Video showed security officers threatening protesters with dogs.
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Police said several people were assaulted with fence posts and flag poles, including private security officers hired by Dakota Access Pipeline. On the previous day, Water protectors clashed with security to successfully stop pipeline construction and some were viciously attacked by guard dogs.
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said it “was more like a riot than a protest”.
According to Morton County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Donnell Preskey, a security guard that was injured on Saturday was taken to a hospital in Bismarck, where he was treated.
During the Saturday protest, at least six people, including a child, are said to have received bites from guard dogs belonging to a private security company at the site, according to tribe spokesperson Steve Sitting Bear.
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 crowd dispersed when officers arrived and no one was arrested, she said.
“We’re days away from getting a resolution on the legal issues, and they came in on a holiday weekend and destroyed the site”, said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said he will continue to promote peace at the worksites. They literally bulldozed the ancestors right out of the ground, along with destroying tipi rings and cairns. The desecration of these ancient places has already caused the Standing Rock Sioux irreparable harm. “In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground”. If completed, the pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield to IL. Magazine that “Of the 380 archeological sites that face desecration along the entire pipeline route, from North Dakota to IL, 26 of them are right here at the confluence of these two rivers”, the Cannonball and the Missouri.
The tribe last week filed court documents outlining numerous sacred sites in the pipeline’s path and Standing Rock sought to preserve those areas.
The protesters marched from property on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land to the private property on the west side of Highway 1806.
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In response to the attack, Red Warrior Camp released a statement which read, “Red Warrior Camp remains nonviolent and unarmed….we ask that supporters keep focus on the fact that this corporation feels justified in using this level of force against unarmed and nonviolent water protectors and the state is allowing it!”
