This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at MNSU chapter.

Here’s a recap:

For months now, Native American tribes have been fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline would transport oil from North Dakota and Montana to Illinois. The thousands of protestors feel that the pipeline would desecrate land and has a high probability of rupturing and poisoning their water supply. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe currently resides on the land that is supposed to be the sight of the pipeline.

The $3.7 Billion dollar project would carry 470,000 barrels of crude oil across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois every day. The US Army Corps of Engineers who approved the project disregard the fact that the pipeline would cross wetlands, rivers and streams, increasing the amount of water that would be tainted, were the pipeline to burst.

The Tribe issued a lawsuit stating “The construction and operation of the pipeline, as authorized by the Corps, threatens the Tribe’s environmental and economic wellbeing, and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance of the Tribe.”

Read the full complaint from the Standing Rock Tribe here. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/08/31/north.dakota.pdf

Here’s what’s happening now:

The Tribe and their allies faced a ruthlessly cold winter. They had a short-lived victory December 4, when the US Army Corps of Engineers made the announcement that they wouldn’t be completing the project without more environmental review, a review that could take up to two years.

After the inauguration of President Trump, an executive order was issued that “insisted” the Army Corps of Engineers reevaluate their decision. To quote the order, it was requested that the Crops “review and approve [the Dakota Access Pipeline] in an expedited manner”, followed by a request from Trump to withdraw the requirement of further environmental review. The action from President Trump has led to the lawyers for the Tribe declaring that ignoring the ruling from December 4 is legally questionable.

President Trump owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners (the company that would be constructing the pipeline) although claims to have sold said stock. The claims that he sold the stock can’t be substantiated considering the President has released no records to confirm his statement. Were it true that the President wrote the executive order on a project that would be monetarily beneficial for him, according to Sarah Krakoff (a professor of resource law at the University of Colorado-Boulder) in an article for The Atlantic: “It would cause all kinds of consternation about undue executive influence.”

The BBC states “The 1,172 mile (1,886km), four-state project is almost finished except for the one-mile stretch under Lake Oahe, where demonstrators have set up protest encampments.” They also spoke with law enforcement officials who estimated that nearly 700 arrests have been made since the protests began in 2016.

I’ll leave you with words from Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II (also quoted in the BBC article): “We will continue to fight against an administration that seeks to dismiss not only our treaty rights and status as sovereign nations, but the safe drinking water of millions of Americans.”

Articles cited:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/02/dakota-access-pipeline-st…

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/the-reversal-at-stan…

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38915797

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