Last of pipeline opponents depart N.D. protest camp
CANNON BALL, N.D. — The last of the Dakota Access pipeline opponents abandoned their protest campWednesdayaheadof a government deadline to get off the federal land, and authorities arrested others who defied the order in a final showof dissent.
Thecamphas beenhome to demonstrators for most of a year as they tried to thwart construction of the pipeline. Some of the last remnants of it went up in flames when occupants set fire to makeshift wooden housing as part of a leaving ceremony.
Authorities later said a 7-year-oldboyanda 17-yearold girl were taken to a Bismarck hospital to be treated for burns.
Many of the protesters left peacefully, but police began making arrests more than an hour after the deadline passed. Police took about 10 people into custody for failing to heed commands to leave, authorities said.
Hours earlier, about 150 people marched arm-inarm out of the soggy camp, singing and playing drums as they walked down a highway. One man carried an American flag hung upside
Authorities sent buses to take protesters to Bismarck, where they were offered fresh clothing, bus fare home and food and hotel vouchers.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers citing the flooding.
At the height of the protests, the site known as Oceti Sakowin hosted thousands of people, though its population dwindled to just a couple of hundred as the pipeline battle moved into the courts.
The camp is on federal land in North Dakota between the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the pipeline route being finished byDallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.
When complete, the project will carry oil through the Dakotas and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois.
Some of the remaining protesters were focused on moving off federal land and away from the flood plain into other camps, said Phyllis Young, one of the camp leaders.
New camps are popping up on private land, including one the Cheyenne River Sioux set up about a mile fromthe main camp.
“A lot of our people want set the deadline, threat of spring to be here and pray for our future,” tribal chairman Harold Frazier said.
Others, including Dom Cross, an Oglala Sioux from Pine Ridge, S.D., said he planned to return home after living at the camp since September.
“There’s a lot of sadness right now. We have to leave our second home,” he said.
Law enforcement officers and first-responders were on hand from several states.
Charles Whalen, 50, an alcohol and drug counselor fromMille Lacs, Minn., said he and a group of about 20 people were not going to leave on their ownandwere willing to get arrested to prove their point.
Craig Stevens, spokesman for the MAIN Coalition of agriculture, business and labor interests, said the group understands “the passions that individuals on all sides of the pipeline discussion feel” and hopes that protesters’ voices “will continue to be heard through other peaceful channels and in court.”