Very bad news: During a pandemic, TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) announced that the final portions of Keystone XL fossil fuel pipeline begin construction in eastern Montana during the weekend of 28/29 March 2020, just as South Dakota’s Governor Kristi Noem finally got her way on 24 March 2020 and formally signed into law new draconian “riot-boosting” legislation which establishes severe legal and financial penalties for those “interrupting” fossil fuel infrastructure, meant to target and intimidate Indigenous activists demonstrating against the pipeline.
On 17 March 2020, leaders from Rosebud Sioux communities and Fort
Belknap Indian Community cited the covid pandemic when they filed an
emergency temporary restraining order against TC Energy in an attempt to
prevent oil crew workers from moving into the construction area (a
hearing on the restraining order is set for mid-April).
The governor’s office said that Kristi Noem signed the so-called “riot-boosting” anti-protesting bill into law on Tuesday, 24 March 2020. A similar law in the state was struck down in 2019. Observers say the riot-boosting laws are clearly meant to intimidate Indigenous activists specifically. The pipeline will pass under the longest undammed river in the
contiguous US; it passes along the border of the Fort Peck reservation;
and it will also pass by close to Pine Ridge. The US Dep@rtment of
H0mel@nd Security calls the pipeline critical infrastructure, allowing construction to continue during the pandemic.
This
construction comes after Rosebud Sioux and Fort Belknap Indian Community
leaders continue to confront the pipeline in Montana federal courts, while Oglala / Lakota and other Native activists continue to confront Noem’s project of criminalizing dissent.
In South Dakota, in 2019 and early 2020, local sheriffs and other c0ps
have been attending “civil disturbance workshops,” and they’ve been
advising county commissioners and other state officials to also
attend “civil disturbance workshops” and apply for “grants’ from
Canadian oil pipeline developer TC Energy in anticipation of protests against TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline.
[See: The Dickinson Press: “Riot boosting bill goes to South Dakota House floor,” 12 February 2020.]
Throughout 2019, Oglala / Lakota and other local Native communiities
consistently criticized the South Dakota
governor’s support of so-called “riot-boosting” legislation which would’ve severely punished
activists protesting or even “encouraging” protesting against pipeline
construction; during the dispute, in May 2019, the leadership at Pine
Ridge reservation unanimously voted to ban South Dakota governor, Kristi
Noem, from entering the reservation until and unless she rescinded her
support of the law. The ACLU and a local judge eventually had the
legislation dismissed as unconstitutional.
On 22 January 2020, though, the White House and US Department of
the Interior announced that they were granting a critically important
“right of way” permit for the construction of Keystone XL pipeline
on about 45 miles of land in eastern Montana. The Keystone XL pipeline had
basically been stalled in 2015 by the former US presidential
administration. The key roadblock to building the pipeline? The US federal
government still hadn’t granted Keystone XL and TransCanada access to
some BLM land in eastern Montana.
On 29 January 2020, that same notorious riot-boosting”law that got South Dakota governor Kristi Noem banned from Pine Ridge?
On this day, Governor Noem formally announced before state congress that she will again reintroduce a
slightly altered version of the law before the legislature this year.
6 February 2020: ACLU sues State of Montana to gain access to the
state’s Department of Justice plans for policing and countering protests
against Keystone XL pipeline construction.
On 18 February 2020, activists, many from Oglala / Lakota communities at Pine Ridge, demonstrated at the South Dakota capitol in defiance of Noem’s riot-boosting legislation, which the House of Representatives ended up passing on this same day.
During the week of 24 March 2020, Noem formally signed the riot-boosting legislation.
This is what the riot-boosting laws are designed to do:
Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma – a state that, like North Dakota, is
greatly dependent on the fossil-fuel industry – introduced legislation to
make sure nothing like the Standing Rock protests happened there. In
2017, Governor Mary Fallin signed a law that imposed a felony charge and
a minimum $10,000 fine on anyone who enters pipeline property to
“impede or inhibit operations of the facility.” If they successfully
“impede or inhibit operations,” the charge is $100,000 or ten years in
jail.
[…] But Oklahoma’s new trespassing law also holds liable “anyone who
compensates, remunerates or provides consideration to someone who causes
damage while trespassing,” according to Public Radio Tulsa.
The wording is almost deliberately vague, easily covering organizations
and environmental groups that might even be only tangentially related
to the person charged with trespassing. And a provision in the bill
states that just an arrest – not a conviction – is enough to trigger that
liability. Other states quickly followed Oklahoma. […] South Dakota introduced bills
that not only impose civil penalties on anyone who “directs, advises,
encourages, or solicits other persons participating” in protest riots,
but also establish an extra fund to pay for the costs of policing
pipeline construction. [From: Luke Darby for GQ. “Red States are Criminalizing Speech to Wage War on Environmental Activists.” 7 June 2019.]
‘The new proposal [Noem’s law] sailed through a House committee on Wednesday [12 February 2020] as
Native American groups testified, prayed and protested at the Capitol.
[…]
Lester Thompson, the chairman of the Crow
Creek Sioux Tribe, said the First Amendment already protects a person’s
to protest. He said the law would put protesters in a defensive
position, vulnerable to laws that do not make it clear what constitutes
violence during a riot.“It could be me raising my
fist,” said Derrick Marks, a committee member of the Yankton Sioux
Tribe. “Is that considered riot boosting? Is that considered violence?“’ [From: Stephen Groves for AP, 12 February 2020.]
“The
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe feels it’s a constitutional experiment that
was wrong,” Bald Eagle said.“Because
they couldn’t create criminals, they’re trying to make civil penalties
in a constitutional experiment that is also wrong.”
[…] [From:
Shannon Marvel for The Dickinson Press. “Riot boosting bill goes to South Dakota House floor” 12 February
2020.]
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