DPJC Position Statement

Dakota Access Pipeline & TransPecos Pipeline
September 15, 2016

The Dallas Peace & Justice Center stands in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and all others at the Camp of the Sacred Stones as they oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline across sacred ancestral lands.

The DPJC deplores the disrespect and disregard the United States government and Energy Transfer Partners have shown toward indigenous people in the United States. We condemn the sense of entitlement demonstrated by these two entities as they conspired to ignore the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as Energy Transfer Partners builds a pipeline over legally recognized treaty territory without the free, prior and informed consent of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

We are also well aware of another E.T.P project that will cause irreversible harm to Texas’ landscape, history and the environment. The TransPecos Pipeline is designed to deliver natural gas from Texas to Mexico, the 143mile pipeline will move through the precious Big Bend area and come very close to Big Bend National Park, home of more than 1200 species of plants and 600 species of animals. We have grave concern for the future of our earth home as our country continues its dependence on nonrenewable fuels and the profits that come with its production. This case is an apt demonstration of how an addiction of this type can cause us to abandon our moral center and our long-range vision of our future.

The DPJC will continue to support the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline and all pipeline resisters, including our local activists resisting the TransPecos Pipeline.