President Donald Trump allegedly encouraged Native American leaders to extract resources from their land, even though the federal regulations do not allow that. According to Axios’s report, the leaders told Trump that they cannot drill for the resources because of regulations, but the president responded that the new administration is different.
”But now it’s me. The government’s different now. Obama’s gone; and we’re doing things differently here. Chief, chief, what are they going to do? Once you get it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean, once it’s out of the ground it can’t go back in there. You’ve just got to do it. I’m telling you, chief, you’ve just got to do it,” Trump said.
One person that attended the meeting defended the president and said that the remarks were just Trump speak, The Hill reports. The unnamed person said that what the president meant by “just do it” was that he was pushing for removing burdensome regulations from the previous administration.
Federal government and Native American tribes had disagreements regarding the energy resources. The tribes wanted to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline because it passes through a lake that has environmental and cultural importance for them. The tribes have long fought to drill on reservations. The process was slowed down with federal regulations. According to some estimations, the reservations contain up to one fifth of the American oil and gas reserves and Trump administration’s rollbacks are allegedly used by the tribe leaders for easier access to the reserves.
According to Axios, Trump met a group of Native American tribal leaders in late June. The meeting was held in the White House.
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