Native American communities along proposed route vow resistance against 'black snake' pipeline

Published on Wednesday, February 5, 2014 by Common Dreams

Indigenous Groups: 'No Keystone XL Pipeline Will Cross Our Lands'

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

(Image: Honor the Earth)Native American communities are promising fierce resistance to stop TransCanada from building, and President Barack Obama from permitting, the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.
"No Keystone XL pipeline will cross Lakota lands," declares a joint statement from Honor the Earth, the Oglala Sioux Nation, Owe Aku, and Protect the Sacred. "We stand with the Lakota Nation, we stand on the side of protecting sacred water, we stand for Indigenous land-based lifeways which will NOT be corrupted by a hazardous, toxic pipeline."
Members of seven Lakota nation tribes, as well as indigenous communities in Idaho, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska and Oregon, are preparing to take action to stop Keystone XL.
“It will band all Lakota to live together and you can’t cross a living area if it’s occupied,” said Greg Grey Cloud, of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, in an interview with Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. “If it does get approved we aim to stop it.”
The indigenous-led 'Moccasins on the Ground' program has been laying the groundwork for this resistance for over two years by giving nonviolent direct action trainings to front-line communities.
"We go up to wherever we've been invited, usually along pipeline routes," said Kent Lebsock, director of the Owe Aku International Justice Project, in an interview with Common Dreams. "We have three-day trainings on nonviolent direct action. This includes blockade tactics, and discipline is a big part of the training as well. We did nine of them last summer and fall, all the way from Montana to South Dakota, as well as teach-ins in Colorado and a training camp in Oklahoma."
"We are working with nations from Canada and British Columbia, as well as with the people where tar sands are located," Lebsock added.
"As an example of this nonviolent direct action," explains Lebsock, in March 2012 people at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota held a blockade to stop trucks from transporting parts of the Keystone XL pipeline through the reservation.
In August 2013, members of the Nez Perce tribe blockaded megaloads traveling Idaho's Highway 12 to the Alberta tar sands fields.
Descendants of the Ponca Tribe and non-native allies held a Trail of Tears Spiritual Camp in Nebraska in November to prevent the construction of the pipeline.
More spiritual camps along the proposed route of the pipeline are promised, although their date and location are not yet being publicly shared.
The promises of joint action follow the U.S. State Department’s public release on Friday of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). This report has been widely criticized as tainted by the close ties between Transcanada and the Environmental Resource Management contractor hired to do the report.
While the oil industry is largely spinning the report as a green-light for the pipeline, green groups emphasize that it contains stern warnings over the massive carbon pollution that would result if the pipeline is built, including the admission that tar sands oil produces approximately 17 percent more carbon than traditional crude.
The release of the FEIS kicked off a 90-day inter-agency review and 30-day public comment period. The pipeline's opponents say now is a critical time to prevent Obama from approving the pipeline, which is proposed to stretch 1,179 miles from Alberta, Canada, across the border to Montana, and down to Cushing, Oklahoma where it would link with other pipelines, as part of a plan to drastically increase Canada's tar sands production.
The southern half of the Keystone XL pipeline — which begins in Cushing, passes through communities in Oklahoma and East Texas, and arrives at coastal refineries and shipping ports — began operations last month after facing fierce opposition and protest from people in its path.
"Let's honor the trail blazers from the Keystone XL south fight," said Idle No More campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller. "Time for some action, and yes, some of us may get arrested!”

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Unlike prison workers, federal inmates still getting paid during government shutdown

Posted Friday, October 11th 2013 @ 10am  by Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo News

About 100 prison workers at South Dakota’s federal prison camp in Yankton are still showing up to work during the government shutdown, even though their pay is being denied. But in a "Say, what?!" outrage, the inmates they are supervising are still being compensated for the jobs they do onsite.

"There's a different funding for them," American Federation of Government Employees Local 4040 Union President Michele Kunkel told a local CBS affiliate.
Kunkel says the 36,000 prison workers employed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons are operating on an IOU system and will most likely get paid whenever the federal government shutdown ends. But the longer the shutdown carries on, the harder it becomes for prison employees to make ends meet.
Kunkel herself knows the sting particularly well, as both she and her husband are employed at the Yankton prison camp.
“We can't go to the grocery store and buy groceries and give them, 'Oh, here's our government IOU,'" Kunkel said.
The prisoners are paid for their work from a separate fund. And since they make considerably smaller wages than a worker outside the prison walls, the Department of Justice says they have enough cash to cover the lapse of funding while parts of the federal government remain closed. The Federal Prison Industries (FPI) program receives about $2.7 million in government funding each year .

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