The Dakota Access Pipeline protests, also known under hashtags like NoDAPL, are a grassroots movement that began in the spring of 2016 in reaction to the proposed construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline. The proposed pipeline would run from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
In April, a Standing Rock Sioux elder established a camp as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the pipeline and over the summer the camp grew to thousands of people. In July ReZpect Our Water, a group of Native American youth, ran from Standing Rock in North Dakota to Washington, DC to raise awareness of what they perceive to be a threat to their people’s drinking water and that of everyone who relies on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers for drinking water and irrigation. The young people attempted to deliver more than 100,000 petition signatures to President Obama asking him to stop the pipeline, but they were not received at the White House.
The Bakken pipeline, also called the Dakota Access Pipeline, is a 1,134-mile-long (1825 km) underground U.S. oil pipeline project for fracked, crude oil being planned by Dakota Access, LLC, a subsidiary of the Dallas, Texas corporation Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. to begin in the Bakken oil fields in Northwest North Dakota and travel through South Dakota and Iowa before ending in Patoka, Illinois. Routing the pipeline across the Missouri River near Bismarck was rejected because of the route’s proximity to municipal water sources; residential areas; and road, wetland, and waterway crossings. The Bismarck route would also have been 11 miles longer.
Of the 380 archeological sites that face desecration along the entire pipeline route, from North Dakota to Illinois, 26 of them are right here at the confluence of these two rivers. It is a historic trading ground, a place held sacred not only by the Sioux Nations, but also the Arikara, the Mandan, and the Northern Cheyenne. The U.S. government is wiping out our most important cultural and spiritual areas. And as it erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as a people. These sites must be protected, or our world will end, it is that simple. Our young people have a right to know who they are. They have a right to language, to culture, to tradition. The way they learn these things is through connection to our lands and our history. If we allow an oil company to dig through and destroy our histories, our ancestors, our hearts and souls as a people, is that not genocide?
A warrant for journalist Amy Goodman’s arrest was issued by Morton County on September 8. She was charged with criminal trespass related to the filming done on September 3. Tom Dickson, Goodman’s attorney, said, “You don’t arrest reporters; I think the government is overplaying its hand.” Ladd Erickson, who is prosecuting the case, said he sees no difference between her and other demonstrators who have been charged with trespass: “She’s a protester, basically. Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions.” Commenting on the arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi said, “…a prosecutor who arrests a reporter because he doesn’t think she’s ‘balanced’ enough is basically telling future reporters what needs to be in their stories to avoid arrest. This is totally improper and un-American.”
On September 7 an arrest warrant was also issued in Morton County for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Stein had spray-painted “I approve this message” and Baraka wrote the word “decolonize” on a bulldozer.
Actress Shailene Woodley, arrested on October 10 along with 27 others, also said she was strip-searched, adding, “Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip-searched. I was just shocked.”
Last week, some protesters moved their camp directly in the path of the proposed pipeline as construction nears the river, but on Thursday morning police descended on the camp with a show of force not yet seen in the months of peaceful protests.
Clad in riot gear and backed by armoured vehicles, the police cleared the protest camp, using sound cannons, pepper spray, taser guns, and shotguns said to contain beanbags against the protesters.
More than 100 people were arrested, including elders praying peacefully in the roadway, according to the Morton County Sheriff Department.