Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Brings Pipeline Opposition to Meeting With Obama

Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier met with President Barack Obama this week to press the administration on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the increasingly militarized police response to the months-long protest encampments near Standing Rock. FSRN’s Nell Abram spoke with Chairman Frazier shortly after that meeting.

The Meeting, in the Chairman’s Own Words

Nell Abram: Chairman Frazier, thanks for joining us on FSRN. You spoke with President Obama and asked him to protect the rights of the Lakota people, their sacred sites, and the waters of the Missouri River. How did your conversation go?

Harold Frazier: You know, I was a little hopeful, but I guess I kind of got what I expected. There’s court cases proceeding. One of the things they assured me is that he is going to follow, continue the consultation process, which three agencies put in place, and he’s reviewing the statutes, so that was good, because I think that’s important, that the laws that govern oil pipelines are followed. I’m happy that he is assuring us that he will be reviewing the laws.

Frazier also raised concerns about the treatment of protesters and tribal members at the protest camps, including reports that federal investigators sent to the site have focused more on identifying individuals than documenting the incidents themselves.

Frazier: I don’t know who the monitors are. I know, like Chairman Archambault, I had written a letter about three weeks ago, and I was told by the FBI that there was a representative from the Department of Justice that went to the site and to the camp. They asked me to come up with names of our members to visit with them. As a matter of fact, we have a tribal member who was bitten by one of the attack dogs back on Labor Day, but I wasn’t able to be there. Our people said they were kind of disappointed a little bit, because when they met with the DOJ representative, the FBI was there and he was just asking for names of individuals versus listening to the stories. That’s something that’s really going on — the local media is really characterizing the protectors as violent people, thieves, which is not true at all.

A Meeting Set Against Months of Escalating Conflict

Frazier’s meeting came amid weeks of mounting tension at the Standing Rock protest encampments in North Dakota, where the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and its neighboring Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have led opposition to the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, a project designed to carry roughly 470,000 barrels of oil daily across four states. The pipeline’s planned route passes within half a mile of the Standing Rock reservation and crosses the Missouri River, the primary water source for both tribes — a fact at the center of their opposition, given the risk a pipeline rupture would pose to their drinking water supply.

By the time of Frazier’s meeting, more than 300 tribal nations had sent representatives or expressed solidarity with the protest camps, according to reporting from NBC News — a scale of intertribal mobilization advocates have described as unprecedented in decades. Law enforcement’s response to the encampments had drawn its own scrutiny well before Frazier’s meeting: protesters and tribal leaders have accused police of using pepper spray, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades against demonstrators, according to Time’s coverage of the protests, and Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman was herself arrested while covering the protests on allegations of trespassing after footage she captured showed security personnel allowing dogs to charge at demonstrators.

Cautious Optimism, Not Resolution

Frazier’s cautious tone in his FSRN interview reflected a broader pattern among tribal leaders responding to the Obama administration in this period: genuine appreciation that the president was engaging directly, paired with real skepticism that engagement alone would produce a different outcome. Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II struck a similar note days later, telling reporters he was encouraged that Obama had acknowledged tribal concerns about sacred sites, while insisting that nothing short of a full environmental review of the pipeline would constitute a real resolution, according to Indianz’s coverage of tribal leaders’ response.

That skepticism proved well-founded in the short term. Despite Frazier’s meeting and Obama’s public remarks, no federal agency had contacted the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe about any change to the pipeline’s route in the weeks that followed, Frazier later noted — even as lawsuits filed by the Cheyenne River Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux, and Yankton Sioux tribes continued moving through federal court, ensuring the fight over Dakota Access would extend well beyond the remaining months of Obama’s presidency.

For more coverage of Indigenous land and water rights struggles, see our related piece on energy companies and fracking opposition in Argentina, or browse our full Environment archive.