Regional Industry & News

STANDING ROCK, N.D. — The world’s eyes turned toward North Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe early September 2016, after a little-known protest over a crude oil pipeline’s path intensified to encompass thousands of Indigenous people and allies.

The months-long conflict over the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, erupted when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved plans for a crude oil pipeline half a mile outside of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

The decision pitted American energy against tribal sovereignty, and led to a grassroots movement of Indigenous protesters and allies from around the world who argued the project threatened water, sacred tribal sites and the environment, while developers and state officials maintained that modern steel pipelines offered safer fossil-fuel transit than railroads or trucks.

Native Americans and climate activists flocked to Standing Rock, nestled on the plains south of Bismarck, North Dakota. Their numbers grew into the thousands. Public figures — like actors Shailene Woodley and Mark Ruffalo and the Rev. Jesse Jackson — arrived in North Dakota to support the tribe, and soon, protester numbers threatened to overwhelm law enforcement's repeated responses.

Activists chained themselves to equipment. They built resistance hubs. They held prayer runs, rode on horseback. They blocked roads and damaged pipeline equipment, which began costing Dakota Access Partners $83.3 million per month.

Many environmental groups, like Greenpeace, supplied the activists with assistance including tents, solar-powered vehicles, cameras and training, according to the North Dakota Monitor.

While activists like Ojibwe writer and Harvard-trained economist, Winona LaDuke, and the then-Standing Rock Sioux Reservation Chairman Dave Archambault II, were concerned about the water, the environment, Indigenous sacred sites and climate issues along the pipeline’s route, Energy Transfer Partners became concerned about pipeline integrity, its workers' safety, budgets and profit.

Before September 2016, the protests were comparatively calm, with a total of 37 people arrested primarily on trespassing and disorderly conduct charges , but by Sept. 3, everything changed. The protests threatened to overwhelm law enforcement, which was pulled in from around the state and eventually included 178 agencies, according to MPR News.

Energy Transfer Partners hired their own security, including TigerSwan, a private security firm founded by an elite special operations unit Delta Force commander, which worked closely with law enforcement and called them “jihadists” and “domestic terrorists” in their weekly reports, according to The Intercept and a Cass County Sheriff’s Office open records request in 2017.

Tasked with undermining morale and gathering evidence, undercover oil industry operatives infiltrated the camps, according to leaked documents from TigerSwan obtained by The Intercept.

The violence escalated. Pipelines were sabotaged. Camp security tightened.

One of the main camps, Oceti Sakowin, or the “Seven Council Fires,” began to resemble a war zone: with activists pitched against law enforcement while private security roamed the hills in all terrain vehicles.

Clashes between private security guards, law enforcement and protesters prompted the state to send additional help, including the North Dakota National Guard, stretching already thin budgets.

By Sept. 3, 2016, the protests garnered national attention after the so-called “day of the dogs,” where private security personnel unleashed guard dogs and pepper spray on protesters, injuring at least six people, including a young child.

Four guards and two dogs were also injured on that day, Donnell Preskey, Morton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, reported at the time.

LaDuke expected the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline to get rough. As a teen, she participated in protests against uranium mining and became one of the youngest people in history to testify before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, according to the National Women’s History Museum.

The violence on that day, the “day of the dogs,” shocked her.

“We were trying to keep people safe and do whatever we could to stop a heinous crime from being committed. The level of repression surprised me. That is what late stage fossil fuel addiction is like,” LaDuke recently told Forum News Service.

“It was traumatic for all of us, but it also formed us. You had everyone stand up for the water, who believed in the water, who came for the water, and Energy Transfer Partners and the state of North Dakota released fury upon those people,” LaDuke said.

Violent clashes continued for months. In early December, a blizzard swept through, driving many protesters out of the state. Archambault said non-Sioux protesters should leave the camps and anticipated that no additional construction work would go forward over the winter season, adding he would focus efforts on communications with President-elect Donald Trump.

A few weeks later, former Gov. Jack Dalrymple penned a lengthy column , stating DAPL "has been marred by a steady stream of misinformation and rumor." He said the tribe's concerns had been overshadowed by mob rule and intimidation as thousands camped illegally on federal land.

Hundreds of protesters acted peacefully, he wrote, but "many were actually professional agitators recruited by large environmental activist organizations" who blocked roads, trespassed on private ranches, slaughtered cattle and horses, and vandalized private construction equipment.

The last day

After months of protests, icy snow needled police and protesters alike the morning of Feb. 23, 2017. “Thunder beings,” or storm spirits, as Standing Rock Sioux activist Shiye Bidzill called a winter storm in 2017, had just swept over the frozen floodplain as the last NoDAPL camps prepared for the final evacuation.

The winter storm, just like the buffalo or the golden eagle that at times visited the resistance camps, were signs that nature was listening, he said.

Law enforcement, however, had their orders: evacuate all the protest camps on public land. Busses and state-sponsored travel-assistance packages worth $300 — a hot shower, food, taxi money and a bus ticket home — were waiting for anyone who left voluntarily.

No one volunteered, former North Dakota Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson said just before the 2 p.m. deadline to evacuate. Iverson is now the agency’s assistant superintendent-field operations.

As gray dawn broke, fires erupted within the camp — home to more than 8,000 people at its height — between Highway 1806 and the Cannonball River. Tipis and plywood shacks burst into flames. Black smoke billowed into low-hanging clouds.

“It’s a way of leaving a place that we’ve held so long here, and burning down a structure is a part of that ceremony of leaving things. Burning all the prayers, all the traditions, all our fights, courage, bravery, strength, all going up in flames,” Bidziil said as the evacuation began.

Law enforcement, however, said the fires hurt the water protector movement.

“It’s hypocritical to say it’s about clean water when things are on fire and things are exploding,” said Iverson at the time, watching from Highway 1806.

As about 60 people marched out for the final time, at least 100 more remained behind, according to police at the time. They were determined to be counted among the total of 761 people arrested during the protest .

On evacuation day, the North Dakota National Guard accounted for 35,412 man hours spent guarding road blocks and assisting police. A total of 1,421 soldiers were called for duty costing the state $8,752,232 since Dalrymple called a state of emergency in August 2016, according to the North Dakota National Guard.

That sum was only a portion of the total cost, nearly $38 million.

To the activists on the final day, the evacuation wasn’t a loss.

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