ABSTRACT
Elaborating on the areas of environmental harm and resistance left underexplored by Crimes of the Powerful, this chapter provides a detailed case study of resistance by Indigenous peoples and environmental activists, known as Water Protectors, to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Utilizing the concept of state–corporate environmental crime, the role of the federal government in facilitating corporate crimes against the environment and Indigenous people will be explored. Furthermore, the implications of Pearce’s insights in Crimes of the Powerful for understanding the differences in the state’s response in mediating class conflict between oil corporations and protesters will be considered. As resistance to corporate power and private property escalates and is met with increasing police force, governmental agencies are compelled to intervene. Although the state may take actions on less threatening issues that appear to challenge oil industry elites such as pipeline protests, the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and the environmental harm it causes are left unexamined.
