11.11.2016 

Thank you for your recent articles about the protest at Standing Rock, N.D. My daughter and I were there recently and attended camp meetings and witnessed the confrontation with police. We also visited the Sitting Bull memorial in nearby Fort Yates. I was struck by the quote from Sitting Bull that we saw there. It begins: “What treaty have the Lakota made with the white man that we have broken?
Not one. What treaty have the white man made with us that they have ever kept? Not one.”

The stories I have seen about the camp that was destroyed by law enforcement say that the land where the camp was situated was owned by the energy company building the pipeline. What the Lakota elders in the camp said was that it was disputed land, given to the Lakota by treaty. The protest at Standing Rock is not just about the Dakota Access Pipeline. Many environmental activists have joined the tribes because they all want to protect the Earth from the ravages of oil and gas extraction. We should support them while there is still time.

 

Susan Permut, Monument