Oil Has More Rights Than People

DAPL protesters still being ignored

This land was made for you and me, but not really. President Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t care about the environment and has hired someone who hates the environment even more to be in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. This ignorance towards the environment is a part of the reason why the Dakota Access Pipeline is still a work in progress.

I’m Talking, But No Words Are Coming Out

Imagine coming from a background where your people were oppressed and pushed off the land they lived on for generations, then many years later similar people want to invade your sacred land in order to save themselves some money. There are other ways to transport oil that don’t require a pipeline running within some important water sources. Transporting by rail or by road instead has proven to have way less spills, but is estimated to be way more expensive. Obviously, the money being wasted on transportation is worth more than the lives that could be saved by avoiding a pipeline. Under the Obama administration, it seemed as though the Army Corps of Engineers understood for a bit that the pipeline would threaten the drinking water in this area and the overall environment, but as soon as Donald Trump became president this understanding was disregarded. Why do we even have laws like the Clean Water Act and the National Historic Preservation Act if they’re just going to be ignored? When the DAPL controversy was being considered in court, we felt heard and understood in the way that our people should feel in a democracy. However, when Trump ordered that the pipeline should continue being built by LLC we felt as though we weren’t important, like state and tribe sovereignty don’t actually mean anything. Our voice is being taken away with the stubborn president we now have.

Arundhati Roy mentioned in an interview discussing poverty in India that “what has happened is a kind of regression and another kind of colonialism.” This isn’t only happening in India, we live in a country where we believe we are always progressing and making life better for the people who live here. However, our president is taking us back in time really quickly. Is our government really taking over Native American land again? I brought up the connection to India because it is known for being a place of poverty, yet the United States shares similar issues while holding a completely different reputation. Roy explains how there is a democracy in India, but it is mostly in favor of the elite. The same thing is happening in the United States! We have places in the United States where people are being treated unfairly, their importance as human beings is put second to the profit that large companies can make from using the land these people live on. In the United States, we have many people who are ignorant of the fact that oil companies are hurting the environment, which means they are hurting our people.

The Government Is Supposed To Be On OUR Side

The land where the DAPL is being built on is considered sacred land, runs through three major rivers, protected wildlife habitats, and farmlands. The fact that the government would more readily side with an oil company while knowing that these resources are at stake in the event of an oil spill, is proof that our government does not really care about “we the people”. I feel that all of the negative possibilities that can occur after the pipeline is complete can not compare to the amount of money this company will be saving by transporting fuel in this way. Vandana Shiva said that corporations are trying to dispossess people and nature of their rights and I agree. With all the power that corporations have provided with themselves, they can get away with anything. There are people who will criticize their actions, but the amount of authority corporations have will allow them to bypass these criticisms until the Earth is completely destroyed. Shiva says that corporations only have a loyalty to their profits and don’t actually care about the people anymore. When the pipeline is complete and an oil spill happens, all we’re going to get is an explanation on how accidents sometimes happen with this kind of technology and this was a risk we knew could happen. We have protesters trying to prevent this type of accident from occurring, but the company is not going to apologize to them and let them know that they were right. They have too much power to recognize that the people who were against them in the first place were right.

This Is The LLC Aiming Their Weapon Towards The People

“How can leaders be goaded to avert catastrophe when the political rewards of their actions will be reaped on someone else’s watch, decades, even centuries from now?” Rob Nixon has explained that any type of development that can potentially harm the environment is an act of violence. He describes it as a slow violence because the repercussions never occur right away, but they always occur. The people who are in charge of building the pipeline right now may not necessarily be the same people in charge years from now when an accident occurs, so they feel as though they can get away with it. Similarly, the people who will be in charge of the company will have the ability to say that they weren’t the ones who decided to build the pipeline in the first place. This is a crime scene where the murderers acted on purpose, while knowing what the exact outcome would be and also that they wouldn’t get in trouble. Slow violence requires attention to be paid for a longer period of time, but it is a necessary attention.

I hope that people remember the protesters years from now when a spill happens. I hope they remember those that have performed this slow act of violence against our people of the United States of America.