The department said Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka was charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
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A spokeswoman for Ms. Stein’s campaign said she spray-painted the message onto a bulldozer that she alleged had been used days earlier to damage ancestral gravesites of the Sioux tribe.
According to an affidavit filed in Morton County District Court on Wednesday, law enforcement officers viewed a video of Stein spray-painting “I approve this message”, on equipment.
About 200 people protested at the construction site two miles east of State Highway 6 about 20 miles south of Mandan, and two protesters bound their hands to bulldozers for several hours. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are the primary opponents of the four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline.
The company Energy Transfer Partners is behind the pipeline construction, though it is unclear who owns the bulldozer.
The tribe requested the stoppage after a weekend confrontation between protesters and construction workers near Lake Oahe due to workers allegedly bulldozing sites that attorney Jan Hasselman said were “of great historic and cultural significance to the tribe”.
Gizmodo has reached out to the Morton County sheriff’s department and will update the post if they respond.
This comes after heated protests about the construction of this pipeline close to Native American reservations.
Protest organizers have said that private security guards provoked protesters who otherwise were conducting peaceful rallies. One protest leader said six people were bitten by security dogs and at least 30 others were pepper-sprayed.
Last week, environmental groups asked the president to deny permits for construction of the pipeline, and on Tuesday a federal judge issued a short-term restraining order against pipeline construction.
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Stein acknowledged the possibility of facing charges on Twitter, where she condemned the building of the oil pipeline. She was protesting outside a debate to which she was not invited. The $3.8 billion pipeline will run from North Dakota to IL, and part of its path will cross the Missouri River.
