Bemidji, MN – Yesterday, June 1st, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) announced that DAPL is officially fully operational. This comes just a week after documents were leaked by a TigerSwan contractor revealing that Energy Transfer Partners was involved in using counterterrorist tactics on non-violent Water Protectors. What’s more is that DAPL has already had three oil spills during test runs, this adds to ETP’s already bad track record of being responsible for oil spills, yet taking very little accountability clean spills up or prevent future spills.

Bemidji, MN – Early this morning the Intercept published an article revealing leaked documents that prove Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and law enforcement from five states were using counterterrorist tactics during the time the #NoDAPL camps were operating. A contractor who worked with TigerSwan, the security company hired by ETP, leaked over 100 internal documents revealing that “TigerSwan spearheaded a multifaceted private security operation characterized by sweeping and intrusive surveillance of protesters.” The documents also show that the security company compared the Water Protectors to jihadist fighters.

“The Indigenous Environmental Network is extremely alarmed with President Donald Trump’s announcement of the two Executive Orders setting the stage for approving the dirty energy pipeline projects of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline. “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Sioux Tribes, as sovereign Native nations, were never consulted by Trump or his Administration on this decision that further violates the treaty rights of the Lakota, Nakota, Dakota people. Trump is portraying his true self by joining forces with the darkness of the Black Snake pipelines crossing across the culturally and environmentally rich landscape of the prairie lands of America.

Dallas Goldtooth, Keep it in the Ground Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network said: “As a movement to stop this dirty Bakken oil pipeline, we are demonstrating the inherent power of organized communities and mobilized citizens. We are showing Big Oil and government leaders that we know the power of our capital, and as such we collectively choose to invest in life and water, not death and oil. As first peoples of the land and in defense of our Indigenous rights, we will continue to rise, resist, self-determine and divest until the Dakota Access pipeline is nothing but the defeated aspirations of a Energy Transfer Partners’ dream.”

“Everyone has that fight in them, no matter what tribe, native, non-native. We never knew that this was going happen in Hunkpapa Lakota Territory, and it happened for a reason because I believe that this was a place that our ancestors, Sitting Bull, Black Elk, spoke about. All the generations, all the people, all of humankind, would come together one day. Those were our leaders, our ancestors, who predicted those things. They predicted the black snake that would come. It was called upon us to be here, to lead this, to lead this fight, of protecting Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth, and to protect our Mni Wiconi, our water of life”