No decision will be made Wednesday in federal court regarding the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
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He said windows were broken out of one of the company’s bulldozers at the pipeline site, fences were cut on private property and a gate was torn down during the first few days of the protest that began August 10, but there hadn’t been any reports of additional damage since the company stopped construction and law enforcement withdrew from the protest site last week.
In turn, the tribe has sought a preliminary injunction in Washington to halt pipeline construction, accusing the US Army Corps of Engineers of violating historic preservation and environmental laws by approving the pipeline, which would cross just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.
They’re opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline that is being built in North Dakota. They say the good life is the way we live. He’s expected to deliver his decision on September 14.
An attorney representing 14 Iowa landowners in the pipeline’s path argued the board must put the project on hold until the dispute between those landowners and the pipeline company is resolved by the courts, because if the courts rule in favor of landowners after the pipeline is already laid on their land, those landowners lose their constitutional right to due process.
Members of other North American tribes, including Canadian First Nations, are traveling to the site in solidarity. – Dakota Access Pipeline opponents prepared Thursday to continue camping near the Missouri and Cannonball rivers while legal groups said they’re looking for new ways to challenge the pipeline. Two hundred people followed, making their daily walk a mile up a rural highway to a patch of prairie grass and excavated dirt that has become a new kind of battlefield, between a pipeline and American Indians who say it will threaten water supplies and sacred lands.
“The drinking water intake for the Fort Yates, Standing Rock Reservation water system is located within 10 miles of the Missouri River crossing of Lake Oahe”. The standoff prompted North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) to declare a state of emergency near the protest site this past Friday.
“They are calling us protestors. but, they have it wrong: we are not protesting. we are p.r.o.t.e.c.t.i.n.g”, she wrote on Instagram.
“This is our homeland”, said Phyllis Young, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Although federal law requires the Corps of Engineers to consult with the tribe about its sovereign interests, permits for the project were approved and construction began without meaningful consultation.
The Corps declined comment on Wednesday.
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.
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Camps have sprung up around the contested area, as the action against the pipeline stretches into its third week, and Amnesty International announced Wednesday that it had sent a delegation of human rights observers to the protest site.
