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Exclusive: On the Dakota Access Pipeline frontline with the Native Nations
Tribal elder went into cardiac arrest as police used water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas on protesters
Shouts of “we are unarmed” against a backdrop of drum beats and roaring water cannons filled the air Sunday night on highway 1806 in the Standing Rock Sioux reservation of North Dakota. It was the scene of a standoff between law enforcement and Native Nations as the latter tried to break through a nearly one-month old barrier that has made the highway impassable, only to be met with water cannons, tear gas, rubber coated bullets and other "less than lethal" tactics.
Live video taken by civilians at the site, as the temperature dipped into the low 20s fahrenheit (below 0 celsius) showed plumes of tear gas drifting into the sky as civilians were blasted by streams of water. Icicles formed from the water glistened in the spotlights as they hung from barbed wire around the barricade.
(Video courtesy of Digital Smoke Signals. A water cannon can be seen in use at minute 4:37 )
According to a statement by the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council, "approximately 300 injuries were identified, triaged, assessed and treated by our physicians, nurses, paramedics and integrative healers working in collaboration with local emergency response. These 300 injuries were the direct result of excessive force by police over the course of 10 hours."
One tribal elder went into cardiac arrest, but luckily was revived by medics, and 26 of the wounded were listed as in serious condition. The statement also listed blunt force injuries caused by rubber bullets and concussion grenades, as well as the use of tear gas and pepper spray against the protesters. A 21-year-old woman underwent eight hours of surgery and may have to have her arm amputated after being hit by a police concussion grenade, her father told The Guardian newspaper.
“We are being met with force,” Kandi Mossett of the the Indigenous Environmental Network tells i24news. “We have the Morton county sheriff’s department, as well as police forces from seven other states, the US army national guard, the Dakota access private security which includes TigerSwan and GS4 who are tier-one highly trained military people from Afghanistan and Iraq against unarmed water protecting civilians.”
The Morton County Sheriff's Department defended their methods in controlling what they described as a “very aggressive” crowd. However, the sheriff’s department spokeswoman Maxine Herr denied the use of concussion grenades.
“It wasn’t from our law enforcement, because we didn’t deploy anything that should have caused that type of damage to her arm,” Herr told the LA Times.
Hundreds and at times thousands of people have gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota since April to stop the construction of a more than 1,100 mile oil pipeline, part of which would possibly traverse the reservation. It has been built right up to the shore of lake Oahe on the Missouri river, which the company plans to drill under to continue the pipeline. Should the pipeline become damaged it would threaten not only the reservation, but also the drinking water of millions of Americans and water used to irrigate farms down stream.
The Native Nations are fighting to protect this water, and view the pipeline as a threat to their health, culture, and sovereignty. They argue that the company building the pipeline has not conducted a proper environmental impact review and has not consulted the Sioux tribe about the project as well as ignored sovereign rights granted to the tribe under treaties signed with the US government.
The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation was established through a series of treaties signed with the US government in 1851, 1868, and 1889. A portion of the pipeline runs through land that the Sioux say are theirs under the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, which was signed by the US government and eight Native Tribes. Additionally, a portion of the pipeline is being constructed on land that the tribes say is a sacred burial ground.
Highway 1806 is one of the sites involved in the protests and has been closed since October 27th, as law enforcement pushed pipeline protesters, who call themselves “water protectors,” away from the northern “frontline” of the construction site.
According to the local Bismark Tribune, vehicles were burned on the highway on that night in October, and on Sunday, some 400 people gathered in an effort to clear the cars that had been chained to concrete barriers, and break through the police barricade, which they say prevents emergency services from reaching the camp, and keeps people from travelling to the construction site.
Sunday night, the Morton County Sheriff’s department posted on its Facebook page that officers were involved with an “ongoing riot” at the highway barricade.
“Law enforcement is currently involved in an ongoing riot on the Backwater Bridge, north of a protest camp in Morton County,” the post reads. “Protesters in mass amounts, estimated to be around 400, are on the bridge and attempting to breach the bridge to go north on highway 1806. Protesters have started a dozen fires near the bridge.”
Law enforcement said that the water cannons were brought out to put out the fires, which were small bonfires lit by the protesters to keep warm.
As of Monday morning, a small group of protesters remained as more and more law enforcement vehicles arrived to provide back up.
Mossett, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes, has been staying at one of the camps along with people from more than 200 other tribes since August 15. Her work with the IEN has brought her to work on a number of projects related to the environment and renewable energy, and she has testified before US Congress and in front of UN forums.
According to Mossett, there are currently at least 1,500 people staying in the camps and standing in solidarity against the pipeline.
Mossett told i24news that the Native Nations have real reason to be concerned about an environmental disaster in the area because Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, has taken so many shortcuts during the building process that they worry about the integrity of the pipeline itself.
“What we are asking for is a full environmental impact statement, which should have been done in the first place, because this is a project that goes through four states and is over 1,100 miles long,” she explains. “The reason why it hasn’t been done is because this company has something called Nationwide Permit 12. NWP 12 covers projects that are one acre in size or less. What they did was break down this 1,100 mile pipeline into acre sized pieces and did an environmental assessment for each one and found no significant environmental impact.”
“Any permits issued under NWP 12 shouldn’t even be applicable,” she continued, adding “We are also asking for them to rescind those permits and go back an do a full environmental impact statement. This is something that the company doesn’t want to do, and didn’t want to do from the beginning which is why it wasn’t done.”
Mossett questions what additional shortcuts the company would be willing to take in order to save time or money.
“This is exactly what we are afraid of, especially with how quickly they have been trying to get the pipeline in- the quality of the work or the integrity of the pipe itself- for a company to be taking this many shortcuts,” she said.
On a daily basis, the water protectors have gone to the frontline, outside of the camp, to conduct what Mossett describes as “non-violent actions” like standing in front of the equipment and trying to protect the easement where the Dakota Access company is digging.
“That’s where we are being met with force,” she says. “All of these heavily armed militarized riot police with long-range acoustic sound devices– sound machines or torture devices basically --that the military uses and we’re out there with our drums and our sage and praying.”
She said that at one point the tribes found out that people had been planted in with protesters to agitate the police by throwing rocks and starting fires, hired by Energy Transfer Partners.
“This company is not above any kind of underhanded thing that could paint a picture to the media that we are violent because that is what they have been striving to do- to make it look like we are violent,” she said.
Energy Transfer Partners rebuked the allegation as "absolutely not true."
In a statement to i24news, Energy Transfer Partners said that "Safety is our top priority; the safety of our employees and our assets, the safety of those who live and work in the area, and the safety of the environment."
Mosset went on to detail the kind of treatment her people have seen at the hands of the authorities.
“We are being sprayed in the face, 500 people have been arrested to date, we have been shot at, we have been arrested and detained and once in jail treated like we have contraband,” she explains.
Describing the areas around the drill site Mosset says “they have us blocked to the north- highway 1806 is completely blocked by police, cement barricades, army national guard and Humvee military vehicles. We cannot drive anywhere to the north because they are protecting the easement. Where the drill pad site is on the hill it is like a fortress. There is private security, police and national guard all protecting the site on top, and then more private security with attack dogs behind them. Behind that there is an eight-foot trench followed by a 15-foot wall with razor wire over the top.”
As of November 14, construction on the pipeline has been temporarily halted as the Army Corps of Engineers “determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property.”
The ruling means that Energy Transfer Partners must hold talks with the Sioux before the Army Corps of Engineers will grant the final permit allowing drilling under lake Oahe.
Meanwhile, Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren told the Associated Press that the company has no plans of rerouting the pipeline, and the company has sued the Army Corp of Engineers in order to try to obtain the permit.
Mossett urges people to consider whether the project will be economically beneficial in the end.
“People need to be fully aware and fully understand that it becoming economically unfeasible to even build the pipeline before its even completed,” she says, noting consistently low oil prices and reduced production. “Will the pipeline become obsolete before it’s even complete?”
The Associated Press also reported that $10 million of tax payer dollars has been spent on law enforcement presence surrounding the pipeline. In September the state-owned Bank of North Dakota lent $6 million to the state's Emergency Commission. On November 2, a state legislative committee approved a request for an additional $4 million. The pipeline itself has a price tag of $3.7 billion.
Even with these questions and the construction pause, after the elections which sent fire-brand billionaire businessman Donald Trump to the White House in a shocking upset, the Native Nations say they are preparing for the long haul.
“After the elections I was walking through the camp and people were crying and people were very somber and pretty devastated for the first day after the election,” said Mossett. “Now people have started to pull themselves back together and people are preparing for the long haul and what is coming up and for what the next fight is.”
A number of celebrities have visited the camp, including Mark Ruffalo, Neil Young and Robert Kennedy Jr., which has helped raise spirits, says Mossett. Additionally, a big benefit concert is planned for Sunday the 27th, featuring Jackson Browne and Bonnie Rait at the Prairie Knights Pavilion on the Standing Rock reservation. The population of the camp is expected to swell to 5,000 or 6,000 people over the weekend.
The amount of support pouring in from the across the US and around the world has left her people in awe, Mossett says.
“I think we are still in awe about it, that it grew the way it did and that it became such a big movement,” she explained. “I think it goes to show that the country is ready, that people want this kind of a movement and who know that there is a better way to live on this planet and it involves divesting from the fossil fuel industry and investing in renewable energy.”
“Even around the world, we have people from all over the world standing with standing rock. Its an indicator that people want change but we aren’t being listened to.”
The Morton County Sheriff's Department could not be reached for comment
Jessi Satin is an i24news reporter and photographer