North Dakota protesters victorious in pipeline fight
finishing the 1,170-mile (1,882 kilometre) pipeline, which crosses four states and is almost complete.
Though the Army’s decision calls for an environmental study of alternative routes, the Trump administration could ultimately decide to allow the original, contested route. Representatives for Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, but he has said that his support has nothing to do with his investment.
Reaction was swift on both sides, with environmental groups like Greenpeace praising the decision. “The water protectors have done it,” said Lilian Molina, a Greenpeace spokeswoman. “This is a monumental victory in the fight to protect indigenous rights and sovereignty.”
But Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the MAIN Coalition, a pro-infrastructure group, condemned the move as “a purely political decision that flies in the face of common sense and the rule of law.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that the president would, again, use executive fiat in an attempt to enhance his legacy among the extreme left,” Stevens said in a statement. “With President-elect Trump set to take office in 47 days, we are hopeful that this is not the final word on the Dakota Access Pipeline.”
Still, the announcement set off whoops of joy inside the Oceti Sakowin camp. Tribal members paraded through the camp on horseback, jubilantly beating drums and gathering around a fire at the centre of the camp. Tribal elders celebrated what they said was the validation of months of prayer and protest.
“It’s wonderful,” Dave Archambault II, Standing Rock tribal chairman, told cheering supporters who stood in the melting snow on a mild North Dakota afternoon. “You all did that. Your presence has brought the attention of the world.”
The decision, he said, meant that people no longer had to stay at the camp during North Dakota’s brutal winter. The Corps of Engineers, which manages the land, had ordered it to be closed, but the thousands of protesters had built yurts, teepees and bunkhouses and vowed to hunker down.
Law enforcement officials and non-Native ranchers in this conservative, heavily white part of North Dakota would like little more than to see the thousands of protesters return home. The sheriff has called the demonstrations an unlawful protest, and officials have characterised the demonstrators as rioters who have intimidated ranchers and threatened and attacked law enforcement – charges that protest leaders deny.
But on Sunday, several campers said they were not going anywhere. They said there were too many uncertainties surrounding the Army’s decision, and they had dedicated too much time and emotion to this fight to leave now.
Federal and state regulators had issued the pipeline the necessary permits to proceed, but the Corps of Engineers had not yet granted it a final easement to drill under a stretch of the Missouri River called Lake Oahe.
The Standing Rock Sioux had objected to the pipeline’s path so close to the source of their drinking water, and said any spill could poison supplies for them and cities downstream. They also said the pipeline’s route through what are now privately owned ranches bordering the river crossed through sacred ancestral lands.