School at Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock | Photo: Oceti Sakowin Camp/Barbara J. Miner, some rights reserved Commentary: Finally, some good news out of 2016. That exclamation on Facebook seemed to sum up the public response Sunday to the Army Corps of Engineers' announcement that it wouldn't allow an easement for an oil pipeline across lands held sacred by the Standing Rock Sioux people.
And indeed, the announcement was cause for jubilation among pipeline opponents, whether at the various encampments or in communities around the world.
But the issue isn't over.
That's not intended to downplay the significance of Sunday's announcement: the Water Protectors at Standing Rock have every right to celebrate this as a victory, and as vindication for their cause. But as the late environmentalist David Brower was fond of saying, in environmental activism all victories are temporary; only the defeats are permanent.
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That means that for pipeline opponents' win this weekend to be maintained, they'll need to stay vigilant. And in that spirit, here are a few things for supporters of the movement at Standing Rock to keep in mind in the months ahead.
Credit where due
Less than an hour after the news of the Corps' announcement hit social media, names of prominent non-Native figures started being mentioned as deserving credit for the win. Some partisans of Senator Bernie Sanders, who lent conspicuous public support to the Standing Rock cause, started claiming credit for the Senator. The same is true for other Democratic politicians, from Al Franken and Tulsi Gabbard to President Barack Obama.
That last deflection of credit is a little troublesome. Some analysts have correctly pointed out that earlier action by Obama, whether to stop the pipeline or help protect activists from police violence, would likely have come in the form of an Executive Order or other mandate that could have been retracted with the stroke of a pen by the next president. The slower route, of using the Army Corps of Engineers' molasses-like compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, will almost certainly prove harder to reverse than an Executive Order.
But the President could certainly have done more to rein in police excesses, even by using his bully pulpit to call for cooler thinking on the part of law enforcement.
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As Native activist Lee Sprague, who has been organizing cold water rescue efforts at Standing Rock, said in a public Facebook post on Monday,
President Obama gets no credit for coddling the DAPL Oil Police. When our peoples and allies were attacked by dogs, Obama was silent. Obama has said we are to be evicted today. Why doesnt Obama evict the Oil Company instead? This is the right question to be asked.
But it's just as problematic to grant credit to Sanders, Gabbard, or Franken - a sentiment with which I suspect those three would agree. The Corps' decision was prompted by an inspiring, sustained, often heroic campaign sparked by the Standing Rock Sioux. It is the Standing Rock Sioux that deserve credit for this win, along with the thousands of Native allies who converged on the scene to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux. Of secondary but still crucial importance were the hundreds of thousands of non-Native people who stood with Standing Rock, whether by traveling to the encampments, coordinating logistical support, or donating funds and needed items.
The credit, in other words, goes to a startlingly broad mass movement led by the Standing Rock Sioux and their Native allies. We non-Native people may be in the habit of taking a whole lot of things that rightly belong to Native people. A good way to start to reverse that trend might be to not coopt credit for the win at Standing Rock.
The pipeline isn't killed
It's easy to find comments on social media along the lines of the Black Snake is killed! (The Black Snake being a figure in Sioux prophecy that many Water Protectors interpret as representing the pipeline.) But what people say in a moment of understandable exuberance isn't always the most accurate assessment. Again, from Lee Sprague's Facebook post:
The DAPL Oil Police are bringing in more troops and convoys of militaries vehicles. They are not stopping construction of the pipeline, they are not disassembling any drilling operations under the Missouri River, or Lake Oahe. There are more lights, more helicopters, dust croppers, and black militarized drones flying overhead.
The owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline project, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL), admitted in a press release Sunday that they have no intention of complying with the Corps' decision not to grant them an easement:
As stated all along, ETP and SXL are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way.
The companies claim that the Obama administration has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency. The phrase abandoned the rule of law, aside from being a bit of a clich among far-right circles to describe situations in which the government enforces laws the speaker doesnt like, may well signal the pipeline companies' intention to drag the Corps into court.
Tents along the Cannonball River, Standing Rock | Photo: Oceti Sakowin Camp/Ahman Dhaliwal
