This is addressed to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren:
We respectfully call on you to speak out about the situation at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, and to encourage other prominent national officials to join you in opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Our national media have portrayed the people at Standing Rock as “protesters” and “demonstrators.” They are neither. They are protectors, protecting our precious water, and they are doing so armed with nothing more and nothing less than prayer.
Even so, law enforcement and military officials have used weapons and the brutalizing, dehumanizing tactics of war against the protectors, our brothers and sisters, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our fellow citizens, while they have been engaged in peaceful prayer.
We believe that Standing Rock represents a pivotal moment for our country, one that forces us to confront our history, to examine our conscience, and to decide if we are a nation that will put oil industry profits ahead of the sovereignty of Native Americans, ahead of the right of future generations to have clean water.
More than 200 Native American tribes have united in common cause at Standing Rock, itself an historic event, in opposition to this pipeline.
In 2014, in a column you wrote in opposition to the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline that threatened to cross parts of western Massachusetts, you stated:
“. . we have an obligation wherever possible to focus our investments on the clean technologies of the future – not the dirty fuels of the past – and to minimize the environmental impact of all our energy infrastructure projects. We can do better – and we should.”
Well said, senator.
As your supportive constituents, we pray that you will feel that same sense of obligation and speak to our nation about the situation at Standing Rock and the historic nature of what is happening there.
There is still a chance for us to do better, and we should.
Deb Tyler, of Wendell, is a member of the Wendell Pipeline Affinity Group of the Sugar Shack Alliance. Co-signers are Susan Theberge, of Amherst, and Irvine Sobelman, of Northampton, members of the Climate Action Now Western Massachusetts Steering Committee.