Protest of the almost $4 million dollar oil pipeline turned violent Saturday when members of a Native American tribe Standing Rock Sioux and private security forces clashed as construction crews began work on the project in Morton County, N.D.
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There, the leader of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said a prayer for peace.
Attorneys for Energy Transfer Partners filed court documents Tuesday morning denying that workers have destroyed any cultural sites.
A protest of a four-state oil pipeline turned violent after tribal officials say construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land in southern North Dakota.
“This demolition is devastating”, Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II said in a statement. It also seeks to temporarily halt construction in a 20-mile radius of the Missouri River crossing north of the reservation until the judge rules on the larger legal issues in the tribe’s case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
That motion is based on the plaintiffs’ claim that it was not properly consulted before the US Army Corps of Engineers approved the pipeline project, which would run from North Dakota to South Dakota, Iowa and IL. The 983-page document, prepared by Dakota Access, LLC (a Houston-based subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners) argues that the preferred construction plan is optimal “because it best meets the objective and need while avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating environmental impacts”.
A hearing is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday before Judge James E. Boasberg in U.S. District Court.
Protesters are concerned the pipeline could leak into the water resources and affect future generations. Standing Rock Sioux tribe spokesperson Steve Sitting Bear also told the Associated Pressthat a young child had been bitten, and 30 people were pepper sprayed.
The pipeline company hasn’t responded to the tribe’s motion. Hundreds of Native American protestors and their supporters, who fear the Dakota Access Pipeline will polluted their water, forced construction workers and security forces to retreat and work to stop. “We’re asking the court to halt this path of destruction”.
The route will begin in the Bakken oil fields near Stanley, North Dakota and end at Patoka, Illinois, where the oil can be transported via another pipeline to the Gulf Coast or shipped to other markets. She is working on organizing another protest in Northeast Wisconsin in about two to three weeks. It’s a conjuncture of local organizing, social media activism, tribal-generated intertribal solidarity, semi-traditional “march on Washington” strategies, and alliances with environmental and other political action groups. “Some people have a lot of concern for other tribes and some think we should take care of our own tribe”.
Activists claimed late Saturday afternoon construction workers released tear gas and attack dogs on protesters.
Jonni Joyce of Martin, S.D., who has trained professional dogs since 1988, watched video from Saturday’s protest at the Dakota Access Pipeline site and called it “a dark day” for her industry.
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Hilton said Friday she plans to follow up with another request to the PSC for the information about the pipeline.
