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| Debra White Plume/Photo Josh Lopez |
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| Debra White Plume/Photo Josh Lopez |
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| Debra White Plume/Photo Josh Lopez UPDATE: Statement by Owe Aku, Bring Back the Way:
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Photo Josh Lopez, Tar Sands Action
WASHINGTON -- Debra White Plume, activist and grandmother, of Owe Aku, Bring Back the Way, was arrested at the White House protesting the tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline headed for Indian country between Canada and Texas, including the massive Ogallala aquifer.
White Plume, Lakota grassroots leader, with Owe Aku, an Oglala Lakota organization in South Dakota working on revitalization of Lakota culture and on 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty rights. “This is an issue of the full recognition of our right to say no, as sovereign independent indigenous nations. The colonial US government doesn’t have our best interest in mind, nor the rights of Mother Earth. Our Lakota people oppose this pipeline because of the potential contamination of the surface water and of the Oglala aquifer. We have thousands of ancient and historical cultural resources that would be destroyed across our treaty lands," White Plume said. “The traditional government of the Great Sioux Nation, as well as the elected leadership have all taken official action to oppose the tar sands oil and the pipeline and have communicated this to the U.S. government. The Native people of the land have not been consulted and we have not given our consent for this pipeline. The right to free prior and informed consent as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well as the rights affirmed in treaties with the US government and Native Nations are continually being violated. It’s my responsibility as a mother and grandmother to stand with Mother Earth against male dominated corporate greed. Where will President Obama stand?”
The highly corrosive oil is an environmental disaster in the making. Protesters were arrested for two week, totaling 1,252 people arrested, to send a message to President Obama to halt the tar sands pipeline.
The tar sands mining is already destroying First Nation homelands in Alberta, Canada.
At home, Debra and Alex White Plume are fighting uranium mining in Lakota country. Here's more from Owe Aku: History of Owe Aku & The Focus of Our Work http://bringbacktheway.com/default.htm
Owe Aku, a Lakota term meaning
"Bring Back the Way", was founded in 1997 by Alex and Debra White Plume and
their extended families. Owe Aku is a grassroots non-governmental social change
organization dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of the Lakota Way
of Life, 1851 & 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty Rights, and Human Rights. Our work
encompasses and goes beyond the Oglala band of the Lakota Nation and the Pine
Ridge Homeland, to the Lakota Nation and the Oceti Sakowin: the Seven Council
Fires, known historically (incorrectly) as the "Great Sioux Nation". In our
Lakota world view of "Mitakuye Oyasin" (we are all related) we have an
International Justice Office in New York City which carries all of our
appropriate work into the international Human Rights and Justice arena in our
birth role and responsibility as Maka Luta Awanke: Protectors of the Sacred Red
Earth.
Our work is
focused in the following areas:Lakota People's School of Liberation
See more arrest photos of the Native American and First Nation delegation on Friday, Sept. 2, 2011, at Censored News.
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