Growing anti-Dakota Access Pipeline camp digs in amid blizzard, eviction threats

Dakota Access Pipeline protesters dig in

(Image credit: CNN/YouTube)

published 30 November 2016

The Army Corps of Engineers is urging the protesters to leave by Dec. 5, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) has issued an "emergency evacuation" order, and it's snowing heavily in Cannon Ball, but the encampment to protest and block completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline just keeps getting bigger. Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with Indigenous Environmental Network, estimates that 5,000 people are in the camp, spearheaded by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Many of the new arrivals are white environmental activists — tribal leaders and fellow protesters have had to ask some of them to stop treating the protest like Burning Man or a hippie festival — but the protesters say they plan to stay put, regardless of blizzard or evacuation threat. "We have lived for generations in this setting," Standing Rock Sioux spokeswoman Phyllis Young said Monday night, referring to the federal land the encampment is on. "That is our camp.... This is Lakota territory. This is treaty territory, and no one else has jurisdiction there."

The Standing Rock Sioux say the planned route of the nearly completed, $3.8 billion pipeline connecting North Dakota's Bakken shale fields to a processing facility in Illinois, burrowing under the Missouri River's Lake Oahe, endangers the water supply for their nearby reservation and could harm sacred native sites. In September, the Army Corps suspended approval of a permit to allow the pipeline to pass under the lake, and the Standing Rock Sioux are trying to block the last leg of the pipeline in federal court. The pipeline is being worked on 24/7, and is now just a few miles away from the protesters' camp, CNN's Sara Sidner notes in her report below. "But certainly they feel they can stop this as long as they stay put." Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.