Aaron Crossley said he felt compelled to join the protest to “stand with people who don’t have a voice”.
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The crowd, which walked from the Winona City Hall to the top of the new interstate bridge, included people from Winona and surrounding cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin along with members and representatives of area environmental and Native American groups, including the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance, Land Stewardship Project and the Winona Green Party. It has excavated and laid pipeline nearly right up to the edge of Lake Oahe, the dammed-off portion of the Missouri River that was flooded more than half a century ago for the construction.
In addition to environmental concerns, the tribe has contended that the Dakota Access Pipeline threatens its members’ economic well being, and its burial and prayer sites.
The protesters left the state Capitol to march down Congress Ave.to protest outside both of the banks.
The Daily Mail reports that work on the Dakota Access pipeline has been halted as the USA government waits to hear more from tribal leaders and environmentalists regarding the project.
Six Nations opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline closed Caledonia’s main street Tuesday as part of a string of protests across Canada and the U.S. However, as a state capital, the City of Austin has had a long history of spontaneous and non-permitted protests. “We support the guys putting their lives on the line”, said Bismarck resident Alicia Nord, who came out with her sister, Ashley Bauer.
Energy Transfer Partners has completed all but about 15 percent of the pipeline’s construction, after the Army Corps of Engineers had granted permits for the pipeline to run along the Missouri River and under Lake Oahe, from northern North Dakota to IL. And today the company building the pipeline has gone to court in an effort to finish the project. Several hundred took to Pershing Square Tuesday afternoon to show their solidarity with those at Standing Rock, and to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has officially halted all work on the project until further water studies can be done and tribal input is received. In North Dakota, the Standing Rock poverty rate is at an astonishing 43.2 percent, which is triple the national average of 14.5 percent. “We want to switch and transform slowly to those green energies”.
Kandi Mossett, campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network: “Now, perhaps more than ever before, we must come together to send a unified message that we will continue to stand in solidarity for the protection of all life and its lovely diversity”.
The fight to block construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota came to Oklahoma Tuesday.
The company said in court documents that the delay has already cost it almost $100 million, “and further delay in the consideration of this case would add millions of dollars more each month in costs which can not be recovered”. The company last week said it was confident the Army Corps would grant the easement, allowing it to begin drilling under the lake about two weeks later.
“It’s just a nasty business, and Native people are saying leave the oil in the ground”.
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Standing Rock chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement on Tuesday that he’s heartened by the signs of solidarity around the country, and believes there is reason for hope. On Tuesday, thousands of their supporters are engaging in nationwide protests targeting the pipeline and its financial backers in cities, including NY and Washington, DC. “Dakota Access has now completed construction of the pipeline on each side of Lake Oahe and is currently mobilizing horizontal drilling equipment to the drill box site in preparation for the tunneling under Lake Oahe”.
