Pipeline protests
The concerns of Native Americans merit an honest conversation in N. Dakota conflict.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but energy giant Kinder Morgan undoubtedly overreacted when it tried to sue a poet for opposing a pipeline.
Back in 2014, protesters camped out at Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada, to prevent preliminary work on expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline, which connects Alberta oil sands with the Pacific Coast. The Houston-based pipeline company responded by filing an injunction against the activists and suing key protest leaders — including poet Stephen Collis — for millions of dollars in damages in lost revenue.
Consider it strategy by sledgehammer, and it only worked to rally international attention to the pipeline opponents.
The public relations faux pas was enough to make Kinder Morgan pull a 180. With a lesson learned, the company dropped charges against the activists and started working with Native Americans along the pipeline’s path. Kinder Morgan Canada eventually reached profit-sharing and other agreements with local tribes and communities near the pipeline.
“We don’t go in with a set proposal, there are not take-it-or-leave it conversations,” Kinder Morgan Canada President Ian Anderson said last year.
Not every nation got on board, and not every protester was mollified, but the tone of the conversation changed when the company stopped lashing out at people and started listening. This week, that pipeline was approved by the Canadian prime minister.
On the other side of the northern border, protesters’ concerns are hard to hear over the sound of concussion grenades.
South of Bismarck, North Dakota, thousands of activists and members of Native American tribes have been camping since the summer to protest the Dakota Access pipeline, which is being built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. Undoubtedly some protesters want to stop oil and gas exploration entirely, but others are there to oppose a project that they see as disrupting sacred lands and risking pollution of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s water sources.
Those pollution worries were serious enough to force a reroute away from Bismarck’s municipal water sources and residential areas. Now the pipeline avoids Bismarck but comes closer to the Sioux tribe.
Police have responded to the protest with attack dogs, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas and riot gear. In one particularly callous incident, police attacked protesters with water cannons when temperatures were below freezing. There was also a woman handing out bottles of water who was airlifted to a hospital in Minneapolis after being struck by a concussion grenade. This isn’t how police should treat peaceful protesters. The resulting cataclysm has failed to dissuade the Standing Rock camp, and has only encouraged more people to join or hold their own events across the world.
Like Kinder Morgan’s experiences with the Trans Mountain pipeline, these month-long protests should inspire a listening tour by Energy Transfer Partners and government authorities. People are bound to support projects if they have a vested interest.
No doubt that America needs infrastructure like the Dakota Access, which would connect the Bakken oil field with storage facilities in Illinois. Whether building a pipeline for oil, power lines for renewables or high-speed rail for Texas commuters, companies and governments should be working with communities instead of treating them like enemies to be crushed underfoot.
The Army Corps of Engineers has ordered the North Dakota protesters to leave their camp on federal land by Monday, Dec. 5. Instead of fighting, everyone should be working toward some sort of written agreement about how interested parties can move forward. After all, the pen is mightier.