Native Americans, ranchers and farmers on Aug. 10 launched a blockade of a highway in North Dakota to bar crews of contractor Energy Transfer Partners [5] from reaching the construction site of the Dakota Access Pipeline [6]. Some 250 Lakota Indians and their allies are still maintaining the blockade, despite several arrests. The $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, will extend from North Dakota to a market hub near Patoka, Ill., outside Chicago. The US Army Corps Engineers issued formal approval of the pipeline on July 26. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe [7] have started a protest camp to block its construction, where the Cannonball and Missouri rivers meet. Standing Rock Sioux chairman Dave Archambault III is among those arrested by North Dakota state troopers and Morton County deputies. At 1,172 miles, the Dakota Access Pipeline is only seven miles shorter than the proposed length of the stalled Keystone Pipeline [8]. (TruthOut [9], Censored News [10], Aug. 13; Native News Online [11], Mother Jones [12], Aug. 12)
