Pipeline protesters continuing to dig in
CANNON BALL, N.D. — Lee Plenty Wolf knows the government wants him to clear out of the snowbound tepee where he stokes the fire, sings traditional Oglala songs and sleeps alongside a pair of women from France and California who came to protest an oil pipeline in the stinging cold. But he and thousands of protesters are vowing to make what may be their last stand at Standing Rock.
The orders to evacuate the sprawling protest camp on this frozen prairie just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation came down last week from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the North Dakota governor’s office. After four months of prayer marches and clashes with law enforcement officials who responded with tear gas and water cannons, the protesters now have until Monday to leave.
The government said it would not forcibly remove anyone, but could cite people for trespassing or other offenses.
At the camp, defiance is rising like smoke from the stovepipe of Mr. Plenty Wolf’s tepee. People are here to stay. They are building yurts and hammering together plywood for bunkhouses and lodges. The communal kitchen stops serving dinner at 9:30 p.m., and reopens a half-hour later as a sleeping space.
“I ain’t going nowhere,” Mr. Plenty Wolf said one night as he cradled a buffalohide drum and reflected on grievances that run deeper than groundwater among Native Americans here. “We’re getting tired of being pushed for 500 years. They’ve been taking, taking, taking, and enough’s enough.”
The approaching deadline to leave the camps and the dwindling days of President Obama’s term create a feeling that any opportunity to stop the Dakota Access pipeline is fading. The fight has drawn thousands of tribal members, veterans, activists and celebrities and transformed a frozen patch of North Dakota into a focal point for environmental and tribal activism.
The main camp sits on federal lands that people at the camps say should rightfully belong to the Standing Rock Sioux under the terms of an 1851 treaty. To Mr. Plenty Wolf, closing it amounts to one more broken treaty.
The Standing Rock Sioux’s concerns about an oil spill just upriver from their water source has resonated with environmentalist and clean-water groups across the country, and dozens have rallied to support the tribes. Climate-change activists who fought the Keystone XL pipeline have also joined the protests. “Keep it in the ground” is a rallying cry on banners.
Even as violent confrontations erupted in fields and along creeks and about 600 people were arrested, crews kept digging and burying the pipeline. Its 1,170-mile path from the oil fields of North Dakota to Southern Illinois is nearly complete.
Since September, the Obama administration has blocked construction on a critical section where the pipeline would burrow underneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites.
The tribe and activists are pushing Mr. Obama to order up a yearslong environmental review or otherwise block the project before he leaves office. President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Friday that he supported finishing the $3.7 billion pipeline.
Nobody here knows what to expect. The Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the federal land on which the main camp sits, says it wants protesters to make a “peaceful and orderly transition” out of the camps and to a “free speech zone” nearby. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier of Morton County, a critic of the protesters who leads the law enforcement response, said his officers would not go into the camps to remove people.
The divide between law enforcement officials and the tribe and protesters now feels more brittle than ever.
Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux chairman, has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of civil rights violations. He criticized officers for using rubber bullets and sprays of freezing water against what he called unarmed, peaceful “water protectors.”
“I’m worried about the next confrontation,” he said. “The escalation has continued to rise. They have concertina wire all over the place. They’re almost daring the water protectors. That’s not safe.”
Sheriff Kirchmeier dismissed the claims.
He said protesters had used sling shots to attack officers and thrown rocks and bottles. He and other local officials continue to criticize the federal government’s response. They say the decision to delay the pipeline created months of instability that have cost Morton County $8 million. They say federal officials have offered little in the way of manpower or money to help.
On Friday, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said she had asked Justice Department officials who handle tribal-justice issues and community policing, as well as the United States attorney for North Dakota, to help mediate.
In recent days, conflicting statements from local and state officials have stirred confusion a about how vigorously officials will enforce the closure of the camps. A Morton County spokeswoman initially said people could face $1,000 fines for trying to bring supplies to the camp, only to be contradicted by a governor’s spokesman who said that North Dakota had no plans to block supplies.