In late March, the climate advocacy group Greenpeace was ordered to pay $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the oil company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The grassroots protests against DAPL in 2016 and 2017 were organized by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous water protectors. Greenpeace peacefully supported the protests but was charged with defamation by Energy Transfer. 

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by Cody Hall who reminds listeners of what happened at the Standing Rock protests and No DAPL movement against the incursion of the Energy Transfer oil pipeline. Hall says that the state’s focus on Greenpeace rather than the Indigenous activists is a strategy to control the narrative and send a message to other organizations that they can be targeted. Hall also says that the ruling erases how Standing Rock was an Indigenous-led movement of more than five hundred Indigenous groups. 

The North Dakota ruling in favor of Energy Transfer could have far reaching effects on first-amendment rights and is an alarming instance of a corporation using a lawsuit to intimidate activists. Greenpeace is appealing the verdict. This Wednesday, the organization, Independent Trail Monitors, asked the United Nations to investigate the verdict because of due process violations and attacks on free speech and Indigenous rights.

Cody Hall is a Lakota leader who participated in Standing Rock. He has been interviewed and quoted by media outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera, The Intercept, and Deadspin. He has also been a radio guest for Native American Calling. He founded the Oceti Sakowin Sports Council and the 7 Flames Lacrosse team and makes his home in Kansas City where he raises two daughters while also working towards the elimination of tribal appropriated names and images at one of the largest and oldest school districts in the Midwest.

Featured image of a pipeline protest via Leslie Peterson on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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