The transfer was celebrated by members of the Ponca Tribe as well as environmental advocates who oppose the construction of the pipeline and continue to demand a total transition to renewable energy.
“We want to protect this land,” Larry Wright Jr., the chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, told the World-Herald. “We don’t want to see a pipeline go through.”
“While TransCanada is trampling on Indigenous rights to fatten their bottom line, Native leaders are resisting by building renewable energy solutions like solar panels in the path of the pipeline,” said 350.org executive director May Boeve.
“Repatriating this land to the Ponca Tribe raises new challenges for the Keystone XL pipeline and respects the leadership of Native nations in the fight against the fossil fuel industry,” she added. “Tribal sovereignty is central to the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground and build a more just society for all.”
a good start to what should be a much larger movement of returning Indigenous lands