Native-led Occupation Stalls Dakota Access Pipeline Project

FEATURING JASON COPPOLA – After weeks of occupying land near the construction of a major crude oil pipeline, Native American and other activists are claiming a brief victory. Work on the Dakota Access Pipeline has temporarily stopped after on-going protests by indigenous activists with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. A company named Energy Transfer is building the pipeline to carry crude Bakken oil extracted through fracking, across four US states including North Dakota where the protests are taking place. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has set up an encampment that they are calling Sacred Stone camp, near the mouth of the Cannonball river, which is a tributary of the Missouri river.

Read Coppola’s writings HERE.

Jason Coppola, writer and producer of the upcoming documentary film Operation: Manifest Destiny. He has reported from occupied Iraq and the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Indian Reservations. His stories for Truthout and Al Jazeera English have won awards from the Native American Journalism Association. He has been closely covering the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.