Tim Mentz, a tribal preservation officer, said the tribe was only recently allowed to survey private lands north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Advertisement
Angry protesters broke through a fence and fought with private security guards, who employed dogs and pepper spray. When police officers arrived, she said that the crowd disbursed.
No one was arrested in the clash between 14 private security officers hired to oversee the project and protesters.
On Friday, members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reportedly filed court documents alleging that multiple sites of “significant cultural and historic value” had been discovered along the route of the proposed (but highly controversial) Dakota Access Pipeline.
Archaumbault says that Dakota Access Pipeline workers continued construction during the early morning hours on Sunday.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe met outside the steps of the Washington, D.C., courthouse August 25 to protest the construction of the pipeline, which they say would wreak havoc on their native lands and cause widespread water contamination.
“This demolition is devastating”, Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement.
The protest was carried out by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others who are sympathetic to their cause. FOX News reported that he said, “These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors”.
The oil pipeline is being constructed by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.
A judge rules on the Tribe’s previous motion to stop construction September 9. “In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground”. “That’s just wrong”, said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux. “This was more like a riot than a protest”.
Frazier says the Sheriff’s statement, “insinuates that the peaceful protestors were the provokers of the incident because several individuals allegedly cut a fence and entered the work site”.
The United States government does not hesitate to harm people to protect its domestic and foreign interests, says a political analyst in IL, citing a violent crackdown on pipeline protesters in North Dakota as an example.
While the protesters contend they were attacked, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department says it was the other way around.
The protestors marched from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land to the private property on the west side of Highway 1806.
Advertisement
Amid tensions surrounding an oil pipeline in North Dakota, representatives from more than 200 tribes around the nation came together for a ceremony encouraging non-violent protesting. “I fear for my people’s safety”.
