See our request for intervention. ), It would also have led to greater greenhouse gas emissionswhich, the latest scientific reports makes clear, we simply cant afford if were to avoid the most catastrophic climate impacts. The U.S. Senate approves a bill to build Keystone XL. The notorious tar sands pipeline was a lightning rod in the fight against climate change and the seemingly unstoppable oil industry. The Fort Belknap Indian Community and Rosebud Sioux Tribe, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, continued their fight against the illegal permitting of the Keystone XL Pipeline with two filings in the US District Court of Montana. Frontline Indigenous youth, who have been standing up against destructive oil pipelines for years, are imploring President Biden to join them in protecting their water, lands, and cultures. In South Dakota, the pipeline would cross through Tripp County, just miles from the boundaries of the Rosebud Indian Reservation and within yards of Rosebuds trust lands and tribal members allotments. If the Presidents goal was to avoid complying with the District Courts decision in that case, it worked. The Keystone XL pipeline was proposed by the energy infrastructure company TC Energy. Frighteningly, the KXL pipeline design would only detect 13,000 barrels (535,000 gallons) of tar sands crude leaked in a 24-hour period. The spill, more than 400,000 gallons of unprocessed crude, is the seventh largest on-shore spill since 2002. Construction has begun despite the fact that there are three lawsuits currently going on. The first, a southern leg, had already been completed and now runs between Cushing, Oklahoma,. It poured 407, 000 gallonsalmost 3,000,000 poundsof crude oil into the ground. The mineral estates qualify as Indian lands and the Tribe has jurisdiction over them. The US did not adequately review the pipelines proposed route and whether it crosses tribal territory. In 2015, the U.S. State Department, under President Barack Obama, declined to grant the northern leg of the Keystone XL project the permit required to construct, maintain, and operate the pipeline across the U.S.Canada bordera permit that President Trump later granted and President Biden once again revoked. As you know, our natural resources are finite. According to a 2015 personal public financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission, then-candidate Trump held between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stock in TransCanada Pipelines, Ltd. NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth explains, President Trump permitted the Keystone XL pipeline because he wanted to. Those treaties are binding to this day, and we expect them to be honored. The KXL phase of the pipeline cuts directly through the traditional homelands of our client tribes. This map is a free and public tool designed to support impacted communities along the route about the risks of living in proximity to fossil fuel pipelines and development. The cost is too high. Of course, TransCanada claims that KXL will be safe, that it will be state of the art. The XL stands for export limited. If completed, KXL would add another 510,000 barrels of capacity. But the movement has had setbacks: a federal judge in Louisisana recently. This map felt particularly timely as construction crews break ground on initial sections of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma. Heres everything you need to know about the historic KXL fightand why the pipelines cancellation has had no impact on current oil prices. The tribes filed a response to TransCanadas motion for summary judgment and a memorandum in support of their own motion for partial summary judgment. In 2014, more than two million comments urging a rejection of the pipeline were submitted to the U.S. Department of State during a 30-day public comment period. Our water sources are threatened by the dirty tar sand crude, our ancestral homelands are in the direct path of the pipeline, and our people already are suffering the effects of nearby construction worker man camps. The water delivery system for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is called the Mni Wiconi, which translates to Water is Life. On February 11, 2019, an 1,800-gallon spill was detected in Missouri on the main Keystone line, and last year more than 400,000 gallons were spilled from the main Keystone line in South Dakota near a tribal community. Large stretches of Keystone have been shut down. Phase 3b is added later, connecting the pipeline from Port Arthur to Houston, Texas. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions. Like that of the United States, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe also has laws that require us to ensure that any company seeking to build a pipeline in our territory must obtain our consent. filed a federal lawsuit against the United States Department of Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over their issuing of the KXL permit, asked the court to grant a temporary restraining order on pipeline construction, the memo in support of preliminary injunction, a response to TransCanadas motion for summary judgment, a memorandum in support of their own motion for partial summary judgment, federal court denied the United States federal governments and the TransCanadas (TC Energy) efforts to dismiss the Tribes case, poured 407, 000 gallonsalmost 3,000,000 poundsof crude oil, much more frequent than TransCanada predicted. President Trump tried to go around the courts, the laws, and the will of the American people, in order to put a foreign-owned pipeline on tribal lands, said NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth. a new mini-documentary entitled Take Action: Protect Our Land., their response to the defendants motions to dismiss. We were not willing to sacrifice our water or safety for the financial benefit of a trans-national corporation. The Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline is the proposed Phase 4 of the Keystone Pipeline system, which already is online with a capacity to carry more than 500,000 barrels per day. A Peoples Orientation to a Regenerative Economy, Chief Theresa Spence and Attawapiskat First Nation file urgent action with UN committee, Indigenous Storytellers Ashley Fairbanks and Jennifer K. Falcon Launch New Podcast We Keep The Fire: Indigenous Climate Futures, Inyo County tribes, residents, and leaders welcome the news of an indefinite suspension of drilling activities at Conglomerate Mesa. The land, water, tribal sovereignty, and governmental services were not given to us in those treaties, President Kindle said. Canada is considered one of the most water-rich countries in the world and yet many indigenous communities continue to be provided with inadequate access to safe drinking water which provides a large public health concern for these communities. Elections turn control of the U.S. Congress over to Republicans, who pledge to move forward on Keystone XL. President Bordeaux had this to say about the KXL pipeline: There are a great many things that trouble us about this project. August-September: Keystone XL protesters organize two weeks of civil disobedience at the White House. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe will take any and all necessary steps, up to and including litigation, to protect our people, our land and water, and our cultural and historic resources., As we have seen, spills from such projects can be catastrophic, said NARF Staff Attorney Matt Campbell. On November 17, 2020, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community, represented by the Native American Rights Fund and co-counsel, filed a federal lawsuit against the United States Department of Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over their issuing of the KXL permit. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares . We are joined in a fight against an invisible enemy that we now know is highly contagious before its hosts even show symptoms, said President Bordeaux of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Based on these extraordinary circumstances, we ask that TransCanada halt any construction during this pandemic.. Meanwhile, major new tar sands projects stopped moving forward, despite investments from the government of Alberta, Canada. All facets of the tar sands industry pose a threat to the environment. A timeline of the Keystone Pipeline project is below. After more than 10 years of tenacious protests, drawn-out legal battles, and flip-flopping executive orders spanning three presidential administrations, the Keystone XL pipeline is now gone for good. In their permit application, TransCanada agreed to abide by tribal laws and regulation, which they have failed to do. The pipeline would consist of 875 miles of 36-inch pipe with the capacity to transport 830,000 barrels per day" (Parfomak, Pirog, Luther and Vann 4). Also in the filings, the Tribes point out that, contrary to defendants arguments, neither the presidents foreign affairs power, nor his role as commander in chief provide him authority to permit the pipeline. The Rosebud Sioux Tribejust like South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montanahas a duty to protect the health and welfare, of its citizens. Farm to Table: The Worlds Largest Protest in India, 2023 The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Phase 2 and 3 did not require Presidential Permits and were built over several years starting in 2010. People must understand that the Ogalalla Aquifer that this pipeline will cross covers 8 states and waters 30 percent of American crops. With this construction, workers will descend on the communities along the pipelines proposed path. In 2017, the Trump administration reversed Obamas veto, signing an executive order to advance the Keystone pipeline as well as a similar crude oil project, the Dakota Access Pipeline despite the many valid arguments made against the two pipelines. After the District Courts decision, President Trump took the extraordinary step of revoking the original KXL permit issued by the State Department and issuing a new permit himself. President Trump is now a defendant and the case is now called Rosebud et al v. Trump, et al. These sands contain bitumen, a gooey type of petroleum that can be converted into fuel. However, maps now reveal that the pipeline will cross tribal lands and water suppliesso the pipeline and the president MUST comply with tribal laws and treaties. In June 2021, TC Energy announced that it was abandoning its plans for building the pipeline for goodputting an end to a fossil fuel project that had loomed over waterways, communities, and the climate for more than a decade. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user. But environmental reviews by both the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline would not have lowered gasoline prices. It was proposed to be an extension of the existing Keystone Pipeline System, which has been in operation since 2010. TransCanada agreed to abide by tribal law. amended complaint in what will now be known as, an amended complaint against TransCanada and President Trump. At the hearings, the US government argued that the treaties that the United States signed with tribal nations are not relevant to the Keystone pipeline. The era of building fossil fuel pipelines without scrutiny of their potential impact on climate change and on local communities is over, Swift says. The presidential permit comes nearly a decade after Calgary-based TransCanada applied to . As an expansion of the companys existing Keystone Pipeline System, which has been operating since 2010 (and continues to send Canadian tar sands crude oil from Alberta to various processing hubs in the middle of the United States), the pipeline promised to dramatically increase capacity to process the 168 billion barrels of crude oil locked up under Canadas boreal forest. The company behind the controversial Keystone XL project that President Joe Biden effectively killed on his first day of office had an oil spill record "worse than the national average" over a. The goal was to transport 830,000 barrels of crude, tar sand oil to refineries on the American Gulf Coast each day. He also signs an order requiring pipelines in the United States to be built with U.S. steel. The Dakota Access Pipeline The controversial construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) gained national and international attention when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accepted an application filed by Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based developer behind the project. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe has retained the NARF to represent its interests with regard to the Keystone XL pipeline. When TC Energy said the pipeline would create nearly 119,000 jobs, a State Department report instead concluded the project would require fewer than 2,000 two-year construction jobs and that the number of full-time, permanent jobs would hover around 35 after construction. Seated in a camping chair, Faith Spotted Eagle, 68, pulls a blanket around her to ward off the cold. In addition, the possibility of damaging community water supplies, valuable agricultural lands, and wildlife habitats is not a cost our clients are willing to bear on behalf of a foreign extractive company propping up a dying energy industry. Frighteningly, the KXL pipeline design would only detect 13,000 barrels (535,000 gallons) of tar sands crude leaked in a 24-hour period. Today, the Presidents of Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Fort Belknap Indian Community were in federal court to invoke their sacred inheritance from these treatiesbecause the KXL pipeline is exactly the kind of depredation the Tribes sought to prevent, NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth explained after the hearings. Indeed, moving crude by rail to the Gulf costs substantially more than moving it by pipe. The goal was to transport 830,000 barrels of crude, tar sand oil to refineries on the American Gulf Coast each day. March: The Trump White House exempts the Keystone Pipeline from the requirement to use U.S. steel. And the risk that Keystone XL would have spilled was heightened because of the extended time the pipe segments were left sitting outside in stockpiles. How an unlikely coalition of environmental activists stopped the destructive tar sands oil pipeline. Although, the pipelines proposed path crosses the plaintiff tribes homelands, the tribes have not been consulted as required by law and DOI policy. The protests were primarily peaceful, with camps and prayer circles set up on the land where construction was to take place. The 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie and other federal laws requires Rosebud consent to cross Rosebud territory. On October 16, 2020, the court held that the Presidents permit only applied to the border and not the entire pipeline, but that the tribes could sue the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for its KXL permitting. Hearings on the motion to dismiss were held Thursday, September 12, 2019, in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, Great Falls Division. These lands are Indian lands. Originally founded as a whites-only city, or sundown town, since the 1980s it has become fairly diverse with one of the most diverse school systems in the United States. Dealing in tar sands oil is an expensive endeavor. The federal government must examine potential impacts on the safety and welfare of Native peopleespecially women and children. Low oil prices and increasing public concern over the climate led Shell, Exxon, Equinor (then Statoil), and Total to either sell their tar sands assets or whittle them down. Do not allow TC Energy and the Trump Administration to ignore their legal and corporate responsibilities to the American people. The lands, water, and promises made in those treaties were paid for, literally, with the blood of our ancestors and relatives. NARF stands with our clients, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community, in their staunch opposition to the completion of the Keystone XL arm of the pipeline system. Among other things, the complaint describes: NARF Staff Attorney Matthew Campbell explained, Before we allow a foreign company to build another pipeline to haul dirty tar sands across any American soil, we should be taking a hard look at the possible impact on American land, water, health, and safety. The Tribes filed this amended complaint (1) to stop the President from trying to circumvent the court and (2) to add claims against TC Energy Corp. (formerly TransCanada Corp.) because maps now show the pipeline corridor crossing tribal territory and water supplies. Early in his presidency, President Trump made it a priority to issue permits for the questionable KXL project without the required tribal consultation, environmental review, or consideration for treaty rights. To that end, the government must examine the potential impact of pipeline construction and man-camps on Native people, especially women and children. The Keystone XL pipeline was proposed by the energy infrastructure company TC Energy. One such protest, a historic act of civil disobedience outside the White House in August 2011, resulted in the arrest of more than 1,200 demonstrators. Tar sands lie beneath the northern Alberta boreal forest. The climate impact of a complete and fully operational Keystone XL would be drastic. TransCanada's plan to dig a trench and bury part of its $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline right through this land has unearthed a host of Native American opposition, resentments and . However, for the Tribes, the KXL fight is just beginning. September: TransCanada and ConocoPhillips file an application for the Keystone XL Phase 4 extension. The federal government argues that the treaties dont matter. While the tar sands industry was once seen as an unbeatable opponent in a David-and-Goliath fight, the victory against Keystone XL shows that the tables have begun to turnand that more power now lies with the advocates for climate justice than ever before. It has been determined that the pervasive violence against indigenous women amounts to genocide. The pipeline would cross less than 100 miles from the headquarters of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation and run directly through sacred and historic sites as well as the ancestral lands of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes. The United States formally agreed, among other things, to keep outsiders off Sioux and other tribal nations territory and protect tribal natural resources. On Friday, December 20, 2019, NARF and their clients, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Fort Belknap Indian Community (the Tribes) received some great news from a Montana court. We have been mistreated in this process, and TC Energy has never sought or obtained our consent to build a pipeline in our territory, including on lands held in trust by the United States. Fort Belknap has a Cultural Property Act that applies to the pipeline. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney M. Bordeaux spoke to the KXL issue, In approving the Keystone XL pipeline, the federal government repeatedly ignored treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, and widespread opposition to push forward the interests of a foreign oil and gas company. TransCanada failed to comply with Rosebud and Fort Belknap law. NARF Staff Attorney Natalie Landreth praised the decision, The courts decision means that ALL of the tribes claims on the current permits will proceed. The revoked permit became the final nail in the pipelines coffin. Between the threat of sexual violence and contraction of the coronoavirus, arrival of KXL construction workers in our homelands poses deadlier risks than ever before and must be stopped. For tribal lands, the treaties absolutely require this sort of review. The total for the Keystone pipeline's 2017 gush onto. One of the central arguments made by pipeline pushers was that tar sands expansion will move forward with or without Keystone XL. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially stated that, on a wells-to-wheels basis, tar sands oil emits 17 percent more carbon than other types of crude, but several years later, the State Department revised this number upward, stating that the emissions could be 5 percent to 20 percent higher than previously indicated. That means burdening the planet with an extra 178.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, the same impact as 38.5 million passenger vehicles or 45.8 coal-fired power plants. The biggest concern with the Keystone XL Pipeline would be a spill in an environmentally sensitive area, such as the . They prohibited any construction until the Trump Administration and TransCanada conduct the necessary review. Later, fossil fuel companies funnelled millions into Trumps 2017 inauguration ceremony, days after which he brought the Keystone XL project back from the dead, and ramped up federal lobbying efforts in the first months of his administration. That leak was nothing compared to the 2017 Keystone spill in South Dakota. The judge found that the US State Department had not fulfilled its duties to the American people when it issued TransCanada a 2017 permit for the Keystone XL pipeline without the required environmental and safety review.