By Jack Dugan
The Bismarck Tribune reported the other day that those who deliver supplies to the now-massive Standing Rock camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, could face fines up to $1,000. The Bismarck Tribune goes to say that “Gov. Jack Dalrymple sought Wednesday to clarify the mandatory evacuation order he issued earlier this week by saying he doesn’t aim to block supplies such as food and clothing from being provided to protesters camping in southern Morton County.”
According to the Bismarck Tribune, “The Monday evacuation order said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land on which a large majority of the protesters are camping isn’t safe for winter dwelling. He said the Corps land is in an area where the river has a history of ice jams in the winter and flooding in the spring.”
Though there have yet to be any reports of these fines being issued to those who continue to run supplies to the camp, I remain skeptical of the North Dakota governor’s claims that the mandatory evacuation order was made with the best interest of the camp in mind.
There has been a long history of deception perpetrated by U.S. government officials, who work to manipulate and often violently oppress Native People for economic gain.
The population of the camp is around 5,000 people. This would make a forceful removal of the protesters more than difficult. Thus, if the Army Corps, the economic powers behind the Dakota Access pipeline, or the government of North Dakota would like to remove the camp, they would have to implement strategies that would force them to leave willingly. But at present, halting construction of the controversial pipeline seems out of the question.
The last time the Sioux people were starved into submission was the 1876 Indian Appropriations Act. This piece of apartheid legislation had a rider that the Sioux described as the “Sell or Starve” rider, which “cut off all rations for the Sioux until they terminated hostilities and ceded the Black Hills to the United States.”
The 1876 U.S. government valued the gold in the Black Hills more than the people who had legal, spiritual, and historical rights to the land.
More than a century later, a 1980 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision granted the tribe an insane amount of money (more than $300 million when adjusted for inflation) as compensation for the illegally seized land. The Sioux Nation refused this money to uphold the notion that their land was never sold to the U.S. and that all land ceded to the U.S. is rightfully theirs.
It was illegal and despicable then and would be even more so now.
The 2016 U.S. government, North Dakota state government, Morton County police, and U.S. Army Corps value the shale oil found in the Bakken oil fields more than the lives of those who have legal, spiritual, and historical rights to the land this pipeline is running through.
The state-sponsored terror may have been effective in 1876 but would inevitably fail now. The tribe has already turned down millions of federal dollars, and I doubt those involved in running supplies will be swayed by fines.