Four years ago, Jaime Pinkham, a member of the Pacific Northwest's Nez Perce Tribe, wrote that President Obama's halting of the contentious Dakota Access pipeline was a victory for tribes in what has been a "long and tragic" history with the federal government. Now, Pinkham is poised to become a top political appointee within the Biden administration, where he could determine the fate of many consequential energy and water projects, including the 1,172-mile-long oil pipeline. "The decision on Sunday handed a victory to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its supporters, but the protest and standoff at the Sioux Reservation should never have happened," Pinkham co-wrote in 2016 in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. Pinkham, who at the time was serving on the governing council of the Wilderness Society, wrote the piece with Jamie Williams, the group's president. They hailed as "welcome news" the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to stop until further notice an easement for the Dakota Access pipeline, which stretches from the Bakken Shale field in North Dakota to refiners in Patoka, Ill., and conduct a full environmental impact review.
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