonialism must be understood. Oppressions replicate themselves, throughout history and throughout societies, until they consume targets well beyond those they were constructed to control or destroy. We see this in the gentrification that destroys both Black and Brown communities. We see this in the reshaping of slavery, which also consumes Native lives through the prison-industrial complex — despite that structure being erected, such as it exists, to uphold the social and economic functionality of anti-Blackness. The United States, as a nation-state, is as diseased now as the smallpox-ridden blankets that were handed to us so many years ago. It is an irony not lost on us that this government once again masks its attacks as efforts to keep us from the cold — to preserve us with a false regard that reeks of death. But we see what lies ahead. In my own imagination, from so many miles away, I can see the barricades that could soon prevent firewood and life-giving food from reaching my people. I can see a government impatiently attempting to freeze and starve out our resisters, for their“own good.“ I see them waiting until they believe that all those left standing are weak and ill-prepared for an onslaught. I see them shutting down our ability to view that siege from a distance. But I do not see us defeated. The truth is, this government has yet to defeat us. We have survived, battle to battle, from one patch of land to another. We are the blood of what couldn’t be killed, and the heart of our resistance now beats in Standing Rock. And it will continue to strengthen us all.
Morton County Sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, has brutalized the Dakota Access Pipeline Water Protectors and he must be prosecuted!
Water Protectors have been strip searched, beaten pepper sprayed, attacked by dogs, shot with rubber bullets and sprayed with water in sub-zero temperatures!
Sheriff Kirchmeier has compounded these human rights abuses by disrupting sacred Native American religious rites, housing arrested Water Protectors in dog kennels, and targeting journalists with rubber bullets and frivolous lawsuits.
Don't you agree he should be prosecuted for these atrocious crimes?
Add your name to demand the U.S. Department of Justice prosecute Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier NOW!
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DAPL was Originally planned to go through the town of Bismark N.D.The residents of Bismarkk (white "christians") objected to the pipeline on grounds that when it leaked it would poison their drinking water...
The People of Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Tribal People) are being FORCED At Gunpoint to accept the same pipeline (on Treaty Land) that will poison them, that their White Neighbors REFUSED. THIS IS GENOCIDE & Blatant Racism....
Tales of a feast on Plymouth plantation in the Autumn of 1621, where of pilgrims from the Mayflower, celebrated the harvest, shared and broke bread with the first Americans are false. They are still used as inspiration and shared with children, teaching them the beauty of gratitude.
But it is now widely understood this Thanksgiving story is a fictional history. It was invented to whitewash the vicious genocide wrought upon the native inhabitants of this magnificent continent. Not only did the Europeans try to eradicate native populations, but they made every effort to eviscerate their culture, their language and eliminate them from these coveted lands.
From Plymouth Rock to Standing Rock, this lie has made our Thanksgiving Day a Day of Mourning for the First Nations, all the tribes big and small, those who came before us.
A few weeks ago we traveled to visit the Standing Rock Sioux In North Dakota. We arrived at this unprecedented historical gathering of over five hundred tribes and thousands of others standing on the front lines to protect water, to state the most basic human truth, to say water is life. Despite the painful history, today they fight peacefully for us all.
The camp grows as winter comes. Standing in protection of our most vital life support systems, but also for the rightful preservation of Native American cultural ways and their sovereignty. Everyone we talk with is committed to peaceful resistance. Weapons alcohol and drugs are forbidden there.
Standing together in prayer to protect water displays a deeply rooted awareness of life's interconnected nature, and of the intrinsic value and import of traditional ways. This growing movement stems from love, it is the most human instinct to protect that which we love. An eager and engaged youth are at the core of this pipeline route resistance, learning from a population of elders who pass down unforgotten knowledge.
It is an awakening. All here together, with their non-native relatives, standing strong in the face of outrageous, unnecessary and violent aggression, on the part of militarized local and state law enforcement agencies and National Guard, who are seemingly acting to protect the interests of the Dakota Access Pipeline profiteers, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars, above all other expressed concerns. They stand against corporate security forces, the county sheriff and the National Guard. Standing while being hit with water cannons, mace, tear gas, rubber bullets. Standing without weapons and praying, the water protectors endure human rights abuses in sub freezing temperatures. Supplies arrive from all over as the social media universe shares the heartbreaking news to the world, that an American corporate media is not free to report. Thus, it is the ugliness of corporate America, seen around the world.
But they stand, their hair frozen from water cannons. They stand for all that is good and they stay strong.
We are calling upon you, President Barack Obama, to step in and end the violence against the peaceful water protectors at Standing Rock immediately.
We will be going back to support the water protectors again. Let us all stand with them in thanks, in appreciation for the ancient wisdom they carry, In thanks for this opportunity for true gratitude. For giving us a path forward. For trying to show us a road to survival. We offer our support and our respect. We hear the call to protect the water protectors to listen, learn and get engaged. They are brave. We thank them.
And we can give thanks for the bounty.
Like water on the garden of activism, America’s surprise president brings a bounty of opportunity. The great issues of our time are now brightly illuminated and people are becoming more aware of them than ever, from sea to shining sea, from Standing Rock to Wall Street.
The surprise president elect was not the winner of the popular vote, does not have a mandate for the change of ideals envisioned. Keep in mind, close to over two million more people voted for another candidate.
Nor is the surprise president the leader of the free world. Two hundred of the worlds nations believe in science, above the profits of the oil, gas and coal industries, and are committed to working together to protect the future from an unchecked climate crisis.
The surprise president claims he does not believe in climate science nor the threats it presents and his actions and words reflect that claim in tangible and dangerous ways.
Do not be intimidated by the surprise presidents' cabinet appointees as they descend the golden escalator. Those who behave in racist ways are not your leaders. The golden tower is not yours. The White House is your house.
Your growing activism in support of freedom over repression, addressing climate change, swiftly replacing a destructive old industries with safe, regenerative energy, encouraging wholistic thinking in balance with the future of our planet; that activism will strengthen and shed continued light on us all. These worthy goals must be met for the all the worlds children and theirs after them.
This is our moment for truth.
Unintimidated, stand, speak up and show up. Be counted. Be like our brothers and sisters at Standing Rock. Be there if you can. The progress we have made over two hundred and forty years as a nation, has always come first from the people
"Today, the Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC-formerly Red Owl), an initiative of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), filed suit in US District Court against Morton County, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirschmeier, and other law enforcement agencies for using excessive force against peaceful Water Protectors on the night of November 20, 2016.
The class action suit, filed on behalf of persons who were injured on the night of November 20 and early morning of November 21, seeks an immediate injunction preventing the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement from using impact munitions such as rubber bullets and lead-filled “beanbags,” water cannons and hoses, explosive teargas grenades and other chemical agents against protesters."
CANNON BALL, ND —Today, the Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC-formerly Red Owl), an initiative of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), filed suit in US District Court against Morton County, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirschmeier, and other law enforcement agencies for using excessive force against peaceful Water Protectors on the night of November 20, 2016.
The class action suit, filed on behalf of persons who were injured on the night of November 20 and early morning of November 21, seeks an immediate injunction preventing the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement from using impact munitions such as rubber bullets and lead-filled “beanbags,” water cannons and hoses, explosive teargas grenades and other chemical agents against protesters.
Beginning on the evening of November 20, officers from the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and assisting agencies confronted peaceful Water Protectors at a bridge near the Standing Rock protest camp and within the boundaries of Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires, or Great Sioux Nation) treaty lands. Without giving any warnings or opportunity to disperse, officers fired on them with highly dangerous munitions, chemical agents, a water cannon and hoses in freezing weather. More than 200 Water Protectors were injured.
“The Morton County Sheriff’s office not only violates the constitutional rights of peaceful protesters, but their actions highlight the long history of abuse against Indigenous peoples,” said Brandy Toelupe, WPLC lawyer. “From the beginning, governments have used their latest technologies to take land and resources from Native nations and oppress Indigenous peoples. Sheriff Kirchmeier’s actions make it clear that nothing has changed,” she added.
The complaint describes the excessive force with which the nine class representatives were met while peacefully protesting. Four are Native, including two members of the Lakota nation. Jade Kalikolehuaokakalani Wool had two grenades blow up near her head, knocking her down, burning her face and sending shrapnel into it, and causing her to be hospitalized. Crystal Wilson was shot with a water cannon, tear gassed and shot with a munition. David Demo was filming police when, without warning, they shot him with a water cannon and then in the hand with a munition. He was hospitalized with broken bones and was told he would need reconstructive surgery. Gary Dullknife III saw a Water Protector knocked to the ground by a water cannon. As police sprayed her on the ground, he tried to move her away. He was shot in the chest, stomach and leg by impact munitions. Mariah Marie Bruce was peacefully protesting when police sprayed her with water cannons. She was then hit in the genitals with a grenade, and was hospitalized. Frank Finan was taking pictures when he was shot in the abdomen and knocked to the ground by a rubber bullet. Israel Hoagland–Lynn tried to help two people who had been shot with water cannons and rubber bullets and was shot in the back of his head by an impact munition. He lost consciousness, was hospitalized, and needed 17 staples for a head wound. Noah Michael Treanor, while praying, was shot by the water hoses or cannon. Once on the ground, he was shot in the head by an impact munition. Bleeding badly, he was hospitalized. Vanessa Dundon was hit in the eye with a tear gas canister that was shot by police directly at the crowd of Water Protectors.
“The civil rights violations that night were deliberate and punitive,” said Rachel Lederman, WPLC lawyer. “The Morton County Sheriff’s Department’s illegal use of force against the Water Protectors has been escalating. It is only a matter of luck that no one has been killed. This must stop.”
Those concerned are urged to call local and federal agencies below to demand (1) immediate end to construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, (2) the immediate cessation and a full investigation into law enforcement abuses, (3) dropping felony charges against water protectors from the October 27 police raid, and (4) permitting the Water Protectors to stay at their current encampment until the DAPL’s application to drill under Lake Oahe and the Missouri River is permanently denied.
• White House: 202-456-1414 or sign the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s White House petition standwithstandingrock.net/take-action • White House Situation Room, 202-456-9431 • North Dakota Governor’s Office: 701-328-2200 • Morton County Sheriff’s Office: 701-667-3330 • Morton County State’s Attorney’s Office: 701-667-3330 • Army Corps of Engineers-Bismarck 701-255-0015
The Water Protector Legal Collective is the National Lawyers Guild legal support team for those engaged in resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. It maintains a 24/7 presence on-site at the Oceti Sakowin camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
The Dakota Access Pipeline has already destroyed lands held sacred by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and if it is completed, the pipeline with threaten the contamination of drinking water for tens of millions of Americans.
When Trump takes office he will likely smooth the way for the pipeline as quickly as possible. However, Bernie Sanders' revolution is asking President Obama to declare Standing Rock a national monument to make sure the pipeline is killed in a way that Trump cannot bring back to life.
Don't you want Obama to kill DAPL for good before he leaves office?
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Peace,
Nathan Mackenzie Brown Really American Founder
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Really American was founded by Nathan Mackenzie Brown and Adriel Hampton when they saw a revolutionary movement forming in response to the corruption, fraud and lies within the US political system that Bernie Sanders exposed to the American public during the 2016 presidential primary.
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Police Are Deliberately Hurting Standing Rock Protesters to Deter Others From Coming, Father of Injured Protester Claims
By Paul Gottinger, Reader Supported News
23 November 16
A few hundred people gathered for a prayer vigil Tuesday evening outside the Minneapolis hospital where 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky was recovering from her injury at Standing Rock.
Witnesses say her arm was severely damaged when an officer pulled the pin on a stun grenade, and held it, then timed the throw so the grenade would explode exactly as it hit her. Witnesses say the police threw the grenade directly at Ms. Wilansky as she was backing away from the police. The grenade explosioncausedbone, muscles and arteries to be blown from her arm, according to her father, Wayne Wilansky.
Ms. Wilansky was airlifted to a Minneapolis hospital, where she has undergone multiple surgeries to save her arm, though it’s not yet clear whether doctors will need to amputate. Wayne Wilansky said his daughter may need up to 20 surgeries, and if she keeps her arm it will have very minor functionality.
Mr. Wilansky says FBI agents, including a representative from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, kept his daughter prisoner inside her hospital room yesterday. The agents didn’t say why they were there for hours, but they eventually collected his daughter’s clothing. Mr. Wilansky says he reached a verbal agreement with the FBI that they will give the Wilansky family access to the clothing to forensically test it themselves.
Police have denied responsibility for the injury to Ms. Wilansky, but her father said, “My daughter, who was completely conscious, says that they threw a grenade right at her.” Multiple witnesses also say Ms. Wilansky was injured due to a police grenade.
Mr. Wilansky continued, “I spoke to the surgeon myself directly. They took shrapnel out of her arm, so it’s pretty clear that it’s a grenade and they're going to save that shrapnel. It's going to stay in pathology until it's needed. There's proof. There's evidence that our government is throwing grenades at our people who are there peacefully protesting."
The police have changed the story of how Ms. Wilansky was hurt three times, according to her father. He also said police are intentionally hurting people in an attempt to deter new protesters from joining those already at Standing Rock.
“It’s unbelievable that governments are violently attacking citizens who are there peacefully in an attempt not to control the protest, not to protect property, but to potentially damage people, to hurt people on purpose so that other people won’t come.”
The authorities blocked medical help from reaching injured protesters, according to Mr. Wilansky.
“They are intentionally blocking ambulances from getting to the site. One of the things that hampered [my daughter’s] healing process was that it took her 6 to 8 hours to get to a hospital where they could do this kind of surgery. [Ambulances] don’t have any access to the roads. They stopped people from getting through.”
Despite her injury, Ms. Wilansky has asked that the attention be kept on the people of Standing Rock.
“Sophia said please go out there and say it’s not about me, it’s about the indigenous peoples. Even though she’s lying there with her arm pretty much blown off, she’s focused on the fact that it’s not about her. It’s about what we’re doing to our country and what we’re doing to the native peoples and what we’re doing to our environment,” her father said.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has been fighting to stop the 1,170 mile Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) for seven months.
DAPL is planned to go under the Missouri River just a half-mile north of the Standing Rock reservation. The pipeline would cross culturally significant areas, and any spill would have a devastating impact on the reservation’s water. The reservation already faces significant issues, including rates of unemployment, poverty, overcrowded housing, premature deaths, and a suicide rate that are all much higher than the national average.
Thousands of supporters have come to the Sacred Stone camp at Standing Rock to act as “Water Protectors” in an attempt to help the Standing Rock Tribe stop the pipeline.
One protester who spoke at the vigil had just returned from Standing Rock and said that police were firing directly at protesters who were posing no threat to law enforcement or to property. He held up a blue sponge round and said, “This is what I get for trying to take a selfie near the police line.”
Activists at Standing Rock have described police firing these sponge rounds at protesters’ faces and heads.
Mr. Wilansky blamed the governor of North Dakota, Jack Dalrymple, law enforcement, and the National Guard for his daughter’s injury. He also asked for everyone to call their local and federal representatives to say the violence towards protesters at Standing Rock must end.
“Everyone has to just say no, we can’t be throwing grenades at people who are peacefully protesting, singing, and chanting and supporting our indigenous nations. This is not the way we behave. This is not Afghanistan and Iraq. We don’t throw grenades at people.”
Mr. Wilansky said that Obama needed to intervene to stop the police attacks on protesters.
“Even president Obama, who I love, said three weeks ago, ‘We’ll wait and see.’ What is there to wait and see? People will die if the situation isn’t stopped.”
Ms. Wilansky’s injury is far from the first injury caused by a “non-lethal” police grenade. Police officers have lost their hand or been killed by mishandling the grenades. Victims have also experienced “bone deep” burns, smoke inhalation, loss of fingers, and even death.
The activist media outlet Unicorn Riot has collected fragments of the different types of grenades that police are firing at Standing Rock protesters.
Paul Gottinger is a staff reporter at RSN whose work focuses on the Middle East and the arms industry. He can be reached on Twitter @paulgottinger or via email.
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