Last stand: 'water protectors' return to Standing Rock as drilling set to begin

Source: The Guardian

Last stand: 'water protectors' return to Standing Rock as drilling set to begin

Tribal leaders may have urged activists to let the fight play
out in the courts, but many on the ground are calling for a final
push as the pipeline moves ahead

Sam Levin in Cannon Ball, North Dakota
Wednesday 8 February 2017 23.02 GMT

Clarence Rowland returned to Standing Rock in the dark of night.

The 26-year-old Oglala Sioux tribe member arrived to his solar-powered hut at 1.30am on Wednesday, knowing that within several hours, Dakota Access pipeline workers could start drilling.

“I came back to stand for our people,” Rowland said, as he prepared a large stew inside his family’s wooden hut. Around him, young children took shelter from sub-zero temperatures outside.

Rowland – who arrived at Standing Rock last August, but went home in January – is one of a number of Native Americans who rushed back this week to the camps in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to fight the $3.7bn pipeline. The activists, who call themselves “water protectors”, are now planning demonstrations, prayer walks and other resistance effortsa day after the US army corps of engineers announced it was approving the final phase of construction of the pipeline.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/08/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-last-stand