Protests led by the tribe and others have grown more aggressive in recent weeks, with some protesters chaining themselves to equipment and several police officers getting injured over the weekend, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.
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A spokeswoman for Stein says that activists invited her to leave a message at the protest site. Four private security guards and two guard dogs received medical treatment, officials said, while a tribal spokesman noted that six people – including a child – were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.
Akicitawin, or Warrior Woman, is written on the handcuff Julie Richards used to chain herself to a piece of heavy machinery to prevent work on the pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
Members of the the tribe have protested the construction of the pipeline since April.
Court records show Stein was charged Wednesday in Morton County with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
US District Judge James Boasberg said Tuesday that work will temporarily stop between North Dakota’s State Highway 1806 and 20 miles east of Lake Oahe.
Ben Affleck, Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller took a break from the DC superhero set to film an endorsement for Rezpect Our Water campaign on Change.org, an online petition to stop the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline. As we’ve reported, “the tribe filed a complaint with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the Army Corps did not follow proper procedure when it gave Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners the go ahead to build the pipeline”. The company said it “has taken and continues to take every reasonable precaution” to protect cultural sites. “The Great Sioux Reservation, formed in the eighteen-sixties, shrunk again and again – in 1980, a federal court said, of the whole sad story, “a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history, ‘” Bill McKibben writes in an essay for The New Yorker”. The tribe also asked the judge to order the company not to engage with or antagonize any protesters.
Seventeen financial institutions, including Citibank, Wells Fargo, and BNP Paribas, l have loaned Dakota Access LLC $2.5 billion to construct the pipeline.
In the tribe’s emergency motion, the Standing Rock Sioux accuses the developer, Dakota Access Pipeline, of razing areas on private land that the tribe’s cultural expert recently discovered were significant. Assistant Attorney General John Cruden added in court documents: “T$3 he public interest would be served by preserving peace”.
Progressive leaders have come out in support of the Standing Rock Sioux protesters.
The Army Corps of Engineers did not oppose the temporary stoppage.
Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman Dave Archambault II issued a statement after the ruling, saying: “Today’s denial of a temporary restraining order … west of Lake Oahe puts my people’s sacred places at further risk of ruin and desecration”.
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The tribe is anxious about the environmental fallout from the construction of the pipeline and potential leaks.
