I still can't believe they're siccing dogs on protesters. In 2016.

If they're already building across the land, don't they have permits from all the relevant authorities, including the tribe? Presumably the environmental impact was hashed out in that process - legally if not persuasively.

That said, DOGS?

@2:

It's my understanding the pipeline route doesn't directly cross the reservation boundary and only runs adjacent to it, but does cross what the tribe has designated sacred sites such as burial grounds, which was part of what was apparently bulldozed over the weekend.

Shouldn't they have protested when it was first proposed?. Not when it's already under construction? They could've brought up the "Ancestral Land" issue years ago. But there's no proof that they did.

The fact is, pipe is being laid. Oil will flow soon. What they are doing, while with great intention, is too little, too late.

@3 & 4

It's more complicated than that, basically.

It's non-tribal, private land but NAGPRA and Section 106 (both federally mandated laws) have skin in this game. But therein is where it gets sticky:

1. The paperwork is probably fucking terrible. The Army Corps of Engineers and the state should both have survey documents about what was observed there, including if there are burials there or not. And it really depends how much money and effort went into that survey. Did the evaluating archaeologists do anything more than walk in a circle and shrug on paper or did something more involved happen? When did it happen? Was it in the context of this situation or did it happen 30 years ago when no one seemed to care including the tribe because it didn't feel it needed to express that sentiment /or/ they were overwhelmed with other issues? Was the PI literally or figuratively drunk when they wrote it? Did the paperwork get lost? These are horrifyingly frequent problems in state/fed archaeological matters.

2. NAGPRA. It seems generally not in dispute that the cemetery belongs to the Standing Rock tribe but few of the things I've read establish that for certain. It's also not clear how long that cemetery hasn't been in use. What seems clear is that no one really knows who is buried there and what their tribal affiliation is, which under NAGPRA is the sort of thing that sets off a multi-year legal fight ala Kennewick Man. There is no competing tribe but the private land owner and the ACE can both call into question who the most likely descendants are that affiliated with the cemetery. The tribe does not want those burials disturbed which means that genetic testing is probably not on offer. An easy way to throw this into a deadlocked, horse latitudes court staredown is question genetic affiliation on these graves. It's a cheap tactic but its been done before.

3. Even if NAGPRA isn't a nightmare... The only power the tribe has at this point is to have a say in where the burials are moved, if they are moved at all. They could be exhumed and committed into tribal custody, at which point the tribe itself conducts its own private re-burials. Or the tribe, if it has the money to do so, can pay archaeologists to move them but having moved burials many times, that costs a lot money and takes time. The tribe has the time but not the money and the private land owner is generally fucking furious that we're holding up construction in these cases so they've got the money and not fucking time for this. So this gets kicked up to court in the worst case scenario and things malinger there for a couple years.

3. The oil company/land owners could negotiate some kind of feel good optics about all this. The tribe would lose the burial site regardless but they could attempt some kind of educational or cultural incentive for doing so, either in terms of funding tribal development projects or establishing a Standing Rock cultural center regarding the site. This is a can of thorny anguished worms and rarely goes well but its been done.

I'm a native person though I am not Souian and a trained archaeologist, I mention this only in the context that I understand the anguish these people are going through. My own tribe has thrown their support behind Standing Rock. The pragmatic scientist in me though understands that the pipeline though is fully unavoidable, both based on how historically these fights go and the laws involved. It was, likely, always managing this loss and not avoiding it, which is not an attitude that many tribal governments respond well to for what are probably obvious and understandable reasons. And so...here we are.

#4 if you ever want to get stoned and wander around shirtless in Montana or wherever let me know.

I'm taking a boat to Florida and buying a car there, I think.

Uisce beatha.

I'm proud -for- Sydney, but I'd listen to #4 on these things.

It's actually "a" historic moment, Sydney. Unless AP style has changed recently.

@5 the recent court case SIERRA CLUB, Appellant v. UNITED STATES ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, et al., Appellees. No. 14–5205. Decided: September 29, 2015 disagrees with you and these protestors
It found that the federal government was not required to conduct NEPA analysis of the entirety of the pipeline, including portions not subject to federal control or permitting. Without a federal handle 106 isn't required.

@6 you'd listen to slog's #1 bigot, who is just making shit up? Noted.

Re: @9

Ok, there goes my theory that comments here disappear for a while then come back because an actual human is contemplating whether they adhere to certain guidelines. Unless, now spam falls within the "acceptable" zone?

Ok now they've removed it, someone else's comment is now called @9, and so my @10 makes no sense. This is like how weather reporters point to a screen that, to us looks like a coherent bunch of images and places and numbers, but to them is just a big blank canvas that they've just gotten good at intuiting where stuff is.

@11:

TV meteorologists also watch a live monitor just off-camera that shows them the same image the viewer sees, so they're not really "intuiting" in that sense.

@12

Dis you see my syntax there? I was clearly having a brain fart all over the place. How bout this: now I feel like a meteorologist whose monitor's on the fritz.

Background:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/30/s…

@11 @12

Guys, this is case where Hanlon's Razor can maybe help you sleep a little better.

The Stranger, for reasons never adequately explained, decided to build their own Content Management System from scratch. It was a horrifying mess on launch, and will continue to be horrible until they finally decide to scrap the whole thing and replace it with real software.

The "vanishing" comments are initially visible because they're rendered into the page by your browser when you hit "Post Comment," and then sent along to the server. When you reload the page, the server doesn't return your new comment for a while because the amateurs they hired to write their back end have no idea how to implement caching correctly.

We can easily see that comments aren't being human-screened up front simply by noting all of the obvious spam that still gets posted (and then later deleted).

@5 thanks a ton for the detailed background!

@15 that seems unpleasantly plausible as far it goes, but I'm still trying to picture how we end up with renumbering problems on subsequent posts. Appears to take an extra screwup. ... Now I'm curious who handled the CMS project.

@5 and @8, thank you for details. As somebody who understands some of the legal framework and nuances, it's very helpful to have this context.

What Happened in North Dakota is important, and far from unprecedented.

I want to thank Sydney Brownstone for her coverage of the very significant events taking place in North Dakota around the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline and protests by more than 90 tribes. However, I do take issue with this statement:

“It's an historic moment, and with the support of more than 90 tribes, it's the largest gathering of its kind in more than a century.” (“We’re at Standing Rock, Watching the Historic Standoff Between Native American Tribes and Pipeline Builders,” Sept. 6, 2016)

This is an historic moment, no doubt, but to say a protest of this magnitude hasn’t taken place for more than one hundred years omits a critical chapter in our history, one that took place in Seattle, and which shaped and continues to shape conceptualizations of rights and protest strategies.

On the morning of March 8, 1970 a convoy departed from south Seattle, red cloth banners bearing American Indian pride messages streaming from the sides of the vehicles. When the cars arrived at the periphery of the Fort, American Indians of all tribes and generations began to climb over the fences on the north and south ends, draping blankets on concertina wire, and setting up teepees and a drum circle.

Reserve Military Police (MP) doing weekend drilling came upon the Native encampment on accident, taking both groups by surprise. The occupiers had assumed the Fort was abandoned since it had been decommissioned in 1968, but this was not the case. After calling for backup from Fort Lewis, the central base in Tacoma, as well as the Seattle Police Department (SPD), the MPs began arresting the protesters for trespassing, marching (or carrying them, if necessary) through a blackberry patch toward trucks which would take them to the Fort’s stockade.

Though the occupation had been intended by its leaders to remain nonviolent, scuffles broke out. The protests continued outside the gates of Fort Lawton, and a temporary camp nicknamed “Resurrection City” was set up to support the protests with tents, food, and water. The number of protesters reported ranged from fifty to more than one hundred.

In spite of the military’s efforts to quash the protests, participants outside the gates maintained their camp for three weeks, holding press conferences and garnering support from American Indians of many tribes, and many others.

The leader of these protests was Bernie Whitebear, the architect of the occupations and member of the Lakes tribe who had moved to Seattle as a young man. Bernie’s stated goal was to claim the land of Fort Lawton for the creation of a multipurpose education center focused on American Indian communities.

In addition to his role in the Fort Lawton occupations, Bernie forged deep connections with Bob Santos, Roberto Maestas, and Larry Gossett to form the “Gang of Four,” a coalition of leaders focused on advocating for social justice on behalf of their communities.

The DAPL protests are not an exception, but rather an important evolution of American Indian civil rights history, one that can trace its lineage to Seattle and the unity of tribes around a different, yet formative urban land rights struggle.

Information adapted from these links:
http://www.unitedindians.org/history/
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/FtLaw…