Our Lakota neighbors recognize that Joe Biden will be our next President, and they are working hard to protect our land and our women from the predations of the black snake from Canada, the Keystone XL pipeline. Last week the Brave Heart Society, the White Buffalo Calf Women’s Society, and the Indigenous Environmental Network rallied at the WBCWS’s women’s shelter in Mission to call on the incoming Biden/Harris Administration to shut Keystone XL down:
While President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to rescind the permit for Keystone XL and kill the project, TC Energy is still continuing to seek local permits, and engage in pre-construction activities like building several man camps, pump-stations, and pipe-yards, which would potentially bring the added risk of housing thousands of out-of-state pipeline workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Faith Spotted Eagle, founder of the Brave Heart Society voiced her concerns by saying, “The 13 year message from the Dakota women on the ground here to KXL & man camps is still “LEAVE!” You bring destruction to the earth, dangerous COVID threats, danger to our animal/ plant relatives and trespass on our inherent and treaty lands and water illegally.” She added, “To President Biden and Vice Kamala Harris, please remember that as a US citizen you are also a Treaty signer, honor it in this time of a dangerous pandemic. It is no different than the small pox blankets that were brought in past history. Join us as relatives today to end this ghost pipeline, NO KXL” [Arlo Iron Cloud, “Leave! Is the Message Dakota Women Have for the Pipeline Man-Camps,” Lakota Times, 2020.12.10].
The Brave Heart Society streamed Thursday’s event on Facebook; the video is archived here.
Gentlemen, Faith Spotted Eagle was being kind when she mentioned the negative effects from man camps. Prostitution and sex trafficking increase, strip joints pop up out in the middle of nowhere, and women and girls are known to disappear, some of whom are found dead with no investigations forthcoming.
Drugs, including meth, and alcohol are widely used in these camps. Great combination for sexual appetites.
I know some women on the reservations and surrounding areas who have learned self defense and how to shoot a gun just because of the man camps.
I’m sure as gentlemen, you’ll now understand why the women here flinch when they hear the two words…man camp.
158 years ago, yesterday….
https://twitter.com/Ruth_HHopkins/status/1342855867125927936
Lincoln ordered mass executions of Dakota Indians after wasicus ignored two treaties and failed to feed the savages so they did what desperate peoples have always done, turned savage against oppressors.