The Keystone XL pipeline would increase the likelihood of rape among American Indian tribes if allowed to move forward, said a coalition of tribal groups Monday in vowing to go to war with President Trump over his orders to expedite pipeline construction.
“We have the right to say we don’t want these pipelines. Not only because it’s going to cause devastation to the waterways and to the land … but also one of the main concerns that we have is the man camps that come along with these pipelines,” Joye Braun with the Cheyenne River Sioux said on a call with reporters.
“And we know that these man camps that there are rapes in these man camps,” said Braun, a lead organizer for the tribe. “That women go missing in these man camps. That there have been incidents of 4-year-olds … that have been raped in these man camps. And we don’t want that to happen to our people.”
Braun was joined by a number of tribes and indigenous groups that are girding up with environmentalists to oppose construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines in the wake of Trump’s directives last week to expedite approval of the projects.
The Keystone XL would cross the border from Canada into the upper Midwest, which then would connect to the existing Keystone segment further south. The project is meant to connect Canada’s oil sands in Alberta to U.S. refiners on the Gulf Coast.
The Dakota Access pipeline would move oil from the shale drilling fields of North Dakota to refiners 1,100 miles east.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was one of the main groups opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline last year, which become an issue during the presidential elections. Braun said her tribe was one of the first to align with Standing Rock to block the project.
Keystone XL would be built less than a mile from the Cheyenne-Sioux reservation, she said. If an oil spill occurred, it would affect the tribe’s drinking water supply in 30 minutes, affecting 14,000 tribal people. That is a “direct threat to the great Sioux Nation,” she added.
Braun’s tribe intervened in the Keystone XL review process at the South Dakota utility commission before former President Barack Obama rejected the pipeline in November 2015 over concerns it would be counterproductive to the goals of the Paris climate change agreement, reached the next month.
By reversing Obama’s decision, “Donald Trump has declared war on indigenous nations across the country,” Braun said. “This pipeline runs right through the traditional lands of the great Sioux Nation. Attacks on our lands, sovereignty and health must stop.”
Braun said the resistance will be through the use of protest camps set up along the pipeline route once construction commences.
“We will fight using prayer and non-violent direct action to stop Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and we will not back down,” Braun said.
