Police Remove Last Standing Rock Protesters in Military-Style Takeover

By Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian UK

24 February 17

Armed occupation brought an anticlimactic and forlorn end to the camp, which had been home to thousands of activists opposing the Dakota Access pipeline

ozens of national guard and law enforcement officers marched into the Dakota Access pipeline protest encampment on Thursday in a military-style takeover, one day after a deadline for the camp’s eviction.

The armed occupation of the largely abandoned plain brought an anticlimactic and forlorn end to the sprawling Oceti Sakowin camp, which had been home to thousands of indigenous and environmental activists since last August.

The Native American-led movement, which rose up in opposition to the pipeline being built just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, captured the world’s attention and achieved a stunning – if short-lived – victory against the fossil fuel industry. The tribe argued that the pipeline route, which passes under the Missouri river, violated its treaty rights, threatened its water source, and damaged sacred sites.

“I honestly thought the camp would always be there,” said Linda Black Elk, a member of the Catawba Nation who works with the Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council. “I thought that people would be able to make their lives there. We would make a treaty claim and it would be back in the hands of the Lakota people.”

Government officials had imposed the Wednesday deadline for evacuating the camp, citing the danger to the camp’s inhabitants, known as “water protectors”, from the spring thaw and possible flooding.

Most of the remaining protesters at Oceti Sakowin left on Wednesday, as law enforcement agencies surrounded, but did not enter, the camp’s boundaries. Some activists set fires to structures, and 10 were arrested on the road near the camp.

But on Thursday, with a few dozen holdouts still in camp, law enforcement officers moved in from multiple directions. Thirty-three people were arrested as of 1pm local time, according to the Morton County sheriff’s department. It was not known how many more remained within the camp.

At mid-afternoon, the North Dakota department of emergency services tweeted that the camp had been “officially cleared of all protest activity”.

Black Elk spoke to the Guardian from Sacred Stone, the original encampment that is within the reservation and has not been evicted.

“I’ve been watching police officers use knives to cut tipis and point their guns inside blindly,” she said. Of the people who had remained in defiance of the eviction, she said, “most of them are Lakota and they are just determined to stay on their own land and not allow the US government to once again remove them from sacred lands.”

A live stream from independent journalist Unicorn Riot showed officers in military fatigues and riot gear marching through camp, some with rifles drawn, while a helicopter hovered overhead and heavy machinery began demolishing remaining structures.

Officers traversed a muddy and debris-filled field that barely resembled the energetic and complex village that celebrated the Obama administration’s last-minute decision to deny a final permit to the pipeline last December. Then, thousands of activists braved blizzard conditions to sleep in tipis and army tents, communal kitchens churned out three meals a day, and tribal elders gathered around the sacred fire to share songs, ceremony and information.

At the time, many feared that the victory against the $3.7bn project would be temporary, noting Donald Trump’s support for the fossil fuel industry. Trump is also an investor in Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project, and received more than $100,000 in campaign donations from ETP’s chief executive, Kelcey Warren.

Just four days after taking office, Trump revived the pipeline, ordering the expedited approval of the final permit.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is challenging that decision in court, but the tribal council supported the closing of the encampments.

“There’ve been a lot of falsely claimed victories by people who tend to do a lot of talking with the army corps and government agencies, and not the folks who are willing to put their bodies on the line and actually stop [pipeline construction] work,” said Noah Morris, a medic who had been at Oceti Sakowin since August.

Frustration with the tribal council’s leadership has sown division within the movement. A spokesperson for the tribe declined to comment on the eviction Thursday, saying that they were “focused on legal strategy” and a Native Nations march on Washington DC planned for March.

Amid the anger and sadness over the eviction of the camp, however, water protectors expressed determination to keep fighting for indigenous and environmental rights.

“The closing of the camp is not the end of a movement or fight, it is a new beginning,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, in a statement. “They cannot extinguish the fire that Standing Rock started. It burns within each of us.”

For Black Elk, the Standing Rock fight has made indigenous people visible to non-Natives in a powerful and important way.

“People forgot we existed. I even had people tell me, ‘I didn’t know that you guys were still here,’” she said. “Now we’re back. This really is serving to show people that we are still here and we are still strong.”