Interviews for Resistance

Interviews for Resistance


Native Nations Rising with Kandi Mossett

March 16, 2017

Last Friday, March 10 was the Native Nations Rising march and gathering in Washington, D.C., a coming together of water protectors and indigenous leaders and organizers from around the country. They gathered to remind the Trump administration that they were not going away and that the struggle to stop the pipelines, the "black snake," would continue. But, says Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network, the gathering also allowed people to come together to refresh connections and to plan for the next steps.

I feel like it was a great success and it led people to work on all the other pipeline sites, because we do have Keystone XL back on because of Donald Trump. There are already camps. There is a camp in South Dakota already near the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. They are fighting, again, the same way they did before because the Dakota Access Pipeline encampment, all of that was a result of the success we had with Keystone XL. Now, all the people are going back to Keystone XL to continue to fight that. But there are people going to the Two Rivers Camp in Texas to fight against the Trans Pecos Pipeline which is the same company, Energy Transfer Partners. To continue to the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, a lot of people are going to Louisiana where a camp is being set up against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is the one that will connect to the Dakota Access Pipeline in Illinois so that the oil can continue to go down to Port Arthur, Texas where it will be refined and then shipped to foreign markets. It is all part of the same project. A lot of people didn’t understand that until they went to D.C. and saw the different information and made that connection that we need to continue to fight.
It is so much bigger than Standing Rock and one pipeline. In addition to that, we are arranging toxic tours and having people come to North Dakota to see the Bakken and the shale oil formation so that they can see where the oil is coming from and to help push more bans and moratoriums on fracking.

Interviews for Resistance is a syndicated series of interviews with organizers, agitators and troublemakers, available twice weekly as text and podcast. Previous interviews here.