Activists gather in downtown Duluth tonight to show support for pipeline protesters in North Dakota who they say are being “brutally repressed” as a private corporation digs up Native American burial grounds. Organizer Reyna Crow says, “The people there want to protect their water supply. They want to protect the sacred site, and… have invoked their rights as sovereign nations under the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty.” Nearly 150 people were arrested in North Dakota Thursday when authorities ousted protesters, who today burned vehicles and built roadblocks along a state highway.
Crow says they want the “militarized police presence” removed, including officers from the Hennepin, Anoka and Washington County sheriff’s departments. “They’re protecting the private corporation,” she says, “not state interests, not citizen safety, they’re protecting corporate profits in sovereign, unceded [Native American] territory.”