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If anyone was in any doubt about whether Donald Trump would be a willing puppet of the fossil fuel industry once in office, yesterday he made his intentions clear. He intends to be Big Oil’s puppeteer in chief.
If those attempting to build the Dakota Access pipeline hoped that the protests against the pipeline and those funding it would fizzle out in 2017, they would have watched in despair at the events which unfolded at the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday.
As people head home for the Christmas vacation to be with their loved ones, spare a thought for the one thousand or so water protectors that are braving bitterly freezing cold temperatures and blizzards in North Dakota to continue what has become the iconic protest of 2016 against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
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.
The battle for the Dakota Access pipeline is not the only pipeline fight in North America. Later today, the Canadian cabinet of Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is expected to review the evidence from a special Ministerial Panel on the highly controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline.
“Where is our breaking point, at which we say that the benefits do not outweigh the human cost?" asks Eric Martin, a doctoral candidate in theology at Fordham University in a powerful polemic in the New York Times on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
They are used to standing shoulder to shoulder in the face of adversity fighting for their country. But next weekend, hundreds of veterans will come together again, potentially for one last time. Their mission this time is not to fight for their Government. But against it.
The dying days of President Obama’s administration are being deeply shamed by the actions of the authorities against the First Nations and others fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.
It is sixty years ago this year that the oil giant, Shell, first found oil at Oloibiri in Ijawland in the Niger Delta, after fourteen years of searching.
