Native Americans protest over North Dakota oil pipeline

By JAMES MacPHERSON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

9 years ago

Jon Don Ilone Reed, an Army veteran and member of South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, poses for a photo at an oil pipeline protest near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in southern North Dakota, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Reed said he fought in Iraq and is now fighting “fighting for our children and our water.” (James MacPherson/AP)

Wambli Johnson poses for photo at an oil pipeline protest near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in southern North Dakota on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. The 11-year-old donated $150 to protest organizers that she earned by selling homemade laundry soap at northern Arizona’s Black Mesa, on the Navajo Nation. ( AP Photo/James MacPherson)

Joye Braun, an organizer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline opposition, poses for a photo at a protest near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in southern North Dakota on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. Braun has been at the protest site since April and has vowed to remain until the project is killed. (AP Photo/James MacPherson)

NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D. (AP) — Native Americans from reservations hundreds of miles away from North Dakota have joined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s growing protest against a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline that they say could disturb sacred sites and impact drinking water for 8,000 tribal members and millions further downstream.

About 30 people have been arrested in recent weeks, and the Texas-based company has temporarily stopped construction.

A federal judge will rule before Sept. 9 on whether construction can be halted on the Dakota Access pipeline, which will pass through Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota and South Dakota.

One of the protesters is an 11-year-old Navajo girl who sold about 50 homemade soaps and gave the money to protest organizers. Her own home has no running water, and her sales pitch was “I don’t want water to be poisoned.”