In Washington, D.C., a federal judge has ruled that construction on sacred tribal burial sites in the path of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline can continue. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order that halts construction only between Route 1806 and Lake Oahe, but still allows construction to continue west of this area. The ruling does not protect the land where, on Saturday, hundreds of Native Americans forced Dakota Access to halt construction, despite the company’s security forces attacking the crowd with dogs and pepper spray. This part of the construction site is a sacred tribal burial ground. As the ruling was issued in Washington, D.C., about 100 Native Americans again shut down construction on another part of the Dakota Access pipeline by obstructing equipment. Some of them locked themselves to the heavy machinery. Native Americans from across the U.S. and Canada continue to arrive at the resistance camps. This is Defender Eagle, a Lakota Sioux.

Defender Eagle: “I think that we’ve waited long enough, in various ways and means, to listen always to what the white man tells us to do. And the time is dawning, and the age is beginning, when we listen again to our indigenous femininity. So I’m waiting for the women, and I’m hearing the women keep telling us what to do. They’ll guide our course. So, I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of listening to the white man tell us different forms of ’I’m not honoring the treaties,’ which are the law of the land.”

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein also was on the site of the protest and graffitied the excavating equipment. We’ll go to North Dakota and to Seattle for an update on the lawsuit and the actions after headlines, and we’ll go to Iowa, where the pipeline is also facing legal resistance over its use of eminent domain.