Stand with Standing Rock

In a Friday letter to President Obama, the United States Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, a coalition of more than 1,200 archeologists, museum directors, and historians from institutions including the Smithsonian and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries denounced the deliberate destruction of Standing Rock Sioux ancestral burial sites in North Dakota.

As archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and museum workers committed to responsible stewardship, we are invested in the preservation and interpretation of archaeological and cultural heritage for the common good. We join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in denouncing the recent destruction of ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people. On Saturday, September 3, 2016, the company behind the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline project bulldozed land containing Native American burial grounds, grave markers, and artifacts–including ancient cairns and stone prayer rings. The construction crews, flanked by private security and canine squads, arrived just hours after the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lawyers disclosed the location of the recently discovered site in federal court filings. Former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz called the discovery of the site “one of the most significant archeological finds in North Dakota in many years.” “This demolition is devastating,” Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said. “These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground.”

The letter goes on to address the historical abuse of American Indian people and their lands and the contribution oil extraction is making to climate change. They ask for a “thorough environmental impact statement and cultural resources survey on the pipeline’s route, with proper consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.”

While a short portion of the pipeline construction has been halted by the Obama Administration until this survey can be done, construction continues elsewhere on the pipeline. It’s significant to have the writers of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act forcefully admonish the president’s administration to be more thorough on the entire path of the pipeline.

More background on the resistance to DAPL below the fold.