page_title: Standing Rock Indian Reservation
section_title: Dakota Access Pipeline
hierarchical_section_title: Standing Rock Indian Reservation / Dakota Access Pipeline
caption_attribution_description: English: "August 31st, 2016 - North Dakota - The #NoDAPL water protectors who have come to stand with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe took non-violent direct action by locking themselves to construction equipment. This is "Happy" American Horse from the Sicangu Nation, hailing from Rosebud."
context_page_description: The Standing Rock Reservation is located in North Dakota and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaksa bands of the Dakota Oyate," as well as the Hunkpatina Dakota. The Ihanktonwana Dakota are the Upper Yanktonai, part of the collective of Wiciyena. The sixth-largest Native American reservation in land area in the US, Standing Rock includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, and all of Corson County, South Dakota, plus slivers of northern Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota, along their northern county lines at Highway 20.
  The reservation has a land area of 9,251.2 square kilometers and a population of 8,217 as of the 2010 census. There are 15,568 enrolled members of the tribe. The largest communities on the reservation are Fort Yates, Cannon Ball and McLaughlin.
context_section_description: The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) was rerouted near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation after a proposed route near the state capital Bismarck was denied as being deemed too risky for Bismarck's water supplies. The tribe opposed the pipeline to be constructed under Lake Oahe and the Missouri River.
  On April 1, 2016, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, an elder member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and her grandchildren established the Sacred Stone Camp to protest the DAPL, which they said threatens the upper Missouri River, the only water supply for the Standing Rock Reservation. The camp was on Allard's private land and served as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the DAPL. Protests at the pipeline site in North Dakota began in the spring of 2016 and drew indigenous people from throughout North America, as well as many other supporters. It was the largest gathering of Native Tribes in the past 100 years. A number of planned arrests occurred when people locked themselves to heavy machinery in civil disobedience. Facebook was criticized for assisting the local authorities in censoring the protesters.
  In the summer of 2016, a group of young activists from Standing Rock ran from North Dakota to Washington, D.C., to present a petition in protest of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is part of the Bakken pipeline. They launched an international campaign called ReZpect our Water. The activists argued that the pipeline, which goes from North Dakota to Illinois, would jeopardize the water source of the reservation, the Missouri River.
  The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop building the pipeline. In April 2016, three federal agencies -- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Interior, and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—requested a full Environmental Impact Statement of the pipeline. In August 2016, protests were held near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
  By late September, it was reported that there were over 300 federally recognized Native American tribes and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 pipeline resistance supporters residing in the camp, with several thousand more on weekends.
  A number of planned arrests occurred when people locked themselves to heavy machinery. On September 3, 2016, the DAPL brought in a private security firm. The company used bulldozers to dig up part of the pipeline route that was subject to a pending injunction motion; it contained possible Native graves and burial artifacts. The bulldozers arrived within a day from when the tribe filed legal action. When unarmed protesters moved near the bulldozers, the guards used pepper spray and guard dogs to attack the protesters. At least six protesters were treated for dog bites, and an estimated 30 protesters were pepper-sprayed before the security guards and their dogs exited the scene in trucks.
  The pipeline construction company claimed they hired the security company because the protests had not been peaceful. The Morton County Sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, described the September 3, 2016 protest, saying protesters crossed onto private property and attacked security guards with "wooden posts and flag poles." He said, "Any suggestion that today's event was a peaceful protest, is false."
  Shortly thereafter, on September 7, 2016, after the federal court denied the tribe's request for an injunction, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation gave the order to halt the construction of the pipeline until further environmental assessments had taken place. There was no evidence of what role President Obama himself may or may not have played in this decision.
  Dakota Access agreed to temporarily halt construction in parts of North Dakota, until September 9, to help "keep the peace." When a federal judge denied the injunction sought by the tribe on the 9th, the Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, and the Department of the Army 
caption: Lakota man locks himself to construction equipment to stop progress of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Summer 2016
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