On November 8, 2016, Beaska Niillas, chairman of the Norwegian Sámi Association (NSA) walked into a conference room in Oslo, Norway, with his wife, Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska, who had spent time in Standing Rock. Both are members of the Sámi Parliament and Beaska is a member of the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature. Niillas and Beaska flew over 1,000 miles from their home in Finmark, the homelands of the Indigenous Sámi people and the most northern province of Norway located above the Artic circle.

Niillas set up a meeting with executives at DNB, Norway's largest bank, to demand that they withdraw their investment in the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).

"It is natural that we would try to help Standing Rock. It is easy for Indigenous people around the world to recognize the struggle. We see what they are going through and we feel it. There is no them, only us," Niillas said in a Skype interview with Truthout.

In his hands was a 20-page report documenting the human rights abuses that members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their allies have experienced at the hands of the state of North Dakota and Dakota Access LLC's private security firm. Thousands have gathered to assist the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in protecting the area from the construction of the $3.7 billion project that would transport crude oil from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery to near Chicago.

The story of how the Sámi received that report illustrates how international networks of Indigenous people are challenging the power structure behind the oppression of Indigenous people all around the world, Niillas said.

DNB, a direct investor and loan provider to the Dakota Access pipeline, loaned $120 million to the Bakken pipeline project and extended $460 million in credit lines to companies with ownership stakes, specifically Energy Transfer Partners, Sunoco Logistics, Phillips 66 and Marathon.