Let me give this a shot:
OIL COMPANIES: We are building this pipeline near your land. Please stand back and observe the wonders of modern engineering.
LAKOTA NATIVE AMERICANS: Um… we can’t help but notice that this pipeline is going to contain oil someday, and, also, it’s crossing the river upstream from our land. If it breaks, we are just a bit concerned about what will happen to our fresh water.
OIL COMPANIES: Not to worry, my friends. We have asked the Army Corps of Engineers to assess the dangers.
ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Yup, everything’s fine.
LAKOTA: Aren’t you the guys that said the levees in New Orleans were just fine?
ARMY CORPS: (hurt look)
OIL COMPANIES: Well, it doesn’t matter. We are building the pipeline on easements we got from landowners, and you can’t stop us.
LAKOTA: Would it be entirely out of line to point out that those people are “landowners” of land that our tribe once owned by treaty with the United States, and then the United States just cancelled the treaty and handed us a new one with less land?
OIL COMPANIES: That was, like, 100 years ago! And you got some money for it.
LAKOTA: Yes, money which we cannot even spend, and which is held “in trust” for us by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and for which we can’t even get an accounting, even though we sued them twenty years ago. Is that the money you mean? Because, honestly, it sort of feels like we never really got a fair hearing on losing that land.
OIL COMPANIES: Not our fault. Ask the Department of Interior.
DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR: You have reached the Department of Interior. Your call is very important to us. Listen carefully as menu options may have changed.
LAKOTA: Look, this is all apparently legal, but it feels like we’re getting screwed. Again.
OIL COMPANIES: Yawn.
LAKOTA: I believe we shall protest.