A Scar On The Land And In Our Hearts

A Scar On The Land & In Our Hearts

Obviously, everyone is aware of the “war” going on in North Dakota in recent months. Dakota Access is building a pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois to extract crude oil from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations. This project was started by despicable Capitalists who care about nothing other than profits. This is a crime against nature. These greedy people are contributing to habitat destruction and the poisoning of water in an area that supports millions of lives. And they are doing it to continue a technology that, by all rights, should have been eliminated decades ago. That having being stated, it is about much more than that. This is an area considered sacred by Indigenous people – a people that have been the victims of genocide dating back more than five centuries.

I wonder how the Christian business people so cold-heartedly making life and death decisions about this would feel if a corporate entity were to knock down every Christian church in North America and build things like nuclear reactors, toxic waste landfills, farm factories and monstrous industrial facilities, causing life-threatening pollution of drinking water and spewing toxin-laden smoke into the air they breathe every day.

I wonder if they have even given a moment’s thought to how their corrupt, murderous behavior is affecting millions of people and animals who not only will not benefit from this project, but will suffer the consequences.

Being a descendant of European invaders I don’t feel I have the right to go into details about the spiritual aspect of this. I will leave that to those who know. This essay is meant to show the people who either support this corporate obscenity or who are indifferent about the effect it is having on so many people, that this is serious. This is one of those moments in history when so much is at stake that we need to break out of our apathy and complacency and ponder the meaning of our existence as a race.

How will we feel about our lives if we do not stand on the moral side of this seminal event in modern history? It is not acceptable to sit by and allow murderous and suicidal destruction to take place. That is moral cowardice. It’s long past time for the people of this country to take a stand against evil. Corruption, cowardice and violent indifference should not be what we are remembered for.

The following is from the Organic Consumers Association. They wrote about this from their own perspective:

Rock Solid: #NoDAPL

Imagine how you’d feel if Monsanto plowed up your backyard to plant GMO crops (and spray them with Roundup)—and the state sent in armed troops to support Monsanto’s “rights.”

You’d defend your home, your soil, your water, your right to a safe, healthy environment.

You’d do what our fellow Earth defenders in North Dakota are doing. You’d stand up against corporate exploitation of Earth’s most precious natural resources.

Organic Consumers Stand with Standing Rock: Donate to help defeat the Dakota Access pipeline. Donate to support the protestors camp or to their legal defense fund.

A journalist recently called the 1,172-mile, $3.7-billion-dollar Dakota Access pipeline a “scar across the face of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.”

True in the literal sense. But figuratively, this destructive project will also go down in history as a scar across our entire nation. Unless we come together to stop it.

In a time when climate scientists are sounding alarms right and left, when politicians are giving lip service to zero emissions, Big Oil is strong arming its way to yet another disastrous project in the name of short-term gain for a few, at the expense of our future.

Today we ask that you not think of yourself as a food activist. That you not wear the label of environmental activist, anti-fracking activist, climate activist, anti-war activist, human rights activist—or any other narrowly defined, issue-specific activist.

Instead we ask you to connect the dots between all of the issues we are so passionate about. To focus on how Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Banks, Big Biotech and all the other “Bigs” collude behind the scenes to rob us of the right to the resources required to support life on earth.

November 15 has been designated as a day of protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. From now through November 15, we’re asking the food movement to stand with Standing Rock. Because in the end, every loss against corporations that foul the Earth is a loss for all of us.

We are in this together. We are so much more powerful when we work as one movement, toward health and justice for all.

TAKE ACTION: Organic Consumers Stand with Standing Rock: Donate to help defeat the Dakota Access pipeline.

YOu can mail your check to: Sacred Stone Camp, P.O. Box 1011, Fort Yates, ND 58538

Donate to the protestors’ legal defense fund. To save the group processing fees, you can also donate directly to their PayPal account at freshetcollective@gmail.com

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*By the way, how many people are aware that the Dakota Access Pipeline is only part of the story here? The Energy Transfer Crude Oil Company is building a pipeline from Illinois to Texas in partnership with Dakota Access. This pipeline would bring this same crude oil to a refinery in Nederland, Texas. So, for those along THAT path, if you’re thinking that this doesn’t directly affect YOUR health – think again.