Indigenous people from across the USA are living in camps on the Standing Rock reservation as they protest the construction of the new oil pipeline which they fear will destroy their water supply.
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Energy Transfer has reiterated its commitment to completing the Dakota Access Pipeline despite controversy surrounding a portion of the line’s route.
Construction will be paused until the Army Corps can “determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act or other federal laws”. The US army corp of engineers, which has jurisdiction over pipelines that cross major waterways, approved the Dakota Access plan despite warnings from the Environmental Protection Agency that leaking oil could pollute the rivers.
In more than 30 USA states, demonstrators planned to gather for what activists dubbed on social media as a national “Day of Action” against the pipeline. “So we will continue to obey the rules and trust the process”, he wrote.
Dozens of different tribes have gathered at a protest camp near the pipeline construction site in North Dakota, which has led to occasional clashes with police and security guards.
As construction continued, the tribe filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order, but the U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the motion denied it and construction continued. They also asked Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work on a 40-mile stretch, though it isn’t clear whether the company has complied.
The tribe says the pipeline will harm water supplies and disturb sacred burial and cultural sites, but the Dallas-based company that’s building it says its committed to the four-state project.
Warren responded, stating: “Concerns about the pipeline’s impact on the local water supply are unfounded”.
“The pipeline company could have avoided all of this if they had just left the pipeline above Bismark, where it was set to go”, said Iron Eyes.
“The pipeline is an intrusion on the Native American people’s right to their ancestral homeland”, she said, “their holy land, you know, that should not be going on”.
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Morris said the Standing Rock camp has drawn more than 3,500 people, where some 200 flags are flying, from tribes in NY, the Great Lakes, the Pacific Northwest, California, Mexico, the Amazon, Hawaii and New Zealand.
