Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Indian tribes claim a pipeline company should not be digging on certain lands because the written easement has not yet been signed and verbal permission to proceed is insufficient.

They also claim the easement should not be given at all because the tribe recently discovered the lands in question are sacred lands.  The tribe didn’t realize it earlier because they have no written records; everything is done verbally, that’s their tradition.

Heads – Whites must have everything in writing; tails – Indians need not have anything in writing.  

Joe Doakes

And is writing a form of cultural appropriation?  Or does that only work one way?