Resources to Share: Extractive Industries, “Man Camps,” and Violence Against Women and Indigenous Peoples
Webinar of Note on Man Camps and Indigenous Communities
On September 19, 2022, the Great Plains Action Society hosted an important webinar addressing the severe and violent effects that temporary workforce housing (“man camps”) for fossil fuel extraction, mineral mining, and large construction projects can have on Indigenous communities. Organizers point out that, years ago, James Anaya, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples stated, “Indigenous women have reported that the influx of workers into Indigenous communities as a result of extractive projects… led to increased incidents of sexual harassment and violence, including rape and assault.” Five years later, in 2019, Sikowis Nobiss, founder and executive director of the Great Plains Action Society, delivered a United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UN PFII) Intervention on Man-Camps and Violence in Indigenous Communities, appealing to the UN and its member states to adhere to all of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and end the Indigenous Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives crisis on Turtle Island.
The impacts and the threat continue.
The webinar features Indigenous experts on these matters, speaking as a new threat looms: the construction of CO2 pipelines, which will bring thousands of transient workers into the Midwest to build a massive, spiderweb-like system traversing both BIPOC urban centers and tribal nations. Host of the webinar, Sikowis Nobiss, explained,
“The reason we’re having this conversation today is that we’ve been working on stopping this imminent threat to Indian country and throughout the Midwest. CO2 pipelines are a new greenwashing tactic proposed by the fossil fuel industry and the ethanol industry—Big Oil and Big Ag—to prolong the lives of these harmful industries.”
Sikowis introduced some of the details of this critical situation, including the unacceptable lack of informed consultation taking place and the new, particular hazards of CO2 pipelines and lack of accompanying safety protocols. The remarkable guest presenters on the webinar carry the expertise to educate on impacts already taking place when large groups of men have come into communities and caused harm, increasing sex trafficking and violence, and exacerbating the MMIR crisis. They represent three organizations responding to various aspects of this crisis, in various geographic regions. Please see their websites for a deeper look at their origins, areas of focus, and resources:
Tanya M. Grassel-Krietlow, FAST Coordinator, South Dakota Network Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault
Lisa Heth, Executive Director, Wiconi Wawokiya, Inc.
https://www.pathfindercenter.org/human-trafficking-shelter
Trisha Etringer, Operations & MMIR Director, Great Plains Action Society
https://www.greatplainsaction.org/
This webinar provides an enormous amount of information on the reasons for, and contours of, the crisis, and the outstanding work that organizations are providing in the realms of advocacy, services (including providing shelter), and efforts to improve law enforcement and governmental monitoring and response—as well as on-the-ground insight into how to stop this massive assault on Indigenous communities.
Summary of Evidence on the Links between Drilling and Fracking Operations and Violent Crime Against Women
The eighth edition of the fracking science Compendium from Concerned Health Professionals of New York, a program of SEHN, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, contains evidence linking drilling and fracking operations to increases in violent crimes that disproportionately harm women, with Indigenous women at particular risk. The following is a summary of those findings, with links to their fully referenced locations within the Compendium, below.
With the arrival of drilling and fracking operations, communities have consistently experienced steep increases in rates of crime, variously including murder, rape, sex trafficking, assault, burglary, larceny, and auto theft. Crime rates have increased even with additional allocation of funds for public safety.
In the Marcellus Shale region, violent crime increased 30 percent in counties that experienced a fracking boom compared to those without fracking. Aggravated and sexual assaults were the crimes primarily responsible for this increase.
A 2020 review of the evidence from 25 relevant studies found that “shale gas development increases total crime, violent crime, property crime, social disorganization crimes and violence against women.” Of those studies that included data on pre- and post-increases in shale gas production, the review found that drilling and fracking leads to a 28 to 46 percent increase in crime in surrounding communities.
A 2021 study documented that fracking booms in rural areas of Arkansas, North Dakota, and West Virginia were associated with more violent crime than rural areas in comparison states.
In the Marcellus Shale region, counties experiencing a fracking boom suffered a 30 percent increase in violent crime, compared to those with no gas boom. Aggravated and sexual assaults were the crimes primarily responsible for this increase.
In addition, “victimization costs” were estimated to be $8.1 million per year in high fracking counties in Pennsylvania. These costs are typically not included in economic analyses touting the benefits in terms of jobs and income that are created in a community by fracking operations.
In Canada, substantial evidence shows that that vulnerable women face increased violence in boomtowns full of transient laborers building big resource projects, as is summarized in a report by the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, based on the testimony of thousands of survivors and family members of murdered and missing women.
Specifically, the presence of man camps, which house large numbers of transient oil and gas workers, is linked to higher rates of violence against Indigenous women. The report also documents upticks in vulnerable women entering the sex trade near fracking-related activities such as pipeline projects. “Women are made vulnerable by the combination of exclusion from high-paying resource jobs and having to make ends meet in a town where the cost of living is rising.”
A 2018 study documented the presence of sex trafficking operations in oil boomtowns in North Dakota's Bakken shale region. Findings demonstrated that sex trafficking was linked to “a confluence of underlying forces including big oil money, an increase in drug cartels and drug use, degradation of women in a male-dominated workforce, increased access to weapons, and a rise in transient populations.” The same study found increases in domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking in fracking boomtowns.
Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission acknowledged in its environmental impact statement that the likelihood of sex trafficking and sexual crimes would increase were the Enbridge Line 3 permitted. Indeed, it did, with more than 40 complaints received by a local violence intervention project concerning Line 3 workers harassing and assaulting women and girls who live near the pipeline route in northwestern Minnesota. In addition, two Line 3 workers from Missouri and Texas were charged in a sex trafficking sting operation.
See pages 71-72 and 507-539 of the Compendium for references, downloadable here: concernedhealthny.org/compendium
We will be updating this collection of findings with documentation that has been published since our eighth edition because, unfortunately, the crisis continues unabated.
Photo: ©Julie Dermansky Photography