Today, in a letter to President Obama, the United States Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers, a coalition of more than 1,200 archeologists, museum directors and historians from institutions including the Smithsonian and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries denouncing the deliberate destruction of Standing Rock Sioux ancestral burial sites in North Dakota.
As archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum workers committed to responsible stewardship, we are invested in the preservation and interpretation of archaeological and cultural heritage for the common good. We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people.
On Saturday, September 3, 2016, the company behind the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project bulldozed land containing Native American burial grounds, grave markers, and artifacts–including ancient cairns and stone prayer rings. The construction crews, flanked by private security and canine squads, arrived just hours after the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lawyers disclosed the location of the recently discovered site in federal court filings.
Former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz called the discovery of the site “one of the most significant archeological finds in North Dakota in many years.” “This demolition is devastating,” Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said. “These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground.”
The letter goes on to address the historical abuse of American Indian people and their lands and the contribution oil extraction is making to climate change. They ask for a “thorough environmental impact statement and cultural resources survey on the pipeline’s route, with proper consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.”
While a short portion of the pipeline construction has been halted by the Obama Administration until this survey can be done, construction continues elsewhere on the pipeline. It’s significant to have the writers of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act forcefully admonish the President’s administration to be more thorough on the entire path of the pipeline.
More background on the resistance to DAPL below the fold.
After the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asked the United Nations on September 20th for protection of the tribe's sovereign rights, today a U.N. special envoy for aboriginal rights called on the U.S. Government to stop construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a United Nations special envoy for the rights of indigenous people, called for a halt to the pipeline's construction because it's seen as a threat to drinking water supplies and some of the sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
"The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations at the planning stage of the project and environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation," she said in a statement.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe set-up a camp in April to PROTECT the source of their drinking water at Lake Oahe on the Missouri River where the pipeline would be buried. The camp has since grown by thousands with hundreds of tribes and supporters joining them to help gain national and international attention.
Many thanks to Lawrence O'Donnell for his national coverage of Standing Rock.