Native Americans Celebrate Keystone XL Cancellation

Native American groups long at the forefront of opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline are cheering President Biden’s revocation of a key permit, effectively shutting down the project, the Washington Examiner reports. Native Americans opposed the pipeline not only for its encroachment onto their land and the potential for toxic spills, but because of the dangers posed by man camps — temporary housing for workers building the pipeline. “Every time there’s an extraction from Mother Earth, indigenous women are most impacted,” Candi Brings Plenty, the Indigenous justice organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Examiner.

Philimon Two Eagle, a member of the Sicangu Lakota tribe in what is now Rosebud, South Dakota, said the pipeline would have added to the “historical wrong” against Native Americans and the long history of mistreatment by the U.S. government. “It is rare that a promise to our people is kept by the United States,” said Harold Frazier, the chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. (Washington Examiner)