Citing the United Nations' 1997 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the pope said that on matters of faith "the right to prior and informed consent (of native peoples) should always prevail." “Only then is it possible to guarantee peaceful cooperation between governing authorities and indigenous peoples, overcoming confrontation and conflict.”

The Cheyenne River and the Standing Rock Sioux tribes have sued to stop construction on the final stretch of the Dakota Access pipeline, which would bring oil from North Dakota’s rich Bakken fields across four states to a shipping point in Illinois. “This is especially clear when planning economic activities which may interfere with indigenous cultures and their ancestral relationship to the earth.”

While none of the representatives were from North America, several news outlets immediately connected the pope’s remarks to the ongoing protests over the construction of a leg of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would go through indigenous land in North Dakota. In this moment, in which humanity is committing a grave sin in not caring for the earth, I urge you to continue to bear witness to this; and do not allow new technologies – which are legitimate and good – but do not allow those which destroy the earth, which destroy the environment and the ecological balance, and which end up destroying the wisdom of peoples.
At the Indigenous Peoples Forum in Rome, Italy, Pope Francis says that developmental needs have to be reconciled with the protection of the particular characteristics of indigenous peoples and their territories. This is taken by some as a reference to the Standing Rock Sioux and other groups opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline.