No KXL - South Dakota Report

Together we are stronger

By MK Resident Media @WiconiUnTipi
There is news to be happy about in regards to the decision of the KXL pipeline in Lincoln, NE a week ago Monday. Unity and action are happening, people are continuing to come together over this collective effort to hold this ground for the sake of survival, and find strength coming from the common ground under all our feet.
Mitkuye Oyasin - We are ALL related

On Monday November 20th the Public Utilities Commission of Nebraska voted 3 for and 2 against the Keystone pipeline extension. The alternative route chosen proves to be more expensive for TransCanada, requiring them to seek new easements to run the pipeline through landowners’ property—according to some reports they are ready for them. Tribes, farmers, ranchers and a growing number of grass roots organizations are ready to fight for every point of social and environmental justice, including:
• A full EIS, Environmental Impact Statement
• Respect for cultural artifacts
​• Deeper review of infrastructural plans 
• The divestment campaigning is continuing and effective


A gathering of Tribes, landowners, and supporting organizations and individuals convened in Lower Brule, South Dakota that weekend to sign the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred Against Tarsands and the KXL Pipeline, for the second time. The first signing happened in 2013, by over 150 Tribes in the US and Canada, including Nations all along the KXL route in Alberta, Montana, North & South Dakota and Nebraska.

Mother Earth threw a sucker punch at the TransCanada on the eve of this decision, November 16th, when the Keystone Line 1 spilled a reported 220,000 gallons of oil in a field just 20 miles west of the Lake Traverse Reservation—home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.

The outcome of the decision on KXL by the commission continues to reveal the failure of turning the US government and regulatory authorities into extensions of corporate America, or disempowering them. This is all an exercise of focused power, and fiscal influence. For many Americans there is a stubborn resolution to stick to what they have been conditioned to be familiar with.

In the middle of this sleepy insanity that passes as “common sense,” a greater reality is emerging—a real desire to survive that transcends the short-term solutions that continue to lead us further into exploitative destruction as a species. More and more communities are paying attention, and making the decision to be humane, to be good neighbors to one another. People are standing up and standing together.