PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Edited and placed this Opinion piece in the Washington Post. The day it ran, then-President Obama spoke publicly on the issue for the first time and one month later ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to issue an environmental impact statement on the project
Why it’s Right to Keep the Brakes on the Dakota Access Pipeline
In 2014, President Obama visited the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. While there, he read aloud these words from Chief Sitting Bull: “Let’s put our minds together to see what we can build for our children.”
Today, it is the children of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who have put their minds together to help envision a safe future for themselves and who are leading an international campaign to protect their drinking water — and the drinking water of 17 million people downstream — from the threats posed by the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which would cross the Missouri River less than a mile upstream of their reservation.
Photo credit: Backbone Campaign