WASHINGTON ― Thanksgiving began in the fall of 1621 when a group of Native Americans joined with newly arrived English settlers to create a harvest feast together and protect each other from violence.

This year, as Americans pick out their turkeys and count their blessings, members of the Sioux Nation in Standing Rock, North Dakota, reported being attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons in subfreezing temperatures as they protested an oil pipeline that threatens to contaminate their water and disrupt their sacred sites. Approximately 300 Native American and non-native protesters were injured in one 10-hour clash with law enforcement on Sunday evening, according to the Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council, and 26 were taken to hospitals with severe head and limb wounds, eye trauma, internal bleeding and hypothermia from being doused with water in 22-degree weather.



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Plagues, fires, taking from giving — these are the associations many of my relatives have with traditional American Thanksgiving, all the way back to our ancestors. This history of generosity and hospitality by the original people of these lands that were taken away and who were destroyed by illness is well articulated in Native American poet Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s poem “America, I Sing Back.”

Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.

Coke illustrated the tenuous grasp the arriving settlers had on life and how the inhabitants of the “Americas” helped them to survive by guiding them and showing them the agricultural “three sisters” method of growing corn, beans and squash (still referred to in the “Farmer’s Almanac” today). For the subsequent hundreds of years, Indian people, and the wrongs done to our contributions and us, have been forsaken.

On Thanksgiving Day at noon, as they have for the past 46 years, Native Americans whose heritage lies in the band of Indians called Wampanoag will gather on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to commemorate a National Day of Mourning. The United American Indians of New England’s website, which requested organizing and food-serving volunteers for this year’s gathering, declares “We Are Not Vanishing. We Are Not Conquered. We Are As Strong As Ever.” It is a message that lives in the hearts and minds of indigenous people the world around: We are still here.

And while many of us are modernized and fully functioning people with a toe in two proverbial worlds — the Western one and the sovereign, Native one — there are many Native Americans who do not celebrate the Pilgrims’ arrival with a feast. Nor do they herald the transgressions against humanity done them by other European settlers.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2016/11/23/thanksgiving-a-day-of-mourning-for-native-americans/

For the Sioux, this is being treated like trespassers on their own land, and according to the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties, this IS their own land

Spotted Tail, Siŋté Glešká of the Brulé Lakota (1823-1881) lamented, “This war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price.”

Some things never change. One of those things is the United States government’s treatment of Native Americans.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent a letter on Friday to Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault informing him that the Corps is ordering the Sioux’s Oceti Sakowin camp, the center of protests against the DAPL, to disperse by closing the “corps-managed federal property north of the Cannonball River to all public use and access” starting December 5.

Those in violation, the letter says, “will be considered trespassing and may be subject to prosecution under federal, state, and local laws…Additionally, any tribal government that sponsors such illegal activity is assuming the risk for those persons who remain on these lands.”

For the Sioux, this is being treated like trespassers on their own land.

According to the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, which was never rescinded, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the lands on which the Oceti Sakowin camp sits, are Sioux lands. Visiting Washington in 1875, Spotted Tail told President Grant “I respect the Treaty [of 1868] but the white men who come in our country do not.”

They did not then. They did not after. They still do not.

The Pick-Sloan Plan of 1944 seized the most fertile Sioux lands (including the site of the Oceti Sakowin camp) along the river in order to build dams. In typical fashion, the government said lands worth $23 million were worth $1.3 million and paid the Sioux pennies on the dollar.

It is ironic that one-and-a-quarter centuries after the closing of the Western frontier that the Army is holding its own lands inviolate but permitting the trespass on lands ceded to native tribes through the treaty and reservation system. Ironic too that nothing is said of the unlawful trespass of Sioux lands by the DAPL.

Archambault issued this statement in response:

“Today we were notified by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that on Dec. 5th, they will close all lands north of the Cannonball River, which is where the Oceti Sakowin camp is located. The letter states that the lands will be closed to public access for safety concerns, and that they will allow for a ‘free speech zone’ south of the Cannonball River on Army Corps lands.

Our Tribe is deeply disappointed in this decision by the United States, but our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever. The best way to protect people during the winter, and reduce the risk of conflict between water protectors and militarized police, is to deny the easement for the Oahe crossing, and deny it now.

We ask that everyone who can appeal to President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the future of our people and rescind all permits, and deny the easement to cross the Missouri River just north of our Reservation and straight through our treaty lands. When the Dakota Access Pipeline chose this route, they did not consider our strong opposition. Our concerns were clearly articulated directly to them in a tribal council meeting held on Sept. 30, 2014, where DAPL and the ND Public Service Commission came to us with this route. We have released the audio recording from that meeting.

Again, we ask that the United States stop the pipeline and move it outside our ancestral and treaty lands.

It is both unfortunate and disrespectful that this announcement comes the day after this country celebrates Thanksgiving—a historic exchange of goodwill between Native Americans and the first immigrants from Europe. Although the news is saddening, it is not at all surprising given the last 500 years of the mistreatment of our people. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stands united with more than 300 tribal nations and the water protectors who are here peacefully protesting the Dakota access pipeline to bolster indigenous people’s rights. We continue to fight for these rights, which continue to be eroded. Although we have suffered much, we still have hope that the President will act on his commitment to close the chapter of broken promises to our people and especially our children.”

The Army Corps of Engineers says “Through deeds, not words, we are BUILDING STRONG” and claims that “Our men and women are protecting and restoring the Nation’s environment” even while they are busily engaged in destroying that environment in North Dakota.

Pipelines leak. The DAPL will leak. With catastrophic results to those who depend on the Missouri River for water.

In an age when the words of a treaty ought to mean something, and be held inviolate, the United States is showing its ugliest “post-imperialist” face to the world and choosing profits for the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of the people – and over the treaty rights of Native Americans.

The Sioux protesters and their allies from all over the world have been brutally treated by law enforcement agencies for protecting their treaty rights and hundreds have been hurt by attack dogs, gas, rubber bullets, and possibly, grenades.

Unfortunately, we just saw that Donald Trump owns a big stake in the DAPL so it would be hopelessly optimistic for anyone to imagine things are going to get better before they get worse.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered protesters to leave by Dec. 5, citing concern over public safety amid high tension on the proposed development.

CANNON BALL, N.D. - Activists protesting plans to run an oil pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota said on Saturday they have no intention of leaving a protest camp after U.S. authorities warned it must be vacated by Dec. 5.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the federal land where the main camp protesting the Dakota Access pipeline is located, said it would close public access to the area north of the Cannonball River, including to protesters. It said this was partly to protect the general public from violent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement that have occurred in the area.

Those who stay could face prosecution for trespassing, the Corps said in a letter to tribal leaders on Friday.

Organizers told a news conference on Saturday at the main protest site where about 5,000 people are camped that they had no intention of moving.

“We are staying here committed to our prayer,” said Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Forced removal and state oppression? This is nothing new to us as native people.”

There are smaller camps on land not subject to the planned restrictions, including an area south of the Cannonball River where the Corps said it was establishing a free-speech zone.

North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, on Saturday said he supported the decision and the federal government, which allowed the protesters to become entrenched, must lead in the camp’s peaceful closure.

Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault said he received notice on Friday about the decision in a letter from Colonel John Henderson, an Army Corps district commander.

Archambault said the best thing the federal government could do for safety is deny the easement for the pipeline. “We have an escalating situation where safety is a concern for everybody.”

Archambault said he did not see the letter as a forced eviction and the tribe would continue to exercise its First Amendment rights to free speech. The tribe is working on a location on reservation land should people choose to go there, he said.

“I don’t think it will ever be an eviction where forces just come in and push people out,” Archambault said.

Demonstrators have protested for months against the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners LP, saying it poses a threat to water resources and sacred Native American sites. The companies say the pipeline would carry Bakken shale oil more cheaply and safely from North Dakota to Illinois en route to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) project is mostly complete except for the segment planned to run under Lake Oahe less than half a mile north of Standing Rock.

The Obama administration in September postponed final approval of a permit required to allow tunneling beneath the lake, a move intended to give federal officials more time to consult with tribal leaders. But the delay also led to escalating tensions over the project.

Last weekend, police used water hoses in subfreezing weather in an attempt to disperse about 400 activists near the proposed tunnel excavation site.

Demonstrators plan a march at noon Sunday in Washington, from the Department of Justice to the Washington Monument.

Would you celebrate the arrival of your murderers?

Neil Young took to Facebook today along with his girlfriend, Daryl Hannah, to write an open letter to urge President Barack Obama to “step in and end the violence against the peaceful water protestors at Standing Rock immediately.” He also encouraged others to “Speak up and show up. Be counted. Be like our brothers and sisters at Standing Rock. Be there if you can.”

Young began the letter by talking about Thanksgiving. “Tales of a feast on Plymouth plantation in the Autumn of 1621, where of pilgrims from the Mayflower, celebrated the harvest, shared and broke bread with the first Americans are false.” He continued, saying that “From Plymouth Rock to Standing Rock, this lie has made our Thanksgiving Day a Day of Mourning for the First Nations, all the tribes big and small, those who came before us.”

Recently, protests at Standing Rock have grown more violent, with police using water cannons on protestors despite freezing temperatures.

He writes:

We will be going back to support the water protectors again.
Let us all stand with them in thanks, in appreciation for the ancient wisdom they carry, In thanks for this opportunity for true gratitude.
For giving us a path forward.
For trying to show us a road to survival.
We offer our support and our respect. We hear the call to protect the water protectors to listen, learn and get engaged. They are brave. We thank them.

Young also released a song in September called “Indian Givers,” which he wrote in solidarity with the protestors. He has been one of the most outspoken celebrities on the issue.