USPCN supports #NoDAPL on #IndigenousPeoplesDay

USPCN supports #NoDAPL on Indigenous People’s Day The $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) has faced months of opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, as well as members of […]

USPCN supports #NoDAPL on Indigenous People’s Day

The $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) has faced months of opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, as well as members of hundreds of other tribes across North and South America. Their goal is to stop the building of the DAPL, which would connect production fields in North Dakota to refineries in Illinois. Their primary fear is that an oil leak would threaten water quality for many members of the tribal community. Already, there has been destruction to ancient burial land in the initiation of the pipeline.

Protesters so far have been attacked, silenced, and jailed. The building of this pipeline is not only an attack on climate justice, but on all Indigenous people. The U.S. has been exploiting their natural resources for hundreds of years, a continued colonization of the Indigenous people’s land—using tactics including military invasion, intimidation, racist policing, and actual geographic removal of the people themselves. The United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) condemns the historical ethnic cleansing and oppression of Indigenous people of the Americas, leading to the current apartheid-style decision to reroute the pipeline away from the majority white town of Bismarck to the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

We also call for an end to the general criminalization of Indigenous people in the United States. The U.S. has incarcerated hundreds of leaders, such as the most famous, the American Indian Movement’s Leonard Peltier, to repress their people’s aspirations for liberation and self-determination. We call for his release and the release of all Indigenous and other political prisoners in the U.S. In addition, we recognize that Native Americans have suffered greatly from mass incarceration and the police state. So far this year, 13 have been killed in officer-involved incidents. We renew our calls for real police accountability and community control of the police on Native lands and everywhere else in the U.S.

The United States Palestinian Community Network stands with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Indigenous nations in their fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, and in their important struggle for sovereignty and national development, the latter including control of their land, water, and all other natural resources.

Get more information on the #NoDAPL movement here!

USPCN
October 10, 2016