DAPL Still Has to Get Past the Protesters
Less than two months after the Army Corps of Engineers denied an easement required for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Corps has reversed course and said it will grant the easement after all. Senator John Hoeven, a Republican from North Dakota, announced the news in a statement on Tuesday night. "This will enable the company to complete the project, which can and will be built with the necessary safety features to protect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others downstream," the statement read.
The Senator’s conciliatory words are unlikely to calm any fears held by the Standing Rock Sioux or any of the thousands of other Native Americans who joined the tribe in protesting the pipeline in 2016—especially if they kept reading the Senator’s statement. "We are also working with the Corps, the Department of Justice, the Department of Interior and the Department of Homeland Security to secure additional federal law enforcement resources to support state and local law enforcement," it said. "On Sunday, 20 additional Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement officers arrived at Standing Rock to assist local authorities."
In effect, they’re preparing for a fight.
The protest at Standing Rock began in April 2016 as the sort of environmental movement that rarely gets any national news coverage—a handful of people, an issue that few across the country fully understood, let alone had heard of. But by September, several thousand people, most of them Native Americans, had gathered at what was called the Oceti Sakowin Camp, or the Seven Council Fires.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2154201/get-ready-showdown-dapl-may-happen-after-all?utm_source=whatyoumissed&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=02012017&spMailingID=27722491&spUserID=NzU3Mzk0NDUyMzAS1&spJobID=980225401&spReportId=OTgwMjI1NDAxS0
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