In Washington, D.C., thousands of Native American activists marched to the White House on Friday, protesting the Trump administration’s policies toward indigenous people and its support for the Dakota Access pipeline. Along the march route, protesters erected a giant tipi outside the Trump Hotel to “reclaim stolen land.” This is activist Deborah His Horse is Thunder.
Deborah His Horse is Thunder: “I mean, as Native people, we’ve continued to have our resources extracted. You know, they’re in the process of doing that now with this pipeline, to the detriment or the possible detriment or the very real detriment of loss of clean water. And then what? Nothing is going to survive without water. Nothing.”
The protest came just days after a federal judge ruled against a lawsuit by the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes seeking to halt construction of the last section of the $3.8 billion pipeline, which they say could pollute their main source of drinking water, the Missouri River. The ruling came after President Trump fast-tracked the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines for completion. The company building the Dakota Access pipeline says it expects to pump oil through the pipeline by April 1.