EXCERPT:
WASHINGTON -- Debra White Plume, activist and grandmother, of Owe Aku, Bring Back the Way, was arrested at the White House protesting the tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline headed for Indian country between Canada and Texas, including the massive Ogallala aquifer.
White Plume, Lakota grassroots leader, with Owe Aku, an Oglala Lakota organization in South Dakota working on revitalization of Lakota culture and on 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty rights.
“This is an issue of the full recognition of our right to say no, as sovereign independent indigenous nations. The colonial US government doesn’t have our best interest in mind, nor the rights of Mother Earth. Our Lakota people oppose this pipeline because of the potential contamination of the surface water and of the Oglala aquifer. We have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that would be destroyed across our treaty lands," White Plume said.
“The traditional government of the Great Sioux Nation, as well as the elected leadership have all taken official action to oppose the tar sands oil and the pipeline and have communicated this to the U.S. government. The Native people of the land have not been consulted and we have not given our consent for this pipeline. The right to free prior and informed consent as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well as the rights affirmed in treaties with the US government and Native Nations are continually being violated. It’s my responsibility as a mother and grandmother to stand with Mother Earth against male dominated corporate greed. Where will President Obama stand?”The highly corrosive oil is an environmental disaster in the making. Protesters were arrested for two week, totaling 1,252 people arrested, to send a message to President Obama to halt the tar sands pipeline.
The tar sands mining is already destroying First Nation homelands in Alberta, Canada.
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