All Words, Not Much Substance, Again As Usual -- Yes, Talking About President Obama And His Commitments To Native Americans

The link is here.

The article beings:

When President Barack Obama paid his much-ballyhooed visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota – a rare presidential visit to Indian country – tribal sovereignty was a big part of the narrative. The President touted policies like the Violence Against Women Act, which gave tribes the authority to prosecute crimes committed on Indian lands by non-tribal members.

“I know that throughout history, the United States often didn’t give the nation-to-nation relationship the respect that it deserved,” the President said during his brief address in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. “So I promised when I ran to be a President who’d change that — a President who honors our sacred trust, and who respects your sovereignty, and upholds treaty obligations, and who works with you in a spirit of true partnership, in mutual respect, to give our children the future that they deserve.”

Lofty rhetoric, to be sure, but just a week after the President spoke those words a member of his administration was before the House Natural Resources Committee to argue against a bill that would give tribes greater sovereignty in regulating oil and gas development on Indian land.

Something you’d think President Obama would support, given his promise to respect the sovereignty of the tribes.

Data points or the writer's contention:

• flaring of natural gas is seen as a problem in the Bakken
• the worse flaring appears to be on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation
• this is due to partly to a) pace of drilling; and, b) difficulty the terrain presents in laying pipeline (but I have a bit of a problem with "difficult terrain"; oil companies have worked with much more difficult terrain than encountered in North Dakota
• much of the problem appears to be due to federal red tape in permitting
• Native Americans, working with state, think they could solve problem more quickly without federal obstacles
• President Obama says "no"; Native Americans and the state are not smart enough to do this on their own; they need federal bureaucracy to do it right
• the rest of the state is doing much better in capturing natural gas rather than flaring it

And so it goes.

As they used to say, "White Man speaks with forked tongue." I would add the obvious but I won't.