Moccasins on the Ground: It’s About Survival.

from Peaceful Uprising

The Lakota people have vowed to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move tar sands through their homeland and water sources. All along the Keystone XL route, from Alberta, Canada, to Houston, Texas, communities have been rising up against it. Tar sands spills — like what happened in Mayflower, Arkansas — are impossible to clean up and do irreparably damage to water and farmland. That’s why the Lakota people have been holding nonviolent direct action training camps to prepare to stop the pipeline from going through the territory that is their home.

The Militarization of Fossil Fuels in Canada

by Winona LaDuke / Common Dreams

This past week in New Brunswick, the Canadian military came out to protect oil companies. In this case, seismic testing for potential natural gas reserves by Southwestern Energy Company (SWN), a Texas based company working in the province. It’s an image of extreme energy, and perhaps the times.

SWN exercised it’s permit to conduct preliminary testing to assess resource potential for shale gas exploitation. Canadian constitutional law requires the consultation with First Nations, and this has not occurred. That’s when Elsipogtog Mi’gmaq warrior chief, John Levi, seized a vehicle containing seismic testing equipment owned by SWN. Their claim is that fracking is illegal without their permission on their traditional territory. About 65 protesters, including women and children, seized the truck at a gas station and surrounded the vehicle so that it couldn’t be removed from the parking lot. Levi says that SWN broke the law when they first started fracking “in our traditional hunting grounds, medicine grounds, contaminating our waters.” according to reporter Jane Mundy in on line Lawyers and Settlements publication. This may be just the beginning.

Putting the Culture Back in Agriculture: Reviving Native Food and Farming Traditions

by Tory Field and Beverly Bell / Toward Freedom

A family on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area of the Southwest makes kneel down bread, a traditional food made with blue corn. Photo: Brett Ramney.

“At one point ‘agriculture’ was about the culture of food. Losing that culture, in favor of an American cultural monocrop, joined with an agricultural monocrop, puts us in a perilous state…” says food and Native activist Winona LaDuke.[i]

Her lament is an agribusiness executive’s dream. The CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company said, “Once television is there, people, whatever shade, culture, or origin, want roughly the same things.”[ii] The same things are based on the same technology, same media sources, same global economy, and same food.

Together with the loss of cultural diversity, the growth of industrial agriculture has led to an enormous depletion in biodiversity. Throughout history, humans have cultivated about 7,000 species of plants. In the last century, three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost. Thirty crops now provide 95% of our food needs, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60%. Eighty-five percent of the apple varieties that once existed in the US have been lost. Vast fields of genetically identical crops are much more susceptible to pests, necessitating increased pesticide use. The lack of diversity also endangers the food supply, as an influx of pests or disease can wipe out enormous quantities of crops in one fell swoop.   

Great Plains Activist Accused of Vandalizing Liquor Delivery Truck in Whiteclay

from Earth First! Newswire

LINCOLN, Nebraska – Activist T.R. McKenzie was arrested yesterday, May 24, on charges stemming from an incident on May 3, 2013, where a group confronted a delivery truck. Allegations include someone flashing a knife and telling the driver to leave town while others threw beer containers into the street. The truck’s two front tires were also slashed. (Bravo, to whoever the warriors were behind this bold act!)

McKenzie is an activist with DGR, which has kept up a campaign against the liquor stores in Whiteclay. For the purposes of dialogue it is crucial to discuss this campaign and its tactics. But more than that, it is important now to stand in solidarity with McKenzie and all others under state repression—regardless of whatever infighting (or “horizontal hostility”) might be occurring within the movement. 

McKenzie was picked up in Lincoln prior to his scheduled appearance at a press conference at the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, where he was planning to speak about the most recent in a long history of documented code violations and human rights abuses committed by alcohol sellers in Whiteclay, Nebraska.

This poster was released by Deep Green Resistance, McKenzie is actively involved with DGR Great Plains

McKenzie was held for six hours at the Lancaster County Jail on charges of theft, criminal mischief, third degree assault, and terroristic threats. He was released on bond the same day as his arrest.This arrest comes in the wake of several weeks of protests and encampments on the outskirts of Whiteclay.

“Most of those sleeping at the protest camp are women and children,” McKenzie said shortly after his release. “We are all working to draw attention to the devastation caused to the Lakota people by the sale of alcohol in Whiteclay.”

Whiteclay has a population of 14, yet 4 liquor stores in the town sell 12,500 cans of beer each day.

Sovereign Nations Walk Out of Meeting With U.S. State Department Unanimously Rejecting Keystone XL Pipeline

Cross Posted from Huffington Post

The State Department, still with “egg on its face” from its statement that Keystone XL would have little impact on climate change, sunk a little lower today as the most respected elders, and chiefs of 10 sovereign nations turned their backs on State Department representatives and walked out during a meeting. The meeting, which was a failed attempt at a “nation to nation” tribal consultation concerning the Northen leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline neglected to address any legitimate concerns being raised by First Nations Leaders (or leading scientific experts for that matter).

Tribal nations added probably the most critical danger of the pipeline which is to the water. Their statement is below:

Indigenous Resistance Grows Strong in Keystone XL Battle

By Crysbel Tejada and Betsy Catlin  / Waging Nonviolence (CC BY-SA)

On cloudy days, heavy smoke fills the air of Ponca City, Okla., with grey smog that camouflages itself into the sky. The ConocoPhillips oil refinery that makes its home there uses overcast days as a disguise to release more toxins into the air. These toxins are brimming with benzene — a chemical that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, can cause leukemia, anemia and even decrease the size of women’s ovaries. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2008 the ConocoPhillips refinery released over 2,000 pounds of this chemical into the air in Ponca City.

“Of the maybe 800 of us that live locally, we have averaged over the last five to seven years maybe one funeral a week,” explained Casey Camp-Horinek, a Ponca woman and longtime activist. “Where we used to have dances every week, now most people are in mourning.”

TransCanada Reps Kicked Out of Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation

Cross Posted From Tar Sands Blockade

“You’re not welcome here… We’ve said no from day one.”

And with these firm words the TransCanada representatives were kicked out of Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation last week. The seemingly aloof TransCanada officials showed up at the Tribal Office in Eagle Butte, South Dakota in an attempt to win the tribe over to the pipeline, but were met with a swift, firm response. Robin LeBeau, Cheyenne River Sioux Councilwoman for District 5, saw them in the parking lot and promptly told them off.

The encounter was caught on video:

Two Activists Lockdown to Protect Cross Timbers from Tar Sands

Cross posted from Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance[Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a chronology of today’s events, and be sure to visit www.gptarsandsresistance.org and donate to these folks bail funds! Oh yeah, did we mention that this is the 5th action in Oklahoma in the past month?]

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Spaulding, OK- Monday, April 29th, 6:15 AM– Earlier this morning two Texas residents locked themselves to machinery being used to construct TransCanada’s dangerous and controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in Spaulding, OK through Muscogee Creek Nation land by treaty.

Idle No More Leads Earth Day Events Against Keystone Pipeline in SF

Cross Posted from Native News Network

Some 700 people celebrated Earth Day in San Francisco on Monday. The event was a combination of celebrating Mother Earth and demonstrating against the dangers of contamination the environment.

The marchers were led down Market Street by women drumming and singing the Women’s Warrior Song

Activist Locks Himself to Keystone XL Heavy Machinery Launching a “Red River Showdown” Over KXL South

Cross Posted from GPTarSandsResistance

On Earth Day 2013, to mark the close of the State Department’s public comment period for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Northern Segment (KXL North) pipeline’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), an activist with the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance has locked himself to a piece of Keystone XL heavy machinery in Oklahoma, temporarily halting work site construction. Alec Johnson, a 61-year old climate justice organizer from Ames, Iowa took direct action to defend the Red River in solidarity with the Mayflower, Arkansas community, which is currently reeling from last month’s massive tar sands spill. The disaster, due to a 22-foot long gash in ExxonMobil’s ruptured Pegasus tar sands pipeline, has resulted in chronic health problems for nearby residents and has left Lake Conway dangerous polluted.