Native American Pipeline Protest Halts Construction in N. Dakota

Native American protesters succeeded in halting construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near Cannon Ball, N.D. Credit: Courtesy of Montgomery BrownPhil McKenna has published an article in Inside Climate News (the publication won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, for its series on the tar sands crude oil spill in the Kalamazoo River) describing the mounting Native American protests against the so-called Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's ancestral lands along the Missouri River in North Dakota. The article begins:

A groundswell of Native American activists has temporarily shut down construction on a major new oil pipeline with an ongoing protest that has drawn around 1,200 people to Cannon Ball, N.D.

Construction workers walked away from their bulldozers Monday after protesters surrounded the equipment and called for an end to construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. A group of protesters on horseback also staged a mock charge toward a line of law enforcement officials guarding the site, and the county sheriff alleged others have fired guns and set off pipe bombs.

The $3.8 billion pipeline at the heart of the protest would carry about half a million barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oil field to Illinois where it would link with other pipelines to transport the oil to Gulf Coast refineries and terminals.

The protest was staged at a spot where the pipeline would pass beneath the Missouri River, just upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, a community of 8,500 along the Missouri River in North and South Dakota.

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