[Photo: At the Standing Rock #WaterProtectors barricade. Credit: UnicornRiot.]
The Protectors have done their best to maintain a peaceful resistance in the face of escalating armed violence from the forces sent against them by DAPL and their state protectors. The forces thrown against the Protectors are escalating, and there is growing brutality. Meanwhile, efforts are being made by the state to bar all information flow out of the area. They have declared a "no fly zone" - YES a NO FLY ZONE - over the whole area so that neither drones (which people's media journalists were using to monitor some of the activities) nor helicopters or small planes (should the corporate media ever show up). The county sheriff has filed charges against various journalists for trespass and other violations in an effort to intimidate and shut down even peoples' media.
The corporate interests and their state protectors want zero visibility of their military actions against peaceful demonstrators. Throw out the Constitution. Throw out the "free press." Throw out the TREATIES signed with the Sioux that makes the land that DAPL is trenching across TRIBAL LAND - throughout perpetuity. Forget that this land is not only tribal land, but that it is SACRED land.
This resistance action is also historic in that as far as we know there has never been a gathering of the tribes that matches this moment. This shold send an unequivocal messages around the world that what is at stake here - on the ground and in principle - is of utmost importance to indigenous people everywhere. Further, if it is of this much importance to the first peoples, it damn well better be of critical importance to everyone.
Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp
=By= Unicorn Riot
Oct 28th 1:20am CDT New video below shows police attacking Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp with pepper spray, less-lethal rounds used at close range, batons, LRAD, and tazers.
100+ Militarized Police Raiding #NoDAPL Resistance Camp Blocking Pipeline’s Path
=By= DemocracyNow!
In Cannonball, North Dakota, over 100 police with military equipment are advancing on a resistance camp established by Native American water protectors in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Photos and multiple videos posted to Facebook Live depict over 100 officers in riot gear lined up across North Dakota’s Highway 1806, flanked by multiple mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles (MRAPs), a sound cannon, an armored truck and a bulldozer. There have also been reports from water protectors that the police presence includes multiple snipers. Police appear to be evicting the camp in order to clear the way for the Dakota Access pipeline company to continue construction — which was active at times on Thursday just behind the police line.Police advance towards blockade on Hwy 1806 to evict #OcetiSakowin from 1851 treaty land and pave way for the #DakotaAccessPipeline. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/VRQAGRdN10
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) October 27, 2016
@democracynow @HillaryClinton the world needs to hear from you on this
— Adrian Hough (@Adey800) October 27, 2016
Cody Hall of Red Warrior Camp told Democracy Now! that behind the line of police, the Dakota Access pipeline company is carrying out construction with cranes and bulldozers on the sacred tribal burial site where on September 3, unlicensed Dakota Access security guards unleashed dogs and pepper spray against Native Americans.
PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016
Water protectors have set up a blockade of the highway using cars, tires and fire. Elders are also leading prayer ceremonies.
PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016
Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network reported in a Facebook Live video posted just before 2 p.m. local time that police have begun arresting water protectors in the ongoing standoff. Sacheen Seitcham of the West Coast Women Warrior Media Cooperative told Democracy Now! police have used tasers against water protectors, and that she was hit with a concussion grenade.
The frontline camp sits directly in the proposed path of the Dakota Access pipeline on private property purchased recently by the Dakota Access pipeline company for $18 million. In establishing this frontline camp, water protectors cited an 1851 treaty, which they say makes the entire area unceded sovereign land under the control of the Sioux. Over the weekend, police arrested more than 120 people in a peaceful march to this site during which police deployed tear gas and used rubber bullets to shoot down drones the water protectors were using to document police activity.
Ahead of today’s apparent police raid, the Federal Aviation Administration also issued a temporary no-fly zone for the airspace above the resistance camps for all aircraft except for those used by law enforcement. This order means Native Americans can no longer fly drones to document police activity, but the police can continue to fly their surveillance drones and helicopters.
The apparent police raid of the resistance camp comes only minutes before Standing Rock Sioux youth flooded the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in New York City to demand Clinton oppose the Dakota Access pipeline.
As police in ND seem poised to raid #NoDAPL camp, Standing Rock youth flood Clinton campaign HQ to demand she oppose Dakota Access pipeline pic.twitter.com/4ixgjiuGpk
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016
Militarized Police Are Cracking Down on Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters
=By= Zoë Carpenter from The Nation
After a weekend of mass arrests, people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline are preparing for another clash with a growing and increasingly militarized police force near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. On Sunday, demonstrators set up a new camp, called Winter Camp, in the pathway of pipeline construction, on what they consider unceded territory belonging to them under the 1851 Laramie Treaty. But Dakota Access LLC, the pipeline developer, said in a statement that they would be “removed from the land,” which the company purchased from a local rancher last month. Police said on Wednesday that they are prepared to carry out that threat. “It’s obvious we have the resources, we have the manpower, to go down there and end this,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said in an interview.
As the prospect of a raid on the Winter Camp looms, human-rights groups are increasingly concerned about law enforcement’s use of force against peaceful pipeline protesters (who call themselves “water protectors”), as well as journalists and legal observers. Demonstrators reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched in custody during the weekend’s arrests. Journalists were also arrested, and had their equipment confiscated.
In a Facebook post, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier described Saturday’s demonstration as a “riot,” and wrote that the “situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful.” But it wasn’t immediately clear what he meant by a riot: The photo that accompanied the Facebook post showed protesters walking calmly through a field carrying banners and signs. Video footage showed people standing together, backing up as police approached. The only supposedly aggressive acts that the sheriff’s department described in any specific form included that two arrows were shot towards law enforcement, one officer was spit on, and that a drone that protesters were using to monitor police activity “attacked” a helicopter.
On Sunday, the Morton County Sheriff called for additional law-enforcement personnel from outside North Dakota. Officers from at least six other states—Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Indiana, and Nebraska—have arrived so far. In his call for more resources, the sheriff cited “escalated unlawful tactics by individuals protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.” State and local officials also requested, and received, temporary flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration in a seven-mile radius around the protest camps, which may be an attempt to keep away news helicopters, as it was during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
“We have heard reports of escalation [from law enforcement], and we continue to be concerned with a number of issues,” said Tarah Demant, the senior director of Amnesty International’s Identity and Discrimination Unit. She cited the “sheer number” of police that have been brought into the area; their use of military-style equipment including riot and camouflage gear, semi-automatic weapons, and armored vehicles; and the force that they’re using to make arrests. “If police are making arrests—for example, for trespassing—they must be done in a way that upholds the rights of the people who are being arrested. And they need to be commensurate with the crime. The idea that police need to come out with pepper spray…is worrisome,” Demant said.
Demant is also concerned with rhetoric coming out of the Morton County Sheriff’s office. The department has repeatedly emphasized that protesters are violent, though there is little evidence to back up its claim. In September, for instance, Kirchmeier spread a rumor that demonstrators were threatening to use pipe bombs against officers. “We’ve seen this in multiple places across the world, and in dictatorships. Declaring that something is a riot is a way to shut down protests,” Demant said. “If there is a riot, then police or authorities have to provide evidence of that.” She said the response from North Dakota officials fits a pattern of increasing militarization of law enforcement across the country, but that it also echoes a long history of official, state-sanctioned violence against indigenous people.
Law enforcement officials have said that they are only responding to illegal activity on private property. “We’re having our hand forced…. we have to defend rule of law, and we have to make those arrests,” Sheriff Laney said in the Wednesday interview. But Jennifer Cook, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said that, while trespassing is illegal, it’s not a crime that warrants a militarized response. “Even if [demonstrators] are on private land, and the private landowner requests that law enforcement eject them, it is in no way justified for law enforcement to come out and use excessive force against them,” Cook said. She said that officials have been “ramping up” the seriousness of the charges they’re filing against protesters (and against journalists: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman was arrested on a “riot” charge). She sees that as an attempt to “justify the militarized response,” rather than a reflection of demonstrators’ actually acting aggressively themselves.
On Saturday, Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II called on the Department of Justice to investigate the “strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement” in North Dakota. Though officials have consistently denied that they’ve used excessive force, on Wednesday the Morton County sheriff’s office did admit that the dog handlers whose animals attacked protesters in September “were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.” It took nearly two months for them to reach that conclusion.
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