Columbia Faculty Release Statement of Support for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

Friday, September 30, 2016

Over 40 Columbia University professors signed a letter in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Read the full letter below or click here.

 

Concerned Faculty
Columbia University
116th & Broadway
New York, NY 10027
 
Chairman Dave Archambault II
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Building 1 North Standing Rock Avenue
Fort Yates, ND 58530
September 4, 2016
 

A Statement of Support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

We the faculty of Columbia University stand in peaceful and politicized solidarity with Chairman Dave Archambault II, tribal members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and their allies against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. This project is not only a violation of treaty rights, but federal law. Although federal law requires The Army Corps of Engineers to consult with the tribe about its sovereign interests, construction began without meaningful consultation. The Army Corps of Engineers disregarded the concerns outlined by the tribe and issued permits to Dakota Access LLC to dig under the Missouri River. Such a move signals the US government’s ongoing disregard for tribal nations and their communities—a relationship that has been marked by genocide and structural injustice since the violent founding of the United States—in favor of corporate interests and profit. This is, and has always been, entirely unacceptable.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is an imminent threat to those living on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, as well as those who live near the pipeline and rely on water from the Missouri River. The pipeline is a dangerous, grave risk to a primary water source and would be an environmental assault on the community if a spill were to occur. Energy Transfer Partners has assured the people of Standing Rock that the pipeline would be closely monitored, but given the historical relations between Indigenous peoples and the United States, the tribe has little faith that their safety and interests will be upheld. The record on spillage is bleak. In 2012-2013, there were 300 oil pipeline breaks in North Dakota alone. The pipeline will also disturb burial grounds and sacred sites on the tribe’s ancestral treaty lands—its proposal marks violation on multiple fronts.

As a collective of scholars, some of whom come from and/or work alongside Indigenous communities, we understand the stakes associated with the propagation of US colonial interests; interests that place the extraction of fossil fuels over a fundamental right to access clean water and a desire to preserve and protect the planet. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are not just fighting for their own existence, but for those who are unable to do so and for all the future generations that follow.

Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline has been temporarily halted, due to the resistance efforts at Standing Rock (and pending a US federal court decision to be released on September 9th, 2016), but we know this fight is far from being over. The faculty of Columbia University will continue to stand with Chairman Archambault, the tribal members, and their allies who are heroically holding the line to stop the pipeline construction. This fight is the fight of all Native peoples and their allies struggling against the imposition of neoliberal development projects that continue to harm humans and homelands alike.

Sincerely,

(Columbia University Faculty, enter names and departmental affiliations)
 
Audra Simpson, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Paige West, Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Elizabeth Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor, Anthropology
 
John Pemberton, Professor, Anthropology
 
Marilyn Ivy, Professor, Anthropology
 
Nan Rothschild, Professor, Dept of Anthropology
 
Jean E. Howard, Department of English and Comparative Literature
 
Joseph Massad, Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
 
Sheldon Pollock, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
 
Steven Gregory, Professor, Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Research in African American Studies
 
Rosalind Morris, Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor
 
Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science, Department of Anthropology
 
Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Associate Professor of Modern Tibet, Department of East Asian Languages And Cultures
 
Wael Hallaq, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, MESAAS
 
Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History
 
Allison Busch, Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
 
Courtney Bender, Professor, Department of Religion
 
Gregory Mann, Professor, History Department
 
Felicity D Scott, Associate Professor, GSAPP
 
James Schamus, Professor of Professional Practice, School of the Arts
 
Timothy Mitchell, Professor, MESAAS
 
Elsa Stamatopoulou, Director, Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program, Institute for the Study of Human Rights/Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race/Anthropology.
 
Kellie Jones, Associate Professor, Art History and Archaeology
 
J. Blake Turner, Assistant Professor of Social Science (in Psychiatry) at CUMC
 
Wayne Proudfoot, Professor, Department of Religion
 
Patricia Dailey, Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature, 
Director, Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality
 
Natasha Lightfoot, Associate Professor, Department of History
 
Carole S. Vance, Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
E. Valentine Daniel, Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Kevin Fellezs, Assistant Professor, Music
 
Ben Orlove, Professor, International and Public Affairs, Earth Institute.
 
Karl Jacoby, Professor, History
 
Marie Lee, Adjunct Professor, Creative Writing
 
Mabel O. Wilson, Professor, Architecture
 
Deborah Paredez, Associate Professor of Professional Practice, School of the Arts & Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
 
Claudio Lomnitz, Professor, Department of Anthropology.
 
J.C. Salyer, Term Assistant Professor of Practice, Sociology 
 
Vanessa Agard-Jones, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Brinkley Messick, Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Andrew J. Nathan, Professor, Department of Political Science
 
Aaron Fox, Associate Professor, Department of Music
 
Catherine Fennell, Associate Professor, Department of  Anthropology
 
Ellie M. Hisama, Professor, Department of Music
 
Neferti Tadiar, Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality
 
E. Mara Green, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
 
Yvette Christiansë, Professor, English & Africana Studies
 
Celia E. Naylor, Associate Professor, Africana Studies and History
 
Deborah R. Coen, Professor, History
 
Manu Vimalassery, Term Assistant Professor, American Studies
 
Severin Fowles, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
 
Kaiama L. Glover, French and Africana Studies
 
Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English, Professor of Africana Studies
 
Nicholas Bartlett, Assistant Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
 
Lisa Tiersten, Professor, History
 
Elizabeth Hutchinson, Associate Professor, Art History and American Studies
 
Alex Pittman, Term Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality
 
Rosalyn Deutsche, Art History
 
Monica L. Miller, Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies
 
Deborah Valenze, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History
 
Debra Minkoff, Miriam Scharfman Zadek Family Professor of Sociology
 
Alexander Alberro, Professor, Art History
 
Najam Haider, Assistant Professor, Religion
 
Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism