The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests or the Standing Rock Protests, also known by the hashtag #NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States that began in April 2016. Protests ended on February 23, 2017, when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters.
The pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Many members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and surrounding communities consider the pipeline to be a serious threat to the region's water. The construction also directly threatens ancient burial grounds and cultural sites of historic importance.
The protests were not successful and the pipeline came online in May 2017. In 2025, a North Dakota jury found that Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International had committed trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts against Energy Transfer LP, the pipeline's builder. The court ordered Greenpeace to pay $345 million in damages. As of 2026, litigation is ongoing.
Background
During September 2014, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal (SRST) council met with Energy Transfer representatives for an initial consultation, which was more than a month before the pipeline's first formal submission to the Army Corps. At the beginning of the meeting, Councilman David Archambault II indicated the tribe's opposition to the project within treaty boundaries. Additional SRST representatives voiced opposition and concerns about the pipeline.
In April 2016, youth from Standing Rock and surrounding Native American communities organized a campaign to stop the pipeline, calling themselves "ReZpect Our Water". Inspired by the youth, several adults, including Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network and tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, established a water protectors' camp as a center for direct action, demonstrating spiritual resistance to the pipeline in both a defence of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural preservation. The #NoDAPL hashtag began to trend on social media, and the camps at Standing Rock gradually grew to thousands of people.
Protests
Conflict between water protectors and law enforcement escalated through the summer and fall. In September 2016, construction workers bulldozed a section of privately owned land that the tribe had claimed as sacred ground. When protesters trespassed into the area, security workers used attack dogs which bit at least six of the demonstrators and one horse. In October 2016, militarized police cleared an encampment which was situated on the proposed path of the pipeline. In November 2016, police used multiple launched tear gas canisters and water cannons on protesters in freezing weather, consequently drawing significant media attention.
Pipeline protests were reported as early as October 2014, when Iowa community and environmental activists presented 2,300 petitions to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad asking him to sign a state executive order to stop it. Voicing concerns for damage to wildlife habitat and sacred sites, the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa (Meskwaki Nation) also objected to the route and formally lodged their opposition in early 2015. Tribal members were also among those who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. In a letter to the Iowa Utilities Board, Tribal chairwoman Judith Bender wrote that there were "environmental concerns about the land and drinking water...it will only take one mistake and life in Iowa will change for the next thousands of years."
The tribe sued for an injunction on the grounds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed to conduct a proper environmental and cultural impact study. Protests had escalated at the pipeline site in North Dakota, with numbers swelling from just a bare handful of people to hundreds and then thousands over the summer.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe believes that the pipeline would put the Missouri River, the water source for the reservation, at risk. They pointed out two recent spills on other pipeline systems, a 2010 pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, which cost over a billion dollars to clean up with significant contamination remaining, and a 2015 Bakken crude oil spill into the Yellowstone River in Montana. The Tribe was also concerned that the pipeline route may run through sacred Sioux sites. In August 2016 protests were held, halting a portion of the pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Protests continued and drew indigenous peoples from throughout North America, as well as other supporters. A number of planned arrests occurred when people locked themselves to heavy machinery.
On August 23, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe released a list of 87 tribal governments who wrote resolutions, proclamations and letters of support stating their solidarity with Standing Rock and the Sioux people. Since then, many more Native American organizations, politicians, environmental groups and civil rights groups joined the effort in North Dakota, including the Black Lives Matter movement, indigenous leaders from the Amazon Basin of South America, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, and many more. The Washington Post called it a "National movement for Native Americans." As of September, the protest constituted the single largest gathering of Native Americans in more than 100 years.
United Nations presentation
On September 20, 2016, Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II addressed the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, where he called "upon all parties to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline." Citing the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, two treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate that recognize the Sioux's national sovereignty, Archambault told the Council that "the oil companies and the government of the United States have failed to respect our sovereign rights."
On September 22, 2016, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a United Nations expert on the rights of Indigenous peoples, admonished the U.S., saying, "the tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations at the planning stage of the project, and environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation." She also responded to the rights of pipeline protesters, saying, "the U.S. authorities should fully protect and facilitate the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of Indigenous peoples, which plays a key role in empowering their ability to claim other rights."
Security confrontations & violence
On September 3, 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline brought in a private security firm when the company used bulldozers to dig up part of the pipeline route that contained possible burial sites and culturally significant artifacts; it was subject to a pending injunction motion. The bulldozers arrived within a day after Standing Rock Sioux filed legal action. Energy Transfer bulldozers cut a two-mile (3200 m) long, 150-foot (45 m) wide path through the contested area.
When protesters crossed the perimeter fence onto private property to stop the bulldozers, they were confronted with pepper spray and guard dogs. At least six protesters were treated for dog bites, and an estimated 30 were pepper-sprayed before the guards and their dogs left the scene in trucks. A woman that had taken part in the incident stated, "The cops watched the whole thing from up on the hills. It felt like they were trying to provoke us into being violent when we're peaceful." The incident was filmed by Amy Goodman and a crew from Democracy Now! Footage shows several people with dog bites and a dog with blood on its muzzle.
Frost Kennels of Hartville, Ohio, acknowledged that they were involved in the incident on September 3. Executive director for Private Investigator Security Guard Services, Geoff Dutton, said Frost Kennels and its owner, Bob Frost, were not licensed by the state of Ohio to provide security services or guard dogs. Morton County Sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, said they were investigating both sides in the incident, including wounds inflicted by the dogs, and that they had no prior knowledge of the use of dogs until a 9-1-1 call was made. When asked why the deputies who witnessed the incident did not intervene, Kirchmeier cited officer security concerns, and stated that it was "more like a riot than a protest" and that there was an investigation into "the incident and individuals who organized and participated in this unlawful event." On the Energy Transfer/Dakota Access side, four security guards were injured, 1 of whom had to be hospitalized.
After viewing footage of the attack, a law enforcement consultant who trains police dogs called it "absolutely appalling" and "reprehensible". "Taking bite dogs and putting them at the end of a leash to intimidate, threaten and prevent crime is not appropriate." A former K-9 officer for the Grand Forks Police Department who now owns a security firm that uses dogs for drug detection said, "It reminded me of the civil rights movement back in the '60s. I didn't think it was appropriate. They were overwhelmed and it just wasn't proper use of the dogs."
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota spoke out against the use of dogs and pepper spray and asked that the state officials "treat everyone fairly and equally." Speaking on September 4, Ojibwe activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke said, "North Dakota regulators are really, I would say, in bed with the oil industry and so they have looked the other way."
As of mid-October 2016, there had been over 140 arrests. Some protesters who were arrested for misdemeanors and taken to the Morton County jail reported what they considered harsh and unusual treatment. Sara Jumping Eagle, a physician on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, said that she was required to remove all of her clothing and "squat and cough" when she was arrested for disorderly conduct. In another such case, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who founded Sacred Stone Camp, said that when her daughter was arrested and taken into custody she was "strip-searched in front of multiple male officers, then left for hours in her cell, naked and freezing." Cody Hall from Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota also reported being strip-searched. He was held for four days without bail or bond and then charged with two misdemeanors.
Actress Shailene Woodley, arrested on October 10, 2016, along with 27 others, also said she was strip-searched, adding, "Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip-searched. I was just shocked." Amnesty International spoke out against the use of strip searches and said that they had sent a letter to the Morton County Sheriff's Department expressing concern about the degree of force used against people taking part in the protests. They sent a delegation of human rights observers to monitor law enforcement's response to the protests.
Protesters said they were blasted with high-pitched sound cannons and described being held in cages that "appeared to be" dog kennels, in the garage of the Morton County Correctional Center, with identifying numbers written on their arms by the arresting officers. One of the arrestees, Floris White Bull, said - “We were caged in dog kennels and sat on the floor and we were marked with numbers,” she said. “My mind, I couldn’t wrap it around the fact that this is happening today. This isn’t something that we’re reading in history books.”
In December 2016, it was reported by Charlie May that Dakota Access LLC had hired the firm TigerSwan to provide security during the protest. In May 2017, internal TigerSwan documents leaked to The Intercept and other documents obtained through public records requests revealed a close collaboration between the pipeline company and local, state, and federal law enforcement as they carried out "military-style counterterrorism measures" to suppress the protesters. TigerSwan also collected information used to assist prosecutors in building cases against protesters, and used social media in an attempt to sway public support for the pipeline. One of the released documents called the pipeline opposition movement "an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component" that operated along a "jihadist insurgency model". The Intercept reported that "Energy Transfer Partners has continued to retain TigerSwan long after most of the anti-pipeline campers left North Dakota, and the most recent TigerSwan reports emphasize the threat of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country."