Tension Between Police and Standing Rock Protesters Reaches Boiling Point

From an Article by Sue Skalicky and Monica Davey, New York Times, October 28, 2016

Arrests and Violence at Pipeline Protest — Demonstrators at the Dakota Access pipeline were shot at with beanbag rounds, hit with pepper spray and taken into custody by the police.

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Cannon Ball, ND — For months, tensions had mounted between protesters and law enforcement officials over the fate of an oil pipeline not far from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Late this week, the strained relations boiled over as officers tried to force the protesters out of an area where they had been camping.

Scores of officers dressed in riot gear walked in a wide line, sweeping protesters out of the area as face-to-face yelling matches broke out. Several vehicles, including at least one truck, were set ablaze. A standoff unfolded beside a bridge known as the Backwater Bridge, where protesters set fire to wooden boards and signs and held off the line of officers over many hours.

By Friday evening, officers said they had arrested at least 142 protesters on charges including engaging in a riot and conspiracy to endanger by fire and explosion. Protesters gathered near the bridge were refusing to leave, the authorities said.

Each side complained vehemently about violent tactics by the other. Officers said that protesters had attacked them with firebombs, logs, feces and debris. They acknowledged using pepper spray and beanbag rounds against the protesters, as well as a high-pitched sound device meant to disperse crowds.

PHOTO: Protesters occupying a bridge north of the Oceti Sakowin Camp, near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Credit Angus Mordant for The New York Times

In one case, the officers said, they used a Taser gun after a protester threw pepper in officers’ faces. One woman who was being arrested, the authorities said, had pulled a gun out and fired at a police line. No one was hit by those shots, they said, though two officers had minor injuries after being hit by debris.

“It was peaceful, but it’s not now,” Randez Bailey, a resident of Standing Rock, said of the protest. “We are the ones who have to live here. You all get to go back home.”

The confrontation has been brewing for months as Energy Transfer Partners tries to finish construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, which is to carry oil 1,170 miles from North Dakota to Illinois. Company officials contend that the pipeline will be a safer way to transfer oil. But Native Americans and environmental activists, many of whom have gathered here, say the $3.7 billion pipeline threatens the region’s water supply and would harm sacred cultural lands and tribal burial grounds.

Even as crews here were continuing construction of the pipeline along private lands, all sides were awaiting a review by the Army Corps of Engineers on a crucial stretch of the proposed path, through Army Corps land and under the Missouri River.

The issue has sparked concern from environmentalists and politicians on social media.

“I stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.” Full statement: https://t.co/AQ8IJISjcY

— Al Gore (@algore) Oct. 25, 2016

And the intensifying clashes as law enforcement moved in on Thursday drew a renewed flurry of attention from organizations like Amnesty International, which said it was sending observers to monitor law enforcement’s behavior, as well as from celebrities.

hard to watch, but truth often is. pls take the time to see what our brothers & sisters went thru today. #NoDAPL https://t.co/jnlJz11B0z

— Shailene Woodley (@shailenewoodley) Oct. 28, 2016

Rubber bullets in the face of peaceful and prayerful Water Protectors at #standingrock please… https://t.co/1mVgFzDf4L

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) Oct. 28, 2016

Kyle Kirchmeier, the Morton County sheriff, said protesters had been asked to move away from a campsite they had created on private land that is owned by Energy Transfer Partners, but had refused.

Photo: The authorities arrived at the pipeline protest on Friday in military-style vehicles and demanded that the protesters vacate the camp. Credit Angus Mordant for The New York Times

“It forced our hand,” Sheriff Kirchmeier said. By Thursday morning, he said, the authorities had given up on negotiations with the protesters and moved in to clear the area, where more than 200 people were gathered. The authorities, some of whom arrived in military-style vehicles, demanded over loudspeakers that people leave before they began moving in, searching tent to tent.

Protesters were not being asked to evacuate a second, larger camp that they have set up on federal land, a few miles away. The authorities said those who were swept off the private land would be permitted to stay in the second camp.

But tribal leaders said the land in question was tribal land, and called on federal authorities to step in and oversee the actions of local law enforcement — particularly given Thursday’s sweep, which brought the total number of protesters arrested since August to 411.

“We need our state and federal governments to bring justice and peace to our lands, not the force of armored vehicles,” said Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. “We have repeatedly seen a disproportionate response from law enforcement to water protectors’ nonviolent exercise of their constitutional rights.”

The Standing Rock Reservation is in both ND & SD, 3600 sq. miles

NOTE: About 8500 residents live on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation which includes all of Sioux County, ND, and Corson County, SD.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Protest of Dakota Access Pipeline

Until a few years ago, the word “occupation” was synonymous with power, imperialism and foreign invasion. Today, in the post-Occupy Wall Street era, more and more activists are using their physical presence to make demands. From Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to Tahrir Square in Cairo, occupation has become a powerful method of organizing.

One of the most dramatic such occupations is occurring in the form of a growing encampment at the Cannonball River in North Dakota, where indigenous tribes are leading a coalition of environmental activists in protest over the building of a new crude oil pipeline.

The Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) has stolen more than a name from American Indians (“dakota” means “friendly” or “allied”). If built, it would pass under the Missouri River twice. The pipeline, which could leak, as many pipelines do, threatens to contaminate the drinking water, crops and burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Federal regulatory agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, quietly approved DAPL, which will transport Bakkan crude oil from North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

Last November, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The rejection was the result of a years-long, hard-fought battle by thousands of activists, many of whom made personal sacrifices, traveled long distances and were even arrested for their acts of civil disobedience.

DAPL, which is only seven miles shorter than Keystone would have been, has not received the same scrutiny. Now, the only thing standing in the way of the pipeline is a growing army of nonviolent protesters blocking construction. An occupation that began in April has grown to about 2,000 and is still growing. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux have set strict rules at the space they are calling Sacred Stone Camp: No weapons, alcohol or drugs.

Members of other North American tribes, including Canadian First Nations, are traveling to the site in solidarity. Celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Shailene Woodley and Ezra Miller have lent their support. The protesters are standing firm, and more than 20 people have been arrested.

Jason Coppola, a filmmaker and journalist who has been covering the protests, explained in an interview with me that one of the most important aspects of this story is one that is age-old: The U.S. government is violating its treaty obligations to Native American tribes. According to Coppola, “The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 guaranteed complete and total access, undisturbed access, [of the land] to the Great Sioux Nation of the Oceti Sakowin [Seven Council Fires].” But that treaty has not been respected. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration explains how—as a result of an expedition led in 1874 by Gen. George Armstrong Custer in search of gold on the Black Hills reservation in North Dakota—”[t]o this day, ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux.”

Coppola told me that it is “important to see this fight in the broader context,” because “the Lakota nation and its people have been fighting situations like this for a very long time.” The DAPL dispute is not just about a pipeline running under a river. It is, broadly speaking, about the rights of the original inhabitants of the United States.

At a time when white-supremacist notions are re-emerging and a major-party presidential candidate is encouraging America to hate again, this battle of government and corporate power against Native American rights is an important reminder of the real power dynamics in the U.S. and of who has been denied rights since the founding of the country.

Earlier this year, a group of armed white men led by Ammon Bundy occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon for more than 40 days in protest of federal land ownership. Those occupiers, who garnered far greater mainstream media attention than the DAPL protesters, ignored the fact that the original stewards of the land they were claiming were members of the Burns Paiute tribe. In fact, the tribe fought for decades in court to gain rights to the land, only to be given a paltry few hundred dollars per person as compensation.

By contrast, the very people that the U.S. has historically sold out and continues to betray lead the occupation in North Dakota. Just as it served the needs of white settlers in decades past, the government is putting corporate power and fossil fuel interests over Native American rights in the case of the DAPL project.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, has launched a website with the innocent-sounding name of daplpipelinefacts.com. On it, the company touts seemingly optimistic economic gains, including the creation of “8,000 to 12,000 construction jobs” (contrasted with a mere “40 permanent operating jobs”). It echoes the standard claim of “energy independence” by liberal politicians, saying that the pipeline will help the U.S. be “truly independent of energy from unstable regions of the world,” because “every barrel of crude oil produced in the United States directly displaces a barrel of imported foreign oil.”

Under the “frequently asked questions” section, the website asks: “What is Dakota Access Pipeline’s commitment to protecting sensitive areas and the environment, such as wetlands and culturally important sites?” The lengthy answer addresses only concerns such as restoring seed banks and vegetative cover, but says nothing about the “culturally important sites” that it raises in its own question. The rest of the page focuses mostly on the concerns of private landowners. There is no mention whatsoever of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. It is as if the tribe does not exist.

Obama claimed to set his administration apart from previous ones by partnering with Native American communities. He has made it a point to visit reservations, a rare act by presidential standards. In 2014, during a visit to North Dakota, he said he was “determined to partner with tribes … on just about every issue that touches your lives.” Indeed, his rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline could be viewed in light of that partnership (Oglala Sioux leader Bryan Brewer called Keystone “a death warrant for our people” during Obama’s visit). In the last few months of Obama’s administration, it remains to be seen whether it will intervene to stop the DAPL despite the approval of federal permits.

Regardless, indigenous activists are determined to occupy their own land for as long as it takes to stop construction of the pipeline. If they succeed, it will be one small measure of justice in a line of injustices going back to the founding of this nation.

READ: Dakota Pipeline Would Make Water the New Oil, Devastating All but the Rich

 READ: The People vs. the Bakken Pipeline in Iowa and the Dakotas