BISMARCK, N.D.—Tribes representing tens of thousands of indigenous people in the United States and Canada have signed a declaration against the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Leaders of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Canada and the Great Sioux Nation and Ponca tribe in the United States signed their declaration at a ceremony on May 17 at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the city where pipeline developer TransCanada Corp. is based.
“There is a historic union between first Americans in Canada and Native Americans in the United States,” said Casey Camp-Horinek, a councilwoman with the Ponca tribe in Oklahoma. “Long before a border ever existed on a map, a fictitious line on a map, we were a united peoples in our approach to care of Mother Earth.”
The 16-page declaration highlights the tribes’ treaty rights and their opposition to the proposed US$8-billion pipeline, which would move Canadian crude south to Nebraska, where the pipeline would connect with an existing Keystone pipeline network that would take the oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries.
“Greed knows no limits, and those in the way are simply collateral damage to corporate profits,” said Brandon Sazue, chairman of the Crow Creek Sioux in South Dakota and one of the leaders of the event.
