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Standing Rock Sioux tribe slams Donald Trump’s executive order on Dakota Access Pipeline

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday morning to revive the project 

Justin Carissimo
New York
Tuesday 24 January 2017 19:55 GMT
(Getty Images)

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe responded President Donald Trump’s executive order Tuesday that would allow construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline to move forward.

In a statement, the tribe said that the project would contaminate tribal water supply and it will take legal action against the order.

“We are not opposed to energy independence,” chairman David Archambault II said in a statement. We are opposed to reckless and politically motivated development projects, like DAPL, that ignore our treaty rights and risk our water. Creating a second Flint does not make America great again.”

After signing the executive order, President Trump ignore a reporter's question regarding the protesters at Standing Rock.


"Mr. Trump, any comment to the Standing Rock community and the protesters out there?" the reporter asked in the Oval Office after he finished signing five executive orders.

The president then put his head down and looked in the opposite direction. He then answered another question asking when he would make his Supreme Court nomination.

Mary Kathryn Nagle, an attorney and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, called on the new president to respect the sovereign-to-sovereign relationship between the country and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

“The current, incredibly high, rates of abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking against Native women in the Bakken region of North Dakota clearly demonstrate that the imposition of a rapid increase in oil extraction on or near tribal lands without the consent of the local Tribal Nations significantly threatens the safety of their citizens, and in particular, their women and children,” she told The Independent in an email.

“As a Native attorney working to restore safety for Native women and children, I urge President Trump to respect the sovereign-to-sovereign relationship between the United States and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.”

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