Indigenous people blocking oil pipeline doing 'spirit work'
Hundreds of people from dozens of indigenous nations across North America have flocked to river banks near Cannonball, North Dakota, to block an oil pipeline that they see as threatening a reservation’s water supply and sacred land.
Several groups set up what they call spirit camps near the spot where the Dakota Access Pipeline would cross the Missouri River, a little more than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation’s water intake. Their numbers swelled into the thousands in August and early September. People have locked themselves to machines to stop construction, leading to arrests.
On September 3, the Dakota Access company’s security guards sprayed mace in the faces of unarmed people and allowed dogs to bite them, according to organizers of opposition to the pipeline.
