Dakota Pipeline Protesters Win Standoff as Alternate Route is Sought

For months, Native Americans with the Sioux tribe at Standing Rock, and many from all over the country, have been trying to stop the pipeline project from running across a reservoir on the Missouri River in North Dakota.

Thousands of Native American and environmental activists have protested the building of the pipeline for months, saying it violates the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and will add to detrimental climate change.

North Dakota veterans said they will not be joining them.

“The safety of everyone in the area – law enforcement officers, residents and protesters alike – continues to be our foremost concern”, Lynch said.

Scores of veterans were the latest to join thousands of protesters who support the Standing Rock Sioux, numerous demonstrators living in makeshift shelters at the site.

Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney again encouraged protesters to heed both the governor’s order and the federal government’s request to leave the land.

Archambault says he has spoken with Gov. Dalrymple by phone several times, but not in person since the large protests near his reservation have been going on.

The North Dakota segment of the project is complete except for a crossing underneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River, near the protest site.

Protesters at the Oceti Sakowin camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, were upbeat after the Army Corps of Engineers announcement but expressed trepidation that the celebration would be short-lived. BBC News reports that Mr. Trump owns stock in both the pipeline’s builder, Energy Transfer Partners, and a company that owns a quarter of the project, Phillips 66.

Spokesman Jason Miller told The Associated Press on Monday that Trump supports construction of the pipeline. It and the Morton County Sheriff’s Office, which has done much of the policing of the protests, didn’t have immediate comment, the AP reported.

Our Rapid City veterans of foreign wars members do not plan to travel to Standing Rock.

“We’ll get settled on the fourth (December 4) and we’ll begin actions with the morning ceremony on the fifth”, one of the group leaders, Michael A. Wood Jr., said in a video posted on his verified Twitter account.

The Army Corps said in November that it had completed that it completed the review it launched in September and has “determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands”.