Indigenous Leaders Arrested at Fossil Fuel Protest

At least 155 Native American Earth protectors were arrested in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, October 12, 2021, while more than 130 protesters were arrested on Monday, October 11.

by Brett Wilkins, courtesy of commondreams.org –

Others were blasted with sonic weaponry as tribal leaders and members from across the continent they call Turtle Island gathered on Indigenous Peoples’ Day to protest Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline and other oil and gas ventures backed by President Joe Biden, and to call on his administration to halt all fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency.

Thousands of Indigenous-led demonstrators rallied and marched, with hundreds engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience outside the White House as a week of #PeopleVsFossilFuels climate action kicked off. Ahead of Monday’s march, protesters painted “Expect Us” on the pedestal of a statue of Andrew Jackson, the genocidal seventh U.S. president known to Cherokees as “Indian Killer”—and favorite of former President Donald Trump.

Indigenous Environmental Network tweeted video footage of police using a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) against demonstrators sitting defiantly but peacefully outside the White House fence. Some observers contrasted the deployment of so-called “sound cannons” against nonviolent Indigenous protesters, both on Monday and during past #StopLine3 protests, with the absence of such heavy-handed tactics during the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mostly white mob.

Some critics decried Biden—the first president to officially commemorate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and the first to appoint a Native American to his Cabinet—for allowing the arrest of Indigenous protesters at Monday’s demonstration. Others took aim at the chasm between the president’s climate promises and his administration’s fossil fuel-friendly actions.

“Biden claimed to be a climate leader during his campaign, and he made promises to steer our nation into a just and renewable transition,” said Tasina Sapa Win, a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation and co-founder of the Cheyenne River Grassroots Collective,

Sapa Win had a message for Biden: “If you’re claiming to be a leader for our climate crisis, to come up with solutions to our issues here, then you need to start living up to your word.”

Siqiñiq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, told The Washington Post at Monday’s protest that thousands of her people have become some of the first U.S. climate refugees, as a dozen villages must relocate to drier ground. She also said that people around her village are developing rare cancers and asthma, and need medication to help them breathe.

“People are dying right now from the pollutants, the toxins, the climate catastrophes that are happening, and we have to stop the harm,” Maupin said, adding that Biden’s election was “riding on climate change, his entire election on people of color, Indigenous people. But when it really comes to when it matters, our lives are still being sacrificed for oil and gas.”

The president and his administration have faced backlash from Indigenous and environmental activists for backing the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, a Trump-era Alaska driling project, and other fossil fuel industry expansion, with critics calling Biden’s actions a “horrible and unconscionable betrayal” of his campaign promises.

Winona LaDuke, founder of the Indigenous-led advocacy group Honor the Earth, told Democracy Now! that “it’s so tragic that, on the one hand, the Biden administration is like, ‘We’re going to have Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but we’re still going to smash you in northern Minnesota and smash the rest of the country.'”

⚠️ They have used the LRAD on Indigenous Elders, Water Protectors, and their allies on Indigenous Peoples’ Day ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/LaRsQRiyhV

— Indigenous Environmental Network (@IENearth) October 11, 2021

“This is President Biden’s moment to keep his word,” said Dana Johnson, senior director of the strategy and federal policy office at WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

“This is a moment to fully, truly, wholly invest environmental justice into the operations of our federal government,” Johnson said, addressing Biden directly. “This is a moment to take the advice of the 27 environmental justice leaders that you put on an advisory panel. This is your moment, President Biden, to be the man of faith that you declare you are.”