Those protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline are pledging not to leave their encampments, days after the US Army Corps of Engineers informed them of a looming eviction.
Last Friday, the Corps stated that federal lands near the Cannonball River in North Dakota would be shut down on December 5. The agency cited “safety concerns,” and claimed that anyone remaining on the property would be deemed trespassers and subject to prosecution.
The site has been a congregating point for roughly 5,000 activists and members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe who are trying to prevent completion of the pipeline, which risks poisoning water supplies and desecrating nearby indigenous sacred sites.
It has also been a location of violent clashes between local authorities and pipeline security officers. Peaceful activists have been sprayed with chemical agents, assaulted with rubber bullets, hosed in sub-freezing temperatures, and had attack dogs sicced on them during their demonstrations.
The Army Corps cited those clashes and the looming winter weather to claim the ejection is in the interest of public safety. They want protesters moved to a so-called “free speech zone” nearby.
On Sunday, however, the Corps stated that it had no plans for a “forcible removal,” and that it intends to facilitate a “peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location.”
“They’re giving us notice because the Corps of Engineers wants to reduce their liability when something serious happens,” said Standing Rock tribal chairman Dave Archambault said on Saturday reacting to the news.
But it’s unlikely that demonstrators will obey the order. “Indigenous people are here to stay,” Nick Tilsen, co-founder of the Indigenous Peoples Power Project, said, according to The Intercept. “And we’re not going to move unless it’s on our own terms, because this is our treaty land, this is our ancestral land, this is where our people have been for thousands of years,” he added.
Those opposing the pipeline have legitimate reason to fear their efforts will be undermined by an incoming Republican president. Donald Trump, after all, hasn’t just been critical of environmental regulations– he has a financial stake in the Texas-based company trying to build the pipeline Energy Transfer Partners.
But it’s President Obama’s administration, plus a prominent blue Senator, who are trying to dispense of the #NoDAPL protesters long before the Trump even takes office. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) praised the Army Corps’ eviction notice.
“The decision by the Army Corps is a needed step to support the safety of residents, workers, protestors, and law enforcement,” she said in a statement over the weekend.
Heitkamp then called on the Army Corps to promptly complete it’s reanalysis of the impacts of the pipeline on tribal water resources. The agency has temporarily halted construction of the project around Lake Oahe, pending further review.
“For too long, we have waited in limbo as the decision is put off,” the senator added.
While the Army Corps of Engineers did temporarily halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline pending the review, President Obama has largely taken a hands-off approach to protecting peaceful protesters who have been under assault by local police at Standing Rock.
Earlier this month, he said of the situation that he would like to “let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of First Americans.”
