Snow won’t delay the Dakota Access Pipeline

Despite an executive order from the governor of North Dakota that protesters evacuate the area near the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, an official said Tuesday they would not block supplies from reaching the camp.

Fong said there will be “passive enforcement” of the rule, meaning officers won’t have a supply blockade or actively enforce the restriction but may stop vehicles if they encounter them during their patrols.

Citing winter’s approach and “violent confrontations” between protesters and law enforcement during the struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Army Corps urged the Standing Rock Sioux to relocate south of the river to an established “free speech zone”.

About 3,000 demonstrators, mostly Native Americans, say the Dakota Access Pipeline threatens water supplies and sacred lands.

A spokeswoman from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe was not immediately available for comment. “For more than 100 days now, the federal government has allowed protesters to illegally entrench themselves on Corps land, and it is the federal government’s responsibility to lead the camp’s peaceful closure”.

However, neither the state nor the Corps has said that protesters would be forcibly removed from the camp.

State officials said on Tuesday they would fine anyone bringing prohibited items into the main protest camp following Governor Jack Dalrymple’s “emergency evacuation” order on Monday.

The civil rights complaint said there were no orders to disperse or warnings issued before local police turned water cannons and tear gas on the protest.

Zent noted that while the Corps manages the lands, the state and local authorities are the ones with responsibility for emergency services.

As part of his order, the governor said, the state will not guarantee the provision of emergency services in the “evacuation area”. She later amended that statement to say that anyone who enters the area does so at their own risk and will be subject to penalties.

Arrests or not, Iron Eyes explained why this is reminiscent of the country’s past treatment of Native Americans.

We ask that everyone who can appeal to President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the future of our people and rescind all permits, and deny the easement to cross the Missouri River just north of our Reservation and straight through our treaty lands.

Not surprisingly, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s elders and the rest of the Standing Rock protesters declined the November 25 eviction notice, vowing to continue to stand for water rights and against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, which is set to cost $3.7 billion, would start in North Dakota, stretch across parts of South Dakota and Iowa, and end in southern IL. “It’s very eerie and we’re trying to stay strong through all of this”.

Protest leaders suggested a forced evacuation could prove more unsafe to the activists than staying put.

On Friday, 33 anti-pipeline protesters were arrested and charged with criminal trespass after about 100 of them formed a prayer circle inside a Bismark mall, police said.

“I want kids one day and I want them to have clean water”, he says. As Aljazeera reports, the governor’s order was worded a bit differently than the rejected order from the Army Corps of Engineers.

“This is your fight that if you don’t take up and you don’t promote and stand up for it now, you end up saying, ‘Why am I being run through?”

She also scoffed at claims that the government was prioritizing public safety and the health of people camped at Standing Rock.