"We're pretty sure that, without serious pressure, the Keystone Pipeline will get its permit from Washington," reads a release signed by McKibben, Klein, and others. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper countered during a visit to New York, calling the project a "complete no-brainer,” and telling reporters: “I'm confident that it will be built."

Then, near the end of September, more than 100 activists were arrested leaping police barricades at a solidarity protest outside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. Rancor over the pipeline continued to crescendo at emotional public hearings in the six U.S. states along Keystone XL's proposed route. News reports detailed how one packed eight-hour meeting in Nebraska pitted local ranchers, fearful of oil leaks into their water supplies, against blue-collar workers, insistent the project will create thousands of much-needed construction jobs.

With the Obama administration expected to step into this political war zone by year's end to decide the fate of the pipeline, chances for intervention are dwindling.

Against this high-stakes environmental showdown, indigenous voices have struggled to be heard. But in the basement of the Rosebud Casino, tribal leaders began enacting a compelling battle plan.

Cross-border alliance

Four hours into the Rosebud Casino meeting, the Canadian delegation arrived: Dene Nation Leader Bill Erasmus, from Great Bear Lake in the North West Territories and George Stanley, a tribal leader from northern Alberta's Frog Lake, right near major oil sands operations. The basement group welcomed them like long, distant friends. In fact, meeting organizer Cobenais had been at the Washington, D.C. protests with Erasmus and Stanley only weeks before. It was there that Erasmus had experienced a bit of a revelation. "Our peoples in Canada and the U.S. have been working in isolation to fight (Keystone XL)," he said. "I became intrigued by the idea of bringing us together."

Many North American indigenous communities do not recognize the 49th parallel, preferring to think of themselves as continental peoples. Yet to date, local priorities and distance had thwarted cross-border cooperation on Keystone XL. The plan at this meeting was to draft a unified two- to three-page Mother Earth accord opposing the pipeline.

Erasmus and Stanley, who sit on the executive of Canada's Assembly of First Nations, hoped to get the document adopted by the wider leadership (which they did, not long after the meeting). Cobenais, in turn, would help push it to the National Congress of American Indians, the biggest indigenous lobby group in Washington, D.C. (still an ongoing process). Both organizations eventually hope to present the Mother Earth accord directly to President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "With an accord at that level," Cobenais said, "we believe the administration would have a hard time saying 'yes' to this pipeline."

450-mile benzene plume

During a break in the meeting, Alex White Plume smoked a hand-rolled cigarette under a small alcove outside the casino. "The ones with filters give you bad breath," he explained. Dark clouds spat rain onto the parking lot in front of him. For White Plume and many other indigenous peoples, Keystone XL is both a risk to the safety of their peoples, and the latest chapter in a centuries-old struggle to defend their land.

Although TransCanada's proposed route does not enter any indigenous reservations as it slices diagonally across South Dakota, the pipeline will burrow under several tributaries of the Missouri River (the White, the Bad and the Cheyenne) that flow near or alongside tribal territory. Earlier this summer, John Stansbury, a professor of water resources engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, released a report on Keystone XL, predicting 91 major spills over a 50-year life period. "If this thing ruptured into a waterway," Stansbury told this reporter in an interview, "the oil itself wouldn't go too far. But what would happen is chemicals in the oil, like benzene, would start to dissolve and form a plume, possibly stretching for 450 miles."

TransCanada disputed Stansbury's report, telling Nebraska media that "as a pipeline operator across North America for over 60 years, safety is a top priority.... We would not put our reputation or the public at risk." And a final environmental assessment from the U.S. State Department predicted "no significant impacts" from Keystone XL.

Descended from Crazy Horse

Hundreds of years of history and personal experience have made White Plume skeptical of the promises of outsiders. Still smoking his cigarette, he explained how his attempt to grow industrial hemp 11 years ago ended with a gun pointed in his face. Some 36 heavily armed U.S. federal agents raided his Pine Ridge Reservation farm, and shut it down by enforcing a law that drew no distinction between hemp and marijuana. The incident strengthened his resentment toward big business and the U.S. government, and his belief that, in the end, his peoples have little say over their land or future.

This widely-held conviction among local tribes dates at least to 1851, when Washington signed the first Treaty of Fort Laramie with Lakota leaders, giving them control over tens of millions of acres across the Great Plains. Then, generations of settler encroachment, renegotiated treaties, and all-out war shrank tribal sovereignty to the confines of a few poverty-stricken reservations. Some believe the full 1851 territory is still indigenous land, and are rankled that TransCanada's Keystone XL might gain the legal power to slice right through it.

Historical grievances cut especially deep for White Plume, who is descended from the same tribal band as Crazy Horse, the famed 19th century Lakota warrior who helped wipe out General George Custer's cavalry regiment at Little Big Horn. "When the settlers came and killed off all our buffalo, they wiped out an ecosystem that we depended on," White Plume said. "And now they're trying to bring dirty oil through our country." He paused for a second, then began to laugh. When he finished the only sound came from the prairie wind.

For more reporting on Energy from The Tyee, click here.