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| Standing Rock 2016: Defending the Water |
Lakota Matt Remle: When Standing Rock's Burials were Bulldozed, They Went After the Banks
"They didn't have a permit -- and they still don't have a permit to be operating, that's why we shifted focus to the financial institutions, and launched a very targeted campaign." -- Matt Remle, Hunkpapa Lakota
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, November 2024
Watch Video by Govinda
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, November 2024
Watch Video by Govinda
SEATTLE -- Speaking at the Salish Sea Assembly, Matt Remle, Hunkpapa Lakota from Standing Rock, describes how the Dakota Access Pipeline used Standing Rock's map of burial places against them, and brought in attack dogs as the pipeline bulldozed their sacred burial place.
Remle, whose Lakota name is Wakíƞyaƞ Waánataƞ (Charging Thunder,) said it was then that they made the decision to target the banks and financial institutions that funded this pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline.
"Our historic preservation officer Tim Mentz had been previously denied to go on our own lands to document on a map exactly where grave sites, cultural sites and sacred sites were located, where they were trying to build that pipeline."
"We were finally allowed access in there, on our own lands, and he did that. He documented it and gave that map to the judge who was presiding over the tribe's legal fight against the company."
"It was two day after that, literally two days after that -- the judge had to give that map to the company -- is when they brought in their private security, armed security, and started bulldozing, brought out their attack dogs, and went over those exact places that Tim had just given them on the map."
"We realized they don't care about any of those things. They don't even care about their own laws."
"They didn't have a permit -- and they still don't have a permit to be operating, that's why we shifted focus to the financial institutions, and launched a very targeted campaign."
The goal was to punish the banks for giving them money.
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| Matt Remle speaks at the Salish Sea Assembly, held Nov. 6 --8, at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. |
Remle, cofounder of the organization Mazaska Talks, said their sole intention was then to target the financial industry, the banks and the insurance companies for the role that they are playing in the Dakota Access Pipeline, Keystone XL pipeline, and their fracking, and wherever the desecration of Unci Maka is taking place.
"They are the real ones who are behind that kind of curtain, the ones that are making these projects possible in the first place."
"Energy Transfer had to get multiple banks from around the world to give them loans to build it, they had to get insurance companies to underwrite it, so our sole goal was to go after them and target them, and hurt their bottom line."
"These corporations, these banks, these politicians, that's really all they care about. You try to appeal to their sense of morality, their sense of justice, a sense of what's right, but that's not enough for them."
Locally, they launched a targeted campaign to pressure the City of Seattle to divest in $21 billion. Their message was clear.
"If you are going to finance projects like this, your bottom line is going to hurt."
With this, a global network was launched and people around the world reached out and wanted to run similar campaigns.
The Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition evolved into a vast network around the world of people fighting mining, coal, and pipelines.
Mazaska Talks: Marching on Financial Institutions
They've just finished the Summer of Heat, when every single day people went after the New York financial district, shutting down the financial sector.
"Day after day, every day, that we shut them down, it costs them money."
Sometimes people can't have a lot of impact at the federal level, but a lot of things can be accomplished by actions at the local level.
They took over the Seattle City Mayor's office and demanded that the city of Seattle do something about the climate crisis.
"Seattle proclaims itself very liberal," he said, so their message was, "It's time to put action to your words."
They brought together a coalition of tribes, labor unions, and others who set the city on the path of being fossil free by 2040.
Then, realizing that this cost money, and that they didn't want to burden their communities with the cost of financing it, they focused on a plan for the polluters to pay.
Originally it was dubbed Amazon tax. Bezos shut down job sites and said he would take his work out of the city, and take his wealth with him, if this passed -- but it passed anyway.
It is the Jump Start Tax.
"We passed it anyway," and its multiple million dollars that helps low income home owners with renewable energy, job training to install solar panels, and projects that link with local tribes to daylight areas that have been paved over, to revive salmon streams.
During the Salish Sea Assembly, Remle joined Paul Chiyokten Wagner WSANEĆ (Saanich) and Rueben George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, on the panel sharing the histories of the struggles to defend the waters.
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| Dakota Access Pipeline bulldozed the sacred burial place at Standing Rock on September 3, 2016. At the same time, attack dogs attacked and bit water protectors, including young women. |
The Salish Sea Assembly
The powerful Salish Sea Assembly magnified the voices of the Coast Salish Water Warriors, the struggle to shut down the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and the flow of dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Salish Sea.
The powerful Salish Sea Assembly magnified the voices of the Coast Salish Water Warriors, the struggle to shut down the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and the flow of dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Salish Sea.
"We are not just activists, we are revolutionaries and we're radical and militant and we want to keep it that way, we don't want to get soft in our older years," said Kanahus Manuel, Secwepemc and Ktunaxa, describing her family's struggle to protect their land and stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia.
Speaking of the "State of Emergency for The Salish Sea," Kanahus said, "We are the title holders to the land."
Censored News Series: The Salish Sea Assembly
Paul Chikoyten Wagner: Protectors of the Waters, From the Salish Sea to Standing Rock
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/state-of-emergency-for-salish-sea-in.html
Coast Salish Freedom Fighters from the Alberta Tar Sands to the Salish Sea, Day 2
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/coast-salish-freedom-fighters-from.html
Live from the Salish Sea Assembly in Seattle, Day 1
Copyright Censored News
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