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“Today is a historic day for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many people who have supported us in the fight against the pipeline,” said Chairman Mike Faith of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “This pipeline should have never been built here. We told them that from the beginning.”
This month we took escalated our campaign and took the fight directly to US Bank’s Annual Shareholder Meeting in Albuquerque, where representatives from pipeline resistance groups from across the nation told their stories directly to US Bank executives.
Once again Big Oil has been forced to rely on brutal militarized force to bludgeon, bully, beat and intimidate peaceful water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. But in the face of such violence and intimidation, the growing movement against new fossil fuels will not be intimidated, it will only grow.
Over the last few months, as the news of the Standing Rock protests have spread across the globe, people have realised that the protest was never just about a pipeline, it was always about so, so much more. It was about the right to protect clean air and water; it was the right to protect ancient burial sites; it was the right to fight for a future for our children and grand-children. It was a belief that we can live in a world without oil. But it was also a battle against oppression and colonisation against First Nations that has being going on for centuries and where the wounds run old, raw and deep.
The long struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline is not over by a long shot, but last night the First Nations at Standing Rock celebrated a hugely significant and hard fought victory after the Army Corps announced it would not be granting the easement for the pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe.
