Sophia Wilansky spent three weeks camped in North Dakota opposing construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline.
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For Stuck, Sunday night’s scenes fresh in his mind, lit by firelight and bright police lights, are an old story.
Her injury is the most gruesome to date among protesters fighting the project. “Doctors are working to save her arm”, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Chairman Dave Archambault II said.
As of Wednesday, Wilansky was receiving treatment at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minnesota.
In a statement on Tuesday, her father, Wayne Wilansky, said she would need multiple surgeries to regain functional use of her arm and hand.
When the pipeline originally was being planned it was set to run past Bismarck, but when questions were raised about whether it could pose a threat to the capital city’s water supply that serves a primarily white population, it was rerouted to pass just north of the reservation. “The Obama administration, now more than ever, has to step up and either rescind the permits, call for a full Environmental Impact Statement or flat-out reject the Dakota Access Pipeline project from moving forward”. At least 17 protesters had to be hospitalized, some treated for hypothermia, after law enforcement allegedly sprayed water on them in freezing temperatures.
At the time of one high-profile incident in September, tribal leaders said the protests escalated after construction crews destroyed American Indian burial and cultural sites on private land, according to the Associated Press. She is scheduled for a second round, he said.
“For me, I welcome to cook with anyone as long as they understand the history, the historical trauma of today and what it represents”, he said.
Both sides agree that the overnight protest got tense, but that’s where any agreement ends.
“In return, the local police department fired water hoses at them, large rubber bullets which they were aiming for head, they were also shooting tear gas and it turned into a more violent demonstration than it was meant to be by the protectors”, Stuck said.
“My heart breaks to hear over 300 people have been seriously injured”, said the head of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, located just northwest of Edmonton, in a statement.
Keller defended police crowd control methods. They also passed out food.
They also said protesters were warned repeatedly that water would be used, but refused to leave, instead saying things like, “Hit me!”
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“The disproportionate corporate security and militarized police actions reveal a risky pattern in the United States of using state sponsored violence to enrich corporations and accelerate damaging climate change”, Santos-Lyons told OPB via email.
According to KFYR, police say protesters were seen running to the area where the explosion had happened.
A Facebook Live video posted Sunday night by activist Kevin Gilbertt showed dozens of protesters facing off against a line of armored vehicles and police in riot gear near the Backwater Bridge on Highway 1806, not far from a camp site that has been used as a staging ground for demonstrations for months. But police can not confirm that Wilansky was involved. She added that medics first encountered the injured woman at a casino near the protests. She was arrested this past summer protesting a pipeline in MA and has been active in other anti-pipeline protests in NY.
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The protests at Standing Rock are “likely to continue”, Sisk reports, with protesters vowing to stay until the construction of the pipeline is stopped.
