A protest of a four-state, $3.8 billion oil pipeline turned violent after tribal officials say construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land in southern North Dakota.
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Tribe spokesman Steve Sitting Bear says protesters reported that six people had been bitten by security dogs, and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.
Preskey said the sheriff’s department isn’t planning to send additional officers to the construction site after what happened Saturday, but they will go out there if similar incidents were to arise.
The security officers were protecting workers and the company’s assets, she said, and “safety is ETP’s top priority and the company is committed to having the appropriate safety measures in place”.
Once the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the permit to build the pipeline, several hundred protestors forced construction to halt.
Since the beginning, Archambault said his message has been about non-violence and promoting peace.
No one was arrested after the incident that occurred Saturday, and the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation are investigating. A federal judge will rule before September 9 whether construction can be halted on the Dakota Access pipeline. “These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors”.
On Saturday, protesters were suddenly alerted to renewed digging, a day after the tribe filed evidence in court of dozens of newly discovered artefacts, grave markers and sacred sites. “In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground”.
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s office Sunday urged protesters “to participate only in peaceful and lawful activities”.
According to tribal preservation officer Tim Mentz, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe did not know about the sites until recently, when it was allowed, as reported in court documents, for private land located north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation to be surveyed.
“I wasn’t expecting them to mace, it came out of nowhere”, one protester said. “According to numerous witnesses within five minutes the crowd of protestors, estimated to be a few hundred people became violent”. He said that it did not seem like a protest, but more like a riot.
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The incident occurred within half a mile of an encampment where hundreds of people have gathered to join the tribe’s protest of the oil pipeline, which is slated to cross the Dakotas and Iowa to IL.
