Sister Diaspora for Liberation, a diasporic intersectional feminist collective rooted in a love ethic and healing, stands in solidarity with the Great Sioux Nation, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and its people and allied tribes in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline across their lands. We are a collective of womyn activists of the global diaspora that have shared experiences and struggles. While we understand that this looks different for every womyn, we know that our oppression is rooted in the imperial capitalist-white supremacist-patriarchal-heteronormative systems we live under. These systems, manifested through colonialism and the historic genocide of the native peoples of the Americas continue to assert the oppression and unjust treatment of indigenous tribes, their traditional practices, and their lands.
The United States continues to break treaties and fails to respect the authority and rights of the Tribe, its lands, and its people. The 1,172-mile pipeline will wreak environmental havoc across its path and poison the water supply for not only the tribe, but for thousands of other people who live along its path as it seeks to cut through the Missouri river and transport over 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Scientists say that it is over 50% likely that an accident will happen and cause a spill and environmental devastation. We know that the continued use of fossil fuels is destroying our planet and threatening the future generations’ livelihoods. The pipeline also seeks to cut through sacred and ancestral tribal lands, of which the Sioux should have full sovereignty and rights. The US government has violated both Laramie Treaties with the tribe and several international laws in its conduct with the pipeline. The pipeline itself violates environmental and preservation policies.
On top of all the listed grievances, we are appalled at the militaristic and violent attempts to suppress and dismantle peaceful protests, to which the tribes have a right to enact in defense of their lands. We have no doubt that the path of the pipeline was chosen to run through tribal lands as an act of racial injustice and lack of recognition of native peoples and their rights.
As a result of all this, Sister Diaspora for Liberation calls for the end of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the restoration of and recognition of the sovereign rights of the Standing Rock Tribe and protection of our environment by halting extraction of the Bakken oil.