By Ethan James

Reporter

The Native Americans who have spent the last months in peaceful protest against an oil pipeline along the banks of the Missouri River are standing up for tribal rights. They’re also standing up for clean water, environmental justice and a healthier climate. And it’s time that everyone else joined in.

Images of the National Guard destroying tepees and arresting elders remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history — the National Gurd versus Native Americans. In the past, it’s almost always ended horribly, and nothing we can do now will erase a history of massacres, stolen land and broken treaties. But this time, it can end differently.

Those protestors on the Standing Rock reservation, sometimes on horseback, have peacefully stood up to police dogs, pepper spray and SWAT teams.

The courage of those protesters managed to move the White House enough that the government called a temporary halt to construction. But the forces that want it finished — Big Oil, and its allies in parts of the labor movement — are strong enough that the respite may be temporary.

Originally, the pipeline was supposed to cross the Missouri River just north of Bismarck, until people pointed out that a leak there would threaten the drinking water supply for North Dakota’s second biggest city. The solution, in keeping with American history, was obvious; make the crossing instead just above the Standing Rock reservation, where the poverty rate is nearly three times the national average. This has been like watching the start of another Flint, Michigan crisis, except with a chance to stop it.

So far, the signs are not good. There has been no word from the White House about how long the current pause will last. Now, the company building the pipeline has pushed the local authorities to remove protesters from land where construction has already desecrated indigenous burial sites, with law enforcement agents using Tasers, batons, mace and “sound cannons.”

It’s hard to defend the actions of protesters blocking approved development projects on private property, but it’s easy to sympathize with their cause.

For us students living in Missouri it doesn’t seem like we should care or get involved, but you should. This kind of government building over sacred grounds of native people count happen in similar ways in our own area. And there are ways that we can help the people of North Dakota. You can’t go up and protest with those in Dakota but we can support them on social media by getting the word out about the movement. You could also give monetary support to organizations that are trying to defend the natives of Dakota.

The oil pipeline of North Dakota violates sacred grounds of Native Americans. We can’t just let them build over land that we took from natives so long ago.