As some Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock prepared for a standoff with law enforcement, demonstrators in Durango marched on Wednesday to reiterate their opposition to the controversial pipeline.
About 30 demonstrators, including tribal members and students, gathered in Buckley Park to make the trek to the local Army Corps of Engineers office in the 1900 block of East Third Avenue, spilling into Main Avenue as they headed north. Protesters did not obtain a permit from the city.
Oglala tribal member Julie Richards, who protested at Standing Rock in North Dakota from August through mid-December, was among the protesters.
“It’s sad,” she said. “We’re seeing history repeat itself. Right now it feels like we’re in the fight of our lives. This isn’t just about Standing Rock, but all the downstream communities who get their water from the Missouri River.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,170-mile pipeline that would carry 470,000 barrels of oil a day from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois. Native tribes have been at the forefront of the protests, renouncing the project for encroaching upon ancestral burial grounds and endangering drinking water for communities that rely on the Missouri River.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and North Dakota authorities set a Wednesday deadline for protesters to evacuate the Oceti Sakawin camp, which sits at the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation. Most protesters left before the deadline, and an unknown number who refused to leave were arrested.
“For me personally, this is an endeavor on behalf of my people,” said Randall Hughes, a Fort Lewis College student and Oglala tribal member. “Wherever we are, we can show our force, sound our voice in numbers. If there are a lot of communities like Durango doing the same thing – demonstrating – we create a bigger voice.”
Dave Mehan of Durango said he participated in the women’s march in Denver in January as well as Wednesday’s demonstration, both in protest of the Trump administration.
“I continue to protest the injustice of this administration to override Native Americans’ input and rights,” Mehan said, referring to the president’s executive action to advance the pipeline. “This sets a bad precedent.”
Durango residents have vocally opposed the pipeline over the past six months. Organized efforts included a demonstration outside Wells Fargo on College Drive to protest the bank for funding the project, and a group of Fort Lewis College students and professors who joined tribes and other protesters in Standing Rock, both in November.
College students also organized a demonstration outside the Pagosa Springs ranch of the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the pipeline.
