LETTER: We don’t need the pipeline

To the Editor:

Currently there are hundreds of Native Americans fighting to retain their lands and water rights given to them by treaties with the US government years ago. We must, as a people, support their efforts to halt the invasion of large oil companies which threaten their water and are currently bulldozing their way through sacred burial grounds in order to erect a $3.8 billion dollar pipeline, which will be 1200 miles long in the never-ending search for more fossil fuel. Thank God the President has temporarily stopped this pipeline, but this is a temporary fix. The Dept. of Justice and Army Corps of Engineers have halted the project for now, but the monied people who have their own pocketbooks to fill are fighting long and hard to assure this dastardly pipeline is completed. This is happening despite it being an encroachment on Native American lands, lands that were given to them by the Federal government via treaties, for which they (Native Americans) were assured would be forever theirs. With these treaties, they were also granted water rights for this land, an essential for people to survive. All of this is being threatened by a large oil company, Energy Transfer Partners, planning to run their pipeline through tribal lands from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and into Illinois. This pipeline is threatens the largest source of fresh water in the United States, the Ogallala Aquifer.

THIS is why Native Americans are protesting the DAP........we know from pipelines throughout the world - despite their being claimed as “safe for the environment”, pipelines burst, leak, etc., threatening every animal or human in the vicinity with their toxicity. As a country we need to support the native peoples fighting for their land and water rights. Write or call your Congress person and tell them NO DAP PIPELINE.

Write or call our President to thank him for a temporary halt and urge him to stop this shameful act against our native people permanently. We don’t NEED this pipeline. It will not create jobs as we’re told it would. It won’t lower gas prices for consumers. Likewise, it will NOT increase our energy security. WE, the people, can stop this travesty of justice. Let’s begin to do the right thing for our Native Americans — let’s support them wholeheartedly.

—Sharen Rockefeller

Wasilla