With snow on the ground and temperatures in Cannon Ball expected to dip to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-16 Celsius) by the middle of next week, according to Weather.com, one group of veterans began constructing military barracks and a mess hall in the freezing conditions on Friday.
Veterans have been arriving at the Oceti Sakowin camp near Cannon Ball over the past several days, prepared to stand as human shields and work with the water protectors protesting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline that threatens water resources and sacred sites, reports Voice of America News.
Reuters is reporting that writer Wesley Clark Jr, whose father is retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, met with law enforcement on Friday. He told them veterans were joining the water protectors, and that demonstrations would be carried out in a peaceful manner. Tribal elders have asked the veterans to avoid confrontation with authorities and not get arrested.
There have been 564 arrests since the protests started earlier this year, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. The demonstrations were always peaceful and didn’t turn violent until law enforcement began using tear gas, rubber bullets and water hoses on the protesters, even in freezing weather.
“I felt it was our duty and very personally more of a call of duty than I ever felt in the service to come and stand in front of the guns and the mace and the water and the threat that they pose to these people,” said Anthony Murtha, 29, a Navy veteran from Detroit, at the Oceti Sakowin camp.
Protesters take NoDAPL to the Banks
On Thursday, demonstrations around the world kicked off a Global Day of Action to start off a month of demonstrations worldwide calling for an end to the Dakota Access Pipeline. “We call on allies across the world to take action EVERY DAY starting December 1,” organizers write.
Activists in Tokyo, Seattle, San Francisco, and Minneapolis took to the streets, targeting banks and calling for their divestment from the Dakota Access Pipeline. Internationally, the movement has been successful in Norway where last month, one of the country’s largest banks bowed to pressure from U.S. Native American and Indigenous Samí people in Norway, in pulling their money out of the DAPL project.
“These catastrophic projects can’t continue, and as citizens of Planet Earth, we can’t allow banks to use our money to fund them,” said Barb Drake, a Seattle NoDAPL movement organizer. “These are not normal times, and this is not normal business,” Drake said.
“We’re encouraging everyone to close their accounts at the funders of DAPL, and we’ll do the same for funders of other dirty energy projects, like tar sands development. The stakes are just too high.”