The mugshot of Shailene Woodley, an actor arrested during a demonstration against the proposed Dakota Access pipeline at the Standing Rock protest site. (Photo: Morton County Sheriff)
As Americans shopped for “Columbus Day” bargains at their local retail stores, water protectors, or protesters as they are sometimes called, gathered in prayer on the front line of the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance.
Thousands of people have camped over the past months at the Sacred Stone Camp, established along the Missouri River in Cannonball, North Dakota, as a place of peaceful and prayerful resistance to the construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ 1,134 mile, $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, which intends to carry 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily through Lakota treaty lands on its way through Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
On October 10, Indigenous Peoples Day to Native Americans, a caravan of cars from the camp set out to a pipeline construction site near the St. Anthony area on Highway 6 in North Dakota.
Actor Shailene Woodley, the most well known of the group for her recent roles in the films Snowden and Divergent, was streaming live on Facebook.
“The reason why we are here,” said Woodley in her broadcast, “is because last night the US district court of appeals decided to deny the injunction to halt construction of the pipeline for 20 miles. So we decided to show up and stand in solidarity for Standing Rock, to show the world, mainstream media, and the government, that we are not going to back down regardless of what decisions they make.”
Woodley was referring to the decision over the holiday weekend by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s emergency motion for an injunction to stop construction of the pipeline.
“Indigenous Peoples Day is about recognizing our true nature. All of us, regardless of our background and our history,” said Woodley, answering people’s questions as she walked along, conducting…