In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which allowed the United States government to forcibly remove all Native-American tribes from the lands they occupied in Florida, Georgia and other southeastern states.
The Cherokee Nation and members of other tribes brought suit against the removals on the ground that they were sovereign nations to whom the laws of the states did not apply.
The cases went to the United States Supreme Court which, in an opinion signed by Chief Justice John Marshall, agreed with the tribes. This led to Jackson’s infamous observation that “Chief Justice Marshall has rendered his opinion, now let him enforce it.”
Despite the fact that the Indian Removal Act mandated that the government negotiate removal treaties with the tribes, fairly, voluntarily and freely, it was ignored.
The forcible removal of the tribes began with the Choctaw Nation. The United States Army threatened to invade and members of the Nation were forced to walk, some in chains, through the winter weather of 1831 without food, supplies or other assistance from the government to the lands set aside for them in Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way and one of the tribal leaders gave the journey the name, “the Trail of Tears and Death.”
The next tribe to be removed was the Creek Nation. On their forced march, 3,500 of the 15,000 people perished due to the conditions.
The Cherokee Nation was divided over whether to negotiate a treaty for compensation for their lands or to resist. By 1838, only 2,000 members had moved and the Van Buren Administration dispatched 7,000 Army troops to force the removal. The members of the tribe were forced into stockades at gunpoint while white settlers looted their homes.
During the course of this forced march of 1,200 miles, disease and starvation took the lives of 5,000 Cherokee people.
During the past four months the Standing Rock Sioux, members of other tribes and supporters have been camped in North Dakota protesting the Dakota Access pipeline which threatens their water supply and ancestral burial grounds.
Hundreds have been arrested and law enforcement have used rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures in an effort to break up the protests and drive them from their encampment.
Last week, the protesters appeared to win a victory when the Army Corp of Engineers announced they would not approve an easement to complete the pipeline under the Missouri River and requiring the pipeline to be rerouted.
The decision by the Corp of Engineers was criticized immediately by Speaker of the House of Representative and human amoeba, Paul Ryan, who tweeted that it was “big government decision making at its worst” and that he was looking forward “to putting the anti-energy presidency behind us.”
The Company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, immediately went to court in Washington, D.C. to challenge the decision.
I suspect this victory will prove to be a pyrrhic one and short-lived.
Until very recently the President-Elect, Donald Trump, was an investor in Energy Transfer Partners.
The Company’s Chief Executive, Kelcey Warren, donated over $ 100,000 to Trump’s campaign.
Next month, as President, Trump will be able to order the Corp of Engineers to reverse its decision and allow the pipeline to be completed.
As I write this, I can’t help but ponder what America’s reaction would be if Energy Tranfer Partners proposed constructing a pipeline through Arlington National Cemetery or the battlefield at Gettysburg?
How would we react, locally, if they proposed building one that ran under Skaneateles Lake or through St. Agnes or Oakwood Cemeteries?
The sound and the fury of the protests would be deafening.
We would be demanding that our elected officials, at all levels, reverse this outrage.
And we don’t even have a treaty that protects us.
Shakespeare, once wrote; “What is past is prologue.”
I fear that we are about to witness that again.