A mock oil pipeline is carried during a demonstration near the White House, in Washington, against the construction of the planned Keystone XL pipeline. (File photo)
Leaders of Native American tribes have pulled out of talks with US federal officials to express their outrage over a planned oil pipeline and the contamination of their ancestral lands as a result of the project.
The leaders from 11 tribes walked out of a meeting in Rapid City on May 16, and called on US President Barack Obama to engage in direct negotiations with them over the Keystone XL pipeline.
Å“I will only meet with President Obama,” Bryan Brewer, the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said.
He added that talking directly with the US president were the only true way to conduct nation-to-nation talks.
The 1,897-kilometer (1,179-mile) Keystone XL pipeline, worth USD 7 billion, would pump oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries.
The pipeline requires approval by the Obama administration because it crosses an international border.
Casey Camp-Horinek, an elder with the Oklahoma-based Southern Ponca Tribe, compared the environmental harms of the pipeline to the miseries and dislocation of thousands of people from her tribe during European colonization.
Å“We find ourselves victims of another form of genocide, and it’s environmental genocide, and it’s caused by the extractive industries,” she said.
Robin LeBeau, a council representative for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe based in South Dakota, vowed to oppose the construction of the pipeline even if that meant standing in front of bulldozers.
Å“What the State Department, what President Obama needs to hear from us, is that we are going to be taking direct action,” she said.
LeBeau said the pipeline would run directly through her tribe’s traditional burial grounds near Bridger, South Dakota.
She urged all Native American tribes to unify in their efforts to stop the construction of the pipeline.
Å“I believe this is going to be one of the biggest battles we are ever going to have,” LeBeau said.
Members of the Indigenous Council of Nebraska, the Lincoln Indian Center and a grassroots movement from Canada called Idle No More have called on Obama to resist political pressure and disallow the pipeline.
They say the project represents a threat to soil, water and the atmosphere through the emission of more greenhouse gases.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that the Keystone XL pipeline will increase annual US carbon pollution emissions by up to 27.6 million metric tons.
MP/HJL
This article originally appeared on : Press TV