Digital maps are a powerful way to educate the public about connections between oil and gas extraction, climate change, social justice, and Indigenous rights. We will Since its construction in 1977, the Trans Alaska Pipeline has transported almost 17 billion barrels of oil, and currently transports about 527,323 barrels a day. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota Oyate) and the Fort Belknap Indian Community (Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) Tribes) along with their counsel, the Native American Rights Fund, applaud the Biden administrations action to revoke the illegally issued KXL permit. It has also been determined that tar sands oil emits 17 percent more carbon than other forms of crude oil. The water delivery system for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is called the Mni Wiconi, which translates to Water is Life. On February 11, 2019, an 1,800-gallon spill was detected in Missouri on the main Keystone line, and last year more than 400,000 gallons were spilled from the main Keystone line in South Dakota near a tribal community. TC Energy has indicated it will be looking at a very ambitious 2020 construction season to make up for the lost time, as well. NRDC advocates were part of a broad coalition that helped stop Keystone XLfor good. The United States must answer to the Tribes for violations of the treaties and be instructed to honor them. As such, they are protected by treaties as well as tribal and federal laws. Even as Trump and TC Energy tried to revive the pipeline, polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed it. Although, TransCanada, now known as TC Energy, has said that it has lost the 2019 construction season for the KXL pipeline, the company has asked the courts to lift the current injunction so that they can immediately begin to build their man-camps and pipe-yards. Tar sands oil is thicker, more acidic, and more corrosive than lighter conventional crude, and this ups the likelihood that a pipeline carrying it will leak. The protests were primarily peaceful, with camps and prayer circles set up on the land where construction was to take place. ante wasteya nape iuzapelo (I take your hand in friendship). See our original complaint filed. NARF is honored to represent the Rosebud Sioux and Fort Belknap Tribes to fully enforce the laws and fight this illegal pipeline.. The first, a southern leg, had already been completed and now runs between Cushing, Oklahoma,. The "replacement" pipeline runs mostly on a completely new route through Minnesota, barreling through hundreds of lakes, rivers, aqueducts and wetlands. Since 2015, CAMP has worked with Indigenous and environmental organizations to build interactive maps that tell stories about climate justice across the Americas. Without Keystone XL, the tar sands industry has been forced to cancel projects rather than shift to rail, subsequently leaving more of the earths dirtiest fuel in the ground where it belongs. Some of the current concerns are rooted in our responsibility to take care of Unci Maka, which is grandmother earth. Police arrest approximately one thousand people. Since the approval, the Trump administration has been sued twice by environmental organizations and lost each time. On Thursday, April 16, NARF attorneys appeared before Judge Brian Morris of the United States District Court of Montana for oral arguments in Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Trump. Opponents of this projectnow called the Gulf Coast Pipelinesay that TC Energy took advantage of legal loopholes to push the pipeline through, obtaining authorization under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nationwide permit and dodging the more rigorous vetting process for individual permits, which requires public input. Our land, water, and people are under direct threat from the KXL pipeline. When that failedthanks to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and other groupsTrump reissued the cross-border permit himself. June-July: Increased opposition to Keystone XL includes legislators and scientists speaking out against the project; the Environmental Protection Agency questions the need for the pipeline extension. The most recent leak, large enough to partially fill a swimming pool, was not big enough to trigger the leak detection system. The following are quotes from the project partners: In addition, the possibility of damaging community water supplies, valuable agricultural lands, and wildlife habitats is not a cost our clients are willing to bear on behalf of a foreign extractive company propping up a dying energy industry. However, maps now reveal that the pipeline will cross tribal lands and water suppliesso the pipeline and the president MUST comply with tribal laws and treaties. Hearings on the motion to dismiss were held Thursday, September 12, 2019, in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, Great Falls Division. Listen to more voices from the community on the NARF YouTube channel. This pipeline was proposed in 2008 and has been referred to as either the Keystone XL pipeline or KXL. In the meantime, the court issued an injunction pursuant to the Clean Water Act in another case that prevents TransCanada from crossing any rivers. Only until November 18, 2019, you can comment on the KXL Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS). In January, TransCanada reported that it would begin Keystone XL pipeline construction in April despite ongoing questions about the projects permitting. The Keystone XL pipeline, briefly explained The Keystone XL pipeline became an almost perfect example of the various stakeholders Native communities, climate activists, scientists,. amended complaint in what will now be known as, an amended complaint against TransCanada and President Trump. We would score a victory, and it would have huge ramifications for holding off construction at critical times, says NRDC attorney Cecilia Segal, who has worked on KXL litigation since 2017. TransCanada ignores the threat that this influx of people creates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first, a southern leg, had already been completed and now runs between Cushing, Oklahoma, and Port Arthur, Texas. Indeed, one study found that between 2007 and 2010, pipelines moving tar sands oil in Midwestern states spilled three times more per mile than the U.S. national average for pipelines carrying conventional crude. People and wildlife coming into contact with tar sands oil are exposed to toxic chemicals, and rivers and wetland environments are at particular risk from a spill. The lands, water, and promises made in those treaties were paid for, literally, with the blood of our ancestors and relatives. However, for the Tribes, the KXL fight is just beginning. It connects Steele City, Nebraska, to Cushing, Oklahoma. Dealing in tar sands oil is an expensive endeavor. President Bordeaux had this to say about the KXL pipeline: There are a great many things that trouble us about this project. These sands contain bitumen, a gooey type of petroleum that can be converted into fuel. But the case against . This portion of the pipeline is called the Gulf Coast Pipeline. For companies considering whether to invest in a long-lived tar sands project (which could last for 50 years), access to cheap pipeline capacity plays a major role in the decision to move forward or not. A Peoples Orientation to a Regenerative Economy, Chief Theresa Spence and Attawapiskat First Nation file urgent action with UN committee, Indigenous Storytellers Ashley Fairbanks and Jennifer K. Falcon Launch New Podcast We Keep The Fire: Indigenous Climate Futures, Inyo County tribes, residents, and leaders welcome the news of an indefinite suspension of drilling activities at Conglomerate Mesa. It has been determined that the pervasive violence against indigenous women amounts to genocide. Any project that crosses tribal lands must be in compliance with tribal laws and regulations. Workers had to excavate sections of the affected pipeline to find and repair the leak. Like the US Constitution, treaties are the law of the land, and no one is above that law, said NARF Staff Attorney Matthew Campbell. In the face of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the Ft. Belknap Indian Community and Rosebud Sioux Tribe asked the court to grant a temporary restraining order on pipeline construction. President Bidens executive order was a landmark achievement and a sigh of relief for indigenous and environmental activists alike. In granting the right-of-way, the BLM failed to analyze and uphold the United States treaty obligations to protect the Tribes lands and natural resources. The government failed to even evaluate an alternate route to avoids tribal treaty lands. Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog post are the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the official position of UAB or the Institute for Human Rights. This map is a free and public tool designed to support impacted communities along the route about the risks of living in proximity to fossil fuel pipelines and development. A spill would have been devastating to the farms, ranches, and communities that depend on these crucial ecosystems. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe will take any and all necessary steps, up to and including litigation, to protect our people, our land and water, and our cultural and historic resources., As we have seen, spills from such projects can be catastrophic, said NARF Staff Attorney Matt Campbell. Like that of the United States, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe also has laws that require us to ensure that any company seeking to build a pipeline in our territory must obtain our consent. On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order revoking the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline permit issued by the Trump administration. Neither the president nor wealthy foreign corporations are above the laws of our country. Its nasty stuff., A fully realized Keystone XL would have led to more mining of that nasty stuff by accelerating the pace at which its produced and transported. It is the largest underground water source in the United States. After more than 10 years of tenacious protests, drawn-out legal battles, and flip-flopping executive orders spanning three presidential administrations, the Keystone XL pipeline is now gone for good. But the movement has had setbacks: a federal judge in Louisisana recently. When industry-friendly politicians took charge of both congressional houses in January 2015, their first order of business was to pass a bill to speed up approval of Keystone XL. U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the East Room of the White House on March 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Its mines are a blight on Canadas boreal, where mining operations dig up and flatten forests to access the oil below, destroying wildlife habitat and one of the worlds largest carbon sinks. Our health and safety should take priority over companies profits. TransCanada must comply with Rosebud law. Its route intercepted Native American land and posed a threat to their water supply. TransCanada failed to comply with Rosebud and Fort Belknap law. Originally founded as a whites-only city, or sundown town, since the 1980s it has become fairly diverse with one of the most diverse school systems in the United States. Its a threat to our climate, our drinking water, and our safety. And the risk that Keystone XL would have spilled was heightened because of the extended time the pipe segments were left sitting outside in stockpiles. The market case had also deteriorated. The court rightly found that today.. The goal was to transport 830,000 barrels of crude, tar sand oil to refineries on the American Gulf Coast each day. As an expansion of the companys existing Keystone Pipeline System, which has been operating since 2010 (and continues to send Canadian tar sands crude oil from Alberta to various processing hubs in the middle of the United States), the pipeline promised to dramatically increase capacity to process the 168 billion barrels of crude oil locked up under Canadas boreal forest. TransCanada's plan to dig a trench and bury part of its $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline right through this land has unearthed a host of Native American opposition, resentments and . It is a project that has moved forward without regard to legality or safety. See the related statement from Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Bordeaux. See our request for intervention. It was a political step, having nothing to do with what the law actually requires. September: Canadas National Energy Board approves the Canadian section. President Trump tried to go around the courts, the laws, and the will of the American people, in order to put a foreign-owned pipeline on tribal lands, said NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth. Farmers, ranchers, tribes, and conservation groups helped keep the project stalled for Trumps full four years in office, despite his best efforts to expedite its approval. When you sign up you'll become a member of NRDC's Activist Network. These lands are Indian lands. Tracey Osborne, Climate Alliance Mapping Project Keystone XL Pipeline Map The proposed Keystone XL extension actually comprised two segments. Between the threat of sexual violence and contraction of the coronoavirus, arrival of KXL construction workers in our homelands poses deadlier risks than ever before and must be stopped. A similar crude oil project, the Dakota Access Pipeline has received media attention in previous years due to the police and state reactions to the protests over its creation. In return, they asked that the United States protect their lands from trespass and their resources from destruction. State Disclosures. The takedown of the notorious Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline will go down as one of this generations most monumental environmental victories. View detailed information and reviews for 5855 Green Valley Cir in Culver City, CA and get driving directions with road conditions and live traffic updates along the way. The Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline is the proposed Phase 4 of the Keystone Pipeline system, which already is online with a capacity to carry more than 500,000 barrels per day. In that case, brought by a coalition of environmental organizations, the District Court had decided that the federal government did not follow the law when it issued its 2017 permit for the pipeline. Therefore, on Monday March 2, 2020, the Fort Belknap Indian Community and Rosebud Sioux Tribe filed a motion for preliminary injunction and asked the court to not allow TransCanada to begin construction of the pipeline while the case is under review. This is not a pipeline to America, said the late civil rights activist Julian Bond, among the many arrested. Even its maps do not give enough detail to show impacts on Indian lands. The Native American Rights Fund is prepared to fight to ensure those treaties are honored and the water is protected.. All construction was stopped. The Keystone XL pipeline would cross the United States border into Montana, then cut through the Great Sioux Reservation, as set forth in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, in South Dakota and finally Nebraska to Steele City where the crude would mix with US crude reserves and continue to Texas for export. This pipeline transports 470,000 barrels of crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois, over 1,172 miles. In 2014, more than two million comments urging a rejection of the pipeline were submitted to the U.S. Department of State during a 30-day public comment period. Court Pulls Key Permit for Massive (and Dirty) Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Hey, Army Corps of EngineersShow Us Your Work in Your DAPL Report, Week 88: Trumps Runaway Train of Deregulation. The pipeline would consist of 875 miles of 36-inch pipe with the capacity to transport 830,000 barrels per day" (Parfomak, Pirog, Luther and Vann 4). Together with the Fort Belknap Indian Community, we brought a lawsuit to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline through our territories. We will not dishonor our relatives and unnecessarily endanger our health, safety, and wellbeing. When the Tribes negotiated their treaties, they gave millions of acres of land to the United Statesincluding, ironically, the land on which the courthouse now stands. You'll receive your first NRDC action alert and But immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump brought the zombie project back to life, along with the legal battles against it. We must ensure our people are safe, and that the economic security, health, welfare, and general well-being of Rosebud and our members are protected. See the open letter from President Kindle for more information on the Rosebud Sioux Tribes position. We are joined in a fight against an invisible enemy that we now know is highly contagious before its hosts even show symptoms, said President Bordeaux of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Based on these extraordinary circumstances, we ask that TransCanada halt any construction during this pandemic.. NARF stands with our clients, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community, in their staunch opposition to the completion of the Keystone XL arm of the pipeline system. In exchange for measures like safe passage of emigrants and peaceful construction of the railroads, the US government and tribal nations signed treaties to prevent intrusion on or destruction of tribal nations lands and natural resources. Indeed, moving crude by rail to the Gulf costs substantially more than moving it by pipe. January: ConocoPhillips acquires a 50% stake in the project. September: TransCanada and ConocoPhillips file an application for the Keystone XL Phase 4 extension. Obviously, that is not the case. June: Phase 1 of the Keystone Pipeline goes online. The cost is too high. Additionally, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe operates its own water delivery system, which is part of the Mni Wiconi Rural Water Supply Project. NARF has two important updates regarding our defense of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community against the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada agreed to abide by tribal law. Indigenous leaders are encouraging him to go even further and cancel more controversial fossil fuel projects, such as the Dakota Access pipeline. The federal government violated the 1851 Treaty of Ft Laramie and 1855 Lame Bull Treaty, in which the US committed to protect against future harm to the tribes natural resources. The Tribes asked the court to rescind the illegal issuance of the Keystone XL pipeline presidential permit. The obligation of the United States to uphold those treaties is paramount, and Keystone XLs current path cannot be approved without the Siangu Lakotas consent. On November 17, 2020, the Tribes filed a federal lawsuit against the United States Department of Interior and the BLM over their January 2020 issuing of the KXL permit. Paramount Network just released a new mini-documentary entitled Take Action: Protect Our Land. The documentary explores the potential impact of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline on our client, the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana. Once resubmitted, the U.S. State Department did not bother to seek any new information or public comment, but instead quickly granted TC Energy a permit. To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. If and when TransCanada provides sufficient maps of the pipelines route, we expect that we will see even more affected tribal lands. This is one of the reasons for the lawsuit. We are thrilled that the project has been canceled.. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota Oyate) and the Fort Belknap Indian Community (Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) Tribes) in coordination with their counsel, the Native American Rights Fund, on September 10, 2018, sued the Trump Administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, Great Falls Division, for numerous violations of the law in the Keystone XL pipeline permitting process. In a last-ditch attempt to revive the Keystone XL pipeline, 21 states led by attorneys . This is one of the reasons for the lawsuit. As the elected President of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, I write regarding a critical issue affecting not only our Tribe, but all of the United States. Nevertheless, in the mid-2000s, with gas prices on the rise, oil companies ramped up production and sought additional ways to move their product from Canadas remote tar sands fields to midwestern and Gulf Coast refineries. February : The Keystone-Cushing Phase 2 of the pipeline goes online. The projects corporate backerthe Canadian energy infrastructure company TC Energyofficially abandoned the project in June 2021 following President Joe Bidens denial of a key permit on his first day in office. Thanks for signing up. The spill, more than 400,000 gallons of unprocessed crude, is the seventh largest on-shore spill since 2002. November: TransCanada says the costs of Keystone XL have grown to US$8 billion from US$5.4 billion. In his recent proclamation, Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives Awareness Day, 2019, President Trump declared it imperative to end the violence that disproportionately affects American Indian and Alaska Native communities. (AP) The Trump administration on Wednesday approved a right-of-way allowing the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline to be built across U.S. land, pushing the controversial $8 . On Wednesday, June 9, 2021, TransCanada (TC Energy) announced that it is terminating its Keystone XL pipeline project. The Native American Rights Fund represents the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Fort Belknap Indian Community in this case. The court asked for supplemental briefing on whether the President had the constitutional authority to issue the permit in the first place, which the Tribes are working on now. The permitting process was completed only 56 days after TransCanada submitted its application for the third time. Pipeline under construction in Alberta, Canada. The founder of Bold Nebraska has led the Cornhusker States years-long rallying cry against TransCanadas tar sands pipeline.
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