Native Wisdom Guides Movement to Close Keystone Pipeline Route

The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s rally Feb. 11 against the Keystone XL Pipeline showed the extent to which the multi-billion-dollar tar-sands crude-oil industry has galvanized cross-boundary opposition in the interest of earth justice.

While mainstream media have failed to inform decision makers of the preponderance of indigenous input into the controversy, native peoples’ governing bodies, traditional councils and non-profit groups have, nonetheless, been at the forefront of the movement to stop the tar sands and halt the pipelines.

The bulk of the pipeline coverage has addressed political and profit motives, even though indigenous leaders have – time and again — pushed the envelope of the argument even beyond its energy and climate-change components to bring the focus back to earth, land and water rights.

The rally in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the population center of the Great Sioux Nation, was remarkable for being convoked by the governmental authority of the second-largest Indian reservation in the United States.

It was the most recent link in a chain of pipeline are helping hold the worldwide grassroots line against corporate greed and domination.