Now is a critical time for we at the Land Stewardship Project to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux, who are resisting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. We need to take action with them in their fight and end the construction of this pipeline. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the governor of North Dakota have announced that they are closing access to the the Oceti Sakowin camp on Monday, Dec. 5. That makes our support more critical than ever.

Call the White House at 202-456-1111 and ask officials to stand with Standing Rock, stop the Army Corps and the state of North Dakota from closing the camp, and halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

At Standing Rock, we see a struggle in which a corporation is putting profits above the interests of people who have inhabited that land for generations. The Standing Rock Sioux are leading the fight against unrestrained corporate power that wants to override a local community’s rights, and abuse water and the land. We need to honor and work with native communities to build up rural life instead of continuing to watch corporations and their allies in government add to the historic denigration of their culture and lands.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline that would stretch from the Bakken oilfields in North Dakota, through South Dakota and Iowa, to Illinois. As the pipeline endangers tribal lands, farmland and public water sources, it threatens to wreak havoc on the very resources that are essential to our survival while violating the rights of native communities.

The pipeline, however, is only one project in an extensive network that includes leaking pipelines, exploding rail cars, frac sand mines and hydraulic fracturing sites that put precious water in danger. The fossil fuel industry has stretched its influence and increased risk to the land and people throughout our Midwestern communities.

At LSP, our members are not new to standing up to this destructive industry. In southeastern Minnesota, LSP members just last week won a fight against frac sand mining by passing a ban in Winona County. Frac sand mines destroy farmland, pollute air and water, and extract wealth from local economies. The frac sand is then used to supply hydraulic fracturing operations, which produce the same fracked oil that would flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline. From every grain of frac sand that is mined in the Driftless Region to every barrel of oil that is shipped across the Great Plains, we cannot allow the continued abuse of our rural communities.

At the Land Stewardship Project we see standing with the Standing Rock Sioux and stopping this awful pipeline as an issue of racial, social and economic justice. We need to take action today.

Call the White House at 202-456-1111 and ask officials to stand with Standing Rock, stop the Army Corps of Engineers from closing the camp, and halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

For more information on how to best support the people standing up to the Dakota Access Pipeline project, see the Oceti Sakowin Camp website.