- The oil pipeline projects they are planning to do at Standing Rock are experiencing fierce conflicts because they jeopardize the Dakota Siux tribes’ life pattern. The Siux’s June sentence in federal court allows them to get the works of the Dakota Access oil pipeline suspended. Hundreds have been arrested and imprisoned in the protests that have taken place so far. They denounce the use of anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist tactics by the State.
Eight of the twelve poorest communities in the U.S. are in North and South Dakota, and they are all tribal communities, according to Nick Tilsen. According to him, the pipelines not only increase the situation of poverty, but they are also “pipelines to pass into the past,” which is why “Indian communities must be provided with the infrastructure of the future.”
They will start with the project of 300 KW with solar panels, and now they will start with the installation of windmills. The twelve communities that make up Standing Rock dream of living with renewable energy, although they are aware that it can’t be done overnight, they insist that “you have to start somewhere.”
Tilsen, who is the head of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, is designing several community resilience projects.
Several solar panels were previously installed by the Navajo Indians at the initiative of Wahleah Johns, member of the collective "Native Renewables".