My friend of over forty years, Jeff D., has educated me on the Dakota Access Pipeline.  When he first began talking with me about the problem…I did not know that there was a problem.

‘First, the pipeline would cross right under the Missouri River at Lake Oahu, half a mile north of the reservation.  A leak or spill could send oil directly into the tribe’s main source of drinking water.  The tribe points out that Dakota Access originally considered a route farther north, upstream of Bismarck, but the company rejected that route, in part because of the close proximity to the state capital’s drinking water wells.  Second, the tribe argues that the pipeline would run through a stretch north of the reservation that contains recently discovered sacred sites and burial places.  True, the land isn’t part of the current reservation.  But the Standing Rock Sioux argue that the land had been taken away from them unjustly over the past 150 years.  And any bulldozing and construction work could damage these sites,’ according to VOX.

Former President Obama halted the pipeline construction for further study and possible re-routing, at the close of his administration.

President Tump, in one of his first Executive Actions, restarted the pipe line.

When asked by a reporter, a few days later, he said that he had not heard one complaint regarding the Dakota Access Pipe Line.  I was told today, by a SIU student who was protesting DAPL that the phones  that people are to call at the White House, complaining about this violation, had been shut off.  Although the President’s exclamation of no complaints and everything is going smoothly strains credulity…as he is an admitted voracious consumer of television news.

It seems curious to me that with all of the ‘Make America Great Again’ talk, of our new President, and his vision of removing those who are illegally here…and with the new Travel Ban that will be released later this week…that will protect our pristine shores from all those who do not have the right to be in America…how do we not consider the rights of the ‘Original Americans?’  Our Native American brothers and sisters were here before President Trump’s family.

I would not want to have my drinking water in danger?  Would you?

I would not want my precious Mother and Father’s graves violated?  Would you?

My friend traveled to North Dakota and stood in Solidarity with our brothers and sisters.  My friend has significant Native American Heritage…so do I.

The camps of the protestors, who by and large were there to pray, are burned to the ground…