CPOY 72 Domestic Picture Story Silver: Oil and Water
On February 7, 2017 the US Army Corps of Engineers granted the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline an easement to pass beneath Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Since early 2016, thousands of Native Americans have been fighting to prevent the pipeline’s completion. In the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency the White House put the construction on hold pending further assessments, and for a while the protesters believed they had won. Crowds celebrated with fireworks on the snow covered prairie of North Dakota. But everything changed with the arrival of President Donald Trump. Within days of Trump taking office, an executive memorandum was issued calling for the pipeline to proceed. And two weeks later, the president’s order was followed through, and the Army Corps granted the easement. For the Sioux people who opposed this venture and the coalition of 200 tribal nations that joined them, this development is a crushing blow.
Protestors raise their arms during a prayer at an action defending what they claim to be a sacred site near Turtle Island against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, North Dakota on November 24, 2016.
Protestors have gathered on disputed Army Corps of Engineers land just north of the reservation to protest the construction of the pipeline underneath the Lake Oahe reservoir of the Missouri River for months since early 2016. Protestors say that the pipeline poses the possibility of contamination of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's primary water source.
