Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

March 18, 2025

Bizarre Case of Energy Transfer v Greenpeace Now Before Jury

 

Dakota Access Pipeline bulldozes Lakota burial places while its security unleashes attack dogs on water protectors on Sept. 3, 2016 at Standing Rock.

The case of Energy Transfer v Greenpeace is now before the jury. It has been eight years since the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock camps, and now the pipeline owner is claiming that Greenpeace led the movement to protect the water. Most water protectors said they didn't even know Greenpeace was there in 2016 and 2017. Energy Transfer is seeking up to $800 million in costs and damages, which is seen as a way to shut down Greenpeace.

With more than 8,000 documents sealed, the pipeline sought to limit any mention of widespread police violence, critical injuries to water protectors, TigerSwan's spy files, and the pipeline's history of spills, including a debated spill at Standing Rock.

In the final testimony, Energy Transfer Executive Chairman Kelcy Warren testified in a video deposition that he offered the Standing Rock Tribe money, a luxury resort, and to build a school, if the tribe would halt the protests and allow the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built. Dave Archambault, tribal chairman in 2016, said he remembers it differently.

North Dakota Monitor reporter Mary Steurer reports from the courtroom.


Energy Transfer board chair says he sought settlement with Standing Rock in 2016

Former Standing Rock chair says he only met with company to discuss safety

By:  - March 17, 2025 6:56 pm

Energy Transfer Executive Chairman Kelcy Warren claimed in court testimony he traveled to North Dakota in December 2016 to discuss a settlement with then-tribal chair David Archambault II to end protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“I said, ‘David, I’m here to make a deal with you,’” Warren said in a video deposition shown to jurors last week during a trial involving Energy Transfer and Greenpeace. “‘What do you want? Money? Land?’”

March 14, 2025

Apache Stronghold: U.S. Give-Away would Destroy Spiritual Home of Apache


Courtesy Apache Stronghold

Apache Stronghold: U.S. Give-Away would Destroy Spiritual Home of Apache



By Wendsler Nosie, Apache Stronghold, March 13, 2025

In the heart of Tonto National Forest in Arizona lies a place that my people, the Western Apache, still hold above all others. This place is Chi'chil BiƂdagoteel, also known as Oak Flat. To us, it is more than a stretch of land; it is sacred and holy. It is where our ancestors walked, where we gather to pray, to carry out ceremonies passed down through generations, and to speak to our Creator. This land is part of who we are as a people, and its spirit is bound to our own.

Klee Benally 'Non-Profit Industrial Complex is Designed to Manage and Neutralize Radical Organizing'



Klee Benally in Rennes, France. Photo by Christine Prat who has translated his book into French.

Klee Benally 'Non-Profit Industrial Complex is Designed to Manage and Neutralize Radical Organizing'

Our readers asked us to republish this article written by Klee Benally, Dine'. Klee's book published before he passed in 2023 provides more details, No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.

Smash the Non-Profit Indigenous Complex! Smash Capitalism!

Indigenous non-profits are the problem.

The Non-profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) is a system of relationships designed by colonial and capitalist forces to manage and neutralize effective radical organizing.

By Indigenous Action, Oct. 8, 2021
Translation into French by Christine Prat

The NPIC is inherently extractive and colonial. 


The NPIC was established to manage social and environmental groups with the same structure as corporations. Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) co-opt movement momentum into campaigns they manage to control and capitalize off of.

Based on the charity model, NPOs focus their resources on building organizational power and not community power thereby stripping essential resources from front-line radical liberatory organizing, while reproducing or prolonging inequality and social hierarchies.

March 12, 2025