Valley activists back Sioux tribe in ND pipeline fight

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

alcorn@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Local native Americans and supporters joined others across the country in a national day of action calling for rejection of the Dakota Access Pipeline and asking President Barack Obama to permanently stop the project.

The supporters carried signs with messages including “We stand with Standing Rock” and “In solidarity with Native Tribes.” Ronda Smith of Youngstown, among them, said: “I’m here to do whatever I can to straighten the government out, whether it is the pipeline or fracking.”

The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline would carry fracked oil from North Dakota through Iowa and Indiana to Illinois, cutting under the Missouri River less than a mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux’s drinking-water supply as well as disrupting the tribe’s sacred and historical land pipeline, opponents say.

Protesters say the pipeline not only would endanger the Standing Rock Sioux’s drinking water but also that of several million other people downstream.

An encampment of several thousand protesters has emerged in North Dakota at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. They’ve gathered to try to stop the oil pipeline being built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, according to reports.

The Youngstown rally, from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday in Central Square, drew about 30 people, several with native American roots.

“There is a loss of life in nature and in the environment when a pipeline goes through,” said Maria Montanez of Youngstown, a Puerto Rican who traces her native American blood to the Tiano Tribe who lived in Puerto Rico before the Spanish came.

“When a pipeline goes through ... it destroys everything in its path,” Montanez said.

Further, she said: “It will not make America less dependent on foreign oil because it is shipped overseas to make more money.”

Robert Gilcher, who was raised in the Newton Falls area by his grandmother, Seline Fall, a full-blooded Cherokee, said he was at the rally to fight for treaty rights for native Americans, which he said “have been violated for centuries.”

“These [the Standing Rock Sioux] are my native brothers and sisters,” said Danielle Hergenrader of Youngstown.

“The government keeps screwing over the Indians. It gave us land on which nothing would grow and now want to pollute and destroy our sacred lands. We’re trying to protect our people and future families,” said Hergenrader, who is part Mohawk.

The national protest is to show “solidarity with indigenous water protectors in North Dakota,” said Judy Vershum of Canfield Township.

“We call on President Obama to remove the permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Vershum said.

“Locally, we have our own water warriors who are fighting to protect the Meander Reservoir water from fracking and injection wells,” she said.