I haven’t been paying much attention to the Keystone XL debacle recently, as it hadn’t been on my radar, but now the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council has forced it back to the forefront:
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council voted to ban Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) from its Pine Ridge Reservation on Wednesday and sent her a sharply-worded letter on Thursday.
“If you do not honor this directive,” wrote the tribe’s president, Julian Bear Runner, “… we will have no choice but to banish you.” …
Bear Runner pledged that the ban would last until Noem rescinds her support for a pair of laws the state passed in response to promised demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline project. The laws, which codify “riot boosting,” are designed to prevent protests that may disrupt pipeline construction.
Critics say the legislation was designed to prevent the sort of large-scale, high-profile protests that unfolded over the Dakota Access pipeline in neighboring North Dakota, which began in 2016 and lasted for months. Demonstrations there led to more than 750 arrests, and the policing effort cost the state $38 million.
Noem announced the bills in the waning days of the year’s legislative session, and the state’s Republican majorities pushed them through the House and Senate in just 72 hours.
“My pipeline bills make clear that we will not let rioters control our economic development,” Noem said in a statement after she signed the bills into law in late March.
I don’t have much more to add, other than to note that it’s inappropriate for a governor of a state to be so blatantly on the side of “economic development,” especially that which could prove disastrous for the state – and then push the poorest members of the state (yeah, it may not be accurate to suggest tribe members are also South Dakotans, but you take my point) to take the biggest risk for the lowest payback. Frankly, her misunderstanding of the state’s role is both dishonorable and goes against the ideological principles most GOP members hold, which is that the state should get out of the way and let the free market do what it will.
