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Merged Dakota Access Pipeline

marplots said:
Generally, you'd move the graves somewhere else. I'm not sure if you can do that with land though.
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Sometimes they move 'em, other times they don't get to run roughshod over people's religious sensibilities. I guess it depends on the resources of the people involved.

I know of a parking lot for an office park near here that has what looks like one humongous landscaping feature right in the middle of it. A hill about six or eight feet high and twenty five by thirty feet or so wide.

It looks really out of place.

It's there because the real estate developer who build the complex couldn't get one family grave plot relocated. The people whose family members were buried there wouldn't budge and the local pols weren't going to get involved in an eminent domain fight over a family graveyard.

So they built the parking lot around it.

I wasn't talking about the end result. I was talking about the dismissiveness given to the idea that the land is sacred to the native Americans living there.
 
quadraginta said:
It certainly can be. Perhaps not necessarily as law, but simply because of history.

How much land in Japan is not owned by Japanese?
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I don't know Japan.

But I do know that civilized states don't discriminate based on ethnicity.
 
quadraginta said:
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It's there because the real estate developer who build the complex couldn't get one family grave plot relocated. The people whose family members were buried there wouldn't budge and the local pols weren't going to get involved in an eminent domain fight over a family graveyard.

So they built the parking lot around it.
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Which is essentially what happened in the pipeline case. It's just that some protestors are not satisfied with the compromise/ruling reached. They believe the result is unjust.

I wasn't talking about the end result. I was talking about the dismissiveness given to the idea that the land is sacred to the native Americans living there.
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Good call. Let me alter it to a more palatable form: Their superstitions do not, in my view, justify stopping construction or a further rerouting.

I accept that the beliefs are authentic, even though they are not shared among all the indians there. I would also accept accommodating their beliefs if practical. What I do not accept is that their beliefs are some kind of trump card to play and win the game automatically.

NPR reported that an archeologist identified 40 sites along the route in that area that were taken into consideration, so it's not like the company is just trampling on indian beliefs willy-nilly. And the pipe itself is buried with maybe a 50 foot strip dug up along with an easement for access. As minimal an impact as possible.
 
marplots said:
Does it matter if the land in the picture is on the reservation or owned by someone else? It matters to me. I don't think that someone's superstitions should outrank my property rights.

We probably disagree on this point. I do, however, agree that the matter of enforcement against trespassing should be handled as gently as possible.

By the way, does it matter if the people in that picture are actually indians or not?
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Are you telling me that it's owned by someone else? As far as I know this is all on reservation property.

No, it doesn't matter of they're actually indians (they are, for the most part).
 
NoahFence said:
Are you telling me that it's owned by someone else? As far as I know this is all on reservation property.

No, it doesn't matter of they're actually indians (they are, for the most part).
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No, it's not on the reservation. That's why they keep talking about "water source" instead.

However, the borders of the reservation have been challenged as well, so in a way, it could be seen as being on part of their ancestral land, even though that land is now owned and managed by pale faces.

I grabbed one summary article just because it had a more-or-less neutral tone. There are many others available. http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045082
 
NoahFence said:
Are you telling me that it's owned by someone else? As far as I know this is all on reservation property.

<snip>.
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No. I don't believe the pipeline itself is on reservation property. It crosses the river upstream of of where their water intake for the reservation is.

The sacred ground is not on reservation property as I understand it. I guess they didn't get to keep that part.
 
quadraginta said:
No. I don't believe the pipeline itself is on reservation property. It crosses the river upstream of of where their water intake for the reservation is.

The sacred ground is not on reservation property as I understand it. I guess they didn't get to keep that part.
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The "upstream" is a bit misleading, since it's at least 50 miles upstream and this is a huge river we are talking about. I've also read the pipeline route uses a route already used for other pipelines, railroads and utilities - a path that's already been "disturbed." This is called "co-locating" and yields a cost savings in construction.

If I had to pick an underlying issue, I think it's the idea that the pipeline was moved away from Bismark (whiteyville) and closer to the indians as a form of racial oppression. A symbol for all the other injustices levied on native americans over the years. This also combines with an environmental watchdog theme that is against the pipeline in any form.

It's just not that good of a symbol in my view, because it presupposes the pipeline is a "bad thing". We'll see what happens.
 
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quadraginta said:
No. I don't believe the pipeline itself is on reservation property. It crosses the river upstream of of where their water intake for the reservation is.

The sacred ground is not on reservation property as I understand it. I guess they didn't get to keep that part.
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Yes, there are two different things going on.

The pipeline itself which will affect their water supply. Just a matter of when.

And the construction and equipment which are trampling on their land. I don't know specifically where the incident in my photo took place, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt when they say it's on their land.
 
Corporations lie.
Government lies.
Environmentalists do not lie.
Indians do not lie.

I can work with that.
 
- I do not know to what degree I agree with the idea that religious concepts of "sacred" override property rights especially giving... (see next point)

- Let's address the elephant in the room. It appears a lot of Native American religious and spiritual practices are very nature based. The functional result of this is that any Native American group can make a claim of something being "sacred" simply by it being outside and that's probably a tad bit unrealistic.

So basically the narrative being written is that the sin of white colonialism plus Native American spiritualism gives any Native American group the ability to declare any "nature" sacred and off limits in perpetuity and I'm sorry I don't know if I can be 100% onboard with that.
 
JoeBentley said:
- I do not know to what degree I agree with the idea that religious concepts of "sacred" override property rights especially giving... (see next point)

- Let's address the elephant in the room. It appears a lot of Native American religious and spiritual practices are very nature based. The functional result of this is that any Native American group can make a claim of something being "sacred" simply by it being outside and that's probably a tad bit unrealistic.

So basically the narrative being written is that the sin of white colonialism plus Native American spiritualism gives any Native American group the ability to declare any "nature" sacred and off limits in perpetuity and I'm sorry I don't know if I can be 100% onboard with that.
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I don't think that's the way it happens. Do you have any examples?
 
I have an easement on my property. There's a four-foot pipe running underground for a quarter mile stretch. It's a legacy pipe from when Dow Chemical pumped brine water out of the ground and ran it to their plant to extract iodine and bromine. The rumor is that when they shut the system down (several decades ago) the company back filled all the pipes with toxic effluent.

I bought the property (where I live) knowing the pipeline was there. I inquired about having the easement released. It was denied because apparently, if Dow keeps it, they can do remediation if there's an accident, but if they let it lapse, they are subject to a lawsuit instead. As far as I know, the easement will still be in place long after I am dead and gone.

If you didn't know where the pipeline was there'd be no way to tell from the surface. It's far enough down that it doesn't affect surface vegetation. I do have to remember not to dig there though. Which I wouldn't do anyhow, since the land is sacred. :)

My only point is that these underground pipelines are a well known and commonly used technology. We just don't see them. If we don't have a connection to one somehow, they don't even seem to exist. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there aren't already pipelines running across the river in that area.
 
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quadraginta said:
I don't think that's the way it happens. Do you have any examples?
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No not really. I wasn't arguing this is, intentionally, what is anyone is doing as a way to get something. I'm just saying the vagueness of defining "sacred" in any context combined with Native American religious practices being vaguer and more tied in with nature is creating some hard to accommodate situations is all.
 
My only point is that these underground pipelines are a well known and commonly used technology. We just don't see them. If we don't have a connection to one somehow, they don't even seem to exist. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there aren't already pipelines running across the river in that area.
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Yea, you can't see 'em until you can. And then:

picture.php
 
At this point though you're not arguing that pipelines shouldn't run through this one place, you're arguing that they shouldn't exist.
 
JoeBentley said:
At this point though you're not arguing that pipelines shouldn't run through this one place, you're arguing that they shouldn't exist.
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Well, one thing at a time I suppose.

I'd prefer they not exist at all, yes. But this latest flap about DAPL is way out of control.
 
marplots said:
I have an easement on my property. There's a four-foot pipe running underground for a quarter mile stretch. It's a legacy pipe from when Dow Chemical pumped brine water out of the ground and ran it to their plant to extract iodine and bromine. The rumor is that when they shut the system down (several decades ago) the company back filled all the pipes with toxic effluent.

I bought the property (where I live) knowing the pipeline was there. I inquired about having the easement released. It was denied because apparently, if Dow keeps it, they can do remediation if there's an accident, but if they let it lapse, they are subject to a lawsuit instead. As far as I know, the easement will still be in place long after I am dead and gone.

If you didn't know where the pipeline was there'd be no way to tell from the surface. It's far enough down that it doesn't affect surface vegetation. I do have to remember not to dig there though. Which I wouldn't do anyhow, since the land is sacred. :)

My only point is that these underground pipelines are a well known and commonly used technology. We just don't see them. If we don't have a connection to one somehow, they don't even seem to exist. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there aren't already pipelines running across the river in that area.
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Certainly sounds harmless.

But there's another way to look at it.
List of pipeline accidents in the United States



With special attention to;
List of pipeline accidents in the United States (1975–99)

and;
List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century

Just to keep it to roughly the last half century, although what came before that is pretty interesting, too.

Of course, those are only the major ones. Too big to keep quiet.
 
JoeBentley said:
No not really. I wasn't arguing this is, intentionally, what is anyone is doing as a way to get something. I'm just saying the vagueness of defining "sacred" in any context combined with Native American religious practices being vaguer and more tied in with nature is creating some hard to accommodate situations is all.
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This is the kind of thing I was talking about.

All it takes are the words "Indian" and "sacred ground" and otherwise rational people's eyes roll back in their heads and the condescension and dismissiveness cuts in.

This doesn't happen when it's white people's sacred ground.
 
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