Dakota Access Pipeline

[Mystic Wanderer]

On Friday, November 25, the Obama Administration issued an eviction notice to the Oceti Sakowin encampments at Standing Rock.

The eviction notice came in a letter from the US Army Corps of Engineers to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, informing the tribe that on Dec. 5th, it will “close” all lands north of the Cannonball River, where the Oceti Sakowin encampment is located. It is no coincidence that the Army Corps of Engineers has chosen Dec 5th, General George Armstrong Custer's birthday, as the date it plans to evict people from the Oceti Sakowin Camp. Custer broke the treaty to dig for gold, the Army Corps is breaking the treaty over oil.

Here is what the eviction notice stated:

The Corps says its decision to clear the area is necessary to protect people from violent confrontations with law enforcement and to uphold the Corps’s land leases to private individuals for grazing and haying uses.  It has designated a ‘free speech zone’ south of the Cannonball River, and anyone outside that area will be considered trespassing and subject to forcible removal and prosecution. Anyone that chooses to remain at the encampment “does so at their own risk, and assumes any and all corresponding liabilities for their unlawful presence.” 

And here is the protesters response:

The Army Corps has no authority to evict us from these lands.  The Oceti Sakowin encampment is located on the ancestral homeland of the Lakota, Mandan, Arikara, and Northern Cheyenne - on territory never ceded to the U.S. government, and affirmed in the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie as sovereign land belonging to the Great Sioux Nation.  The encampment is, in many respects, a reclamation of this stolen territory and the right to self-determination guaranteed in the treaties.  Our water protectors are not trespassers and can never be trespassers.  The Army Corps also has no authority to diminish our right to free speech - where in the Constitution does it establish zones for the right to free speech? Do corporations now decide whether the Constitution applies? We are not moving, and we will not be silenced. 

GOOD FOR THEM!  

I hope this doesn't turn ugly, but it appears neither side is backing down, so I'm afraid it will.  

Read the full story here: Source