In this piece, 23-year-old Jackie Fielder explains why indigenous people in the United States are calling for groups and individuals to divest from big banks that finance oil pipeline projects. Jackie is a Mnicoujou Lakota, Mandan, and Hidatsa organizer with Mazaska Talks, founder of the San Francisco Defund DAPL Coalition, and a delegate of the WECAN Autumn Indigenous Women’s Divestment Delegation.

February was a particularly difficult month for indigenous activists around Turtle Island (North America). The month marks one year since the United States government deployed a handful of law enforcement officers to evict non-violent, unarmed Water Protectors from the #NoDAPL resistance camps that stood for 10 months.

From April 2016 to February 2017, thousands of indigenous people and their accomplices from around the world faced surveillance, rubber bullets, attack dogs, concussion grenades, and water cannons in subfreezing temperatures to denounce the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Thanks to this historic gathering on Lakota treaty territory, for the first time, many Americans saw for themselves the still-frayed relationship between Native Americans and the United States government. Through both amateur social media documenters and progressive independent media, we witnessed a revival of the 19th century Indian Wars, with the United States using Humvees instead of horses, informants instead of scouts, and protecting a multi-billion dollar oil company instead of protecting gold mining settlers. As the world wonders whatever happened to the #NoDAPL movement, indigenous people around Turtle Island are gearing up to shut down three more tar sands pipelines. To fight all these pipelines at once, we are calling on people around the world to divest from the banks financing our oppression.

To understand how banks are connected to the oppression of indigenous peoples, one must first understand that, contrary to popular belief, banks do not actually hold your money in a vault; they lend it. Because deposits are the primary source of funds for almost every bank, some of the deposits you make to one of these big banks will be loaned to corporations, including private prisons, oil companies, and assault weapon manufacturers. The profit the banks make is the difference between the low interest rates they pay depositors and the high interest rates debtors, like corporations, pay them to borrow the money.

Environmental organizations like Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Oil Change International, and Greenpeace have conducted research this past year to highlight the banks loaning funds to pipeline companies. Unfortunately, they found that almost every major bank is complicit in some pipeline company’s financing. The organizations have named dozens of other big banks as financiers of companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline and three proposed tar sands pipelines: Trans Mountain, Line 3, and Keystone XL.

Why target banks rather than elected representatives or the courts? Indigenous advocates of divestment believe that as long as oil companies have big banks in their corner, they have the funding they need to sail through or skirt legal processes, influence politicians, and leave the public to deal with their environmental destruction.

Trump’s election victory spelled out disaster for the #NoDAPL movement based on his financial ties to and appointments of oil and pipeline moguls. He appointed former CEO of Exxon Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state, and he was backed by Energy Transfer Partners — Dakota Access, LLC’s parent company — CEO Kelcy Warren, who donated $100,000 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee with the GOP, according to the Washington Post. And his personal investments have been tied to oil, too: Trump’s spokeswoman could not confirm if Trump had sold his stock in Phillips 66, which owns a quarter of the Dakota Access Pipeline; and his pick for energy secretary, Rick Perry, used to serve as a board member of Energy Transfer Partners.