Lillia Pete had been watching pipeline protests in Fort Yates, North Dakota, for months before she saw them turn violent.
It's why she and about 75 protesters – spearheaded by newly formed group ATL No DAPL – stood on CSX train tracks Friday along Decatur Street in southeast Atlanta.
A march started near Woodruff Park about 3p.m., a symbol of solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American reservations who’d been protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline Project since April.
They planned to remain until midnight.
“What they’re experiencing is police brutality…there’s a lot of macing and tasering going on,” said Pete, who is Navajo.
The pipeline is expected to run through the reservations connecting pipelines in North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa with those in Illinois, a deal involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reportedly without consultation of Native American tribes.
The likelihood this issue would affect Atlantans seems slim with only 0.2 percent of Native Americans living in the city, according to the U.S. Census. But protesters referenced the recent Colonial Pipeline Company pipeline burst in Helene, Alabama, that left one person dead and five injured.
Less than two months ago and just nine miles away from the Oct. 31 burst, a pipe leak caused the Alpharetta-based company to shut down one of the largest gasoline arteries in the Southeast for 12 days, causing gas shortages in metro Atlanta.
Activists fear that building a pipeline near or on indigenous land could cause a similar chain of events, or worst, dry up the water supply.
“They’re not just doing it for themselves; they’re doing it for people who feed off of the Missouri River,” protester Courtney Prather said. “If there’s an oil spill, which is very possible, and there’s been several oil spills over the years, then that supply is gone.”
Prather had been following the protests, which she said turned violent after militarized police presence.
“This is the first (protests) have really come to a head and that’s because of military type presence,” Prather said. “They’re protecting their water, it’s their life.”
For others, such as protester Dianne Mathiowetz, the pipeline poses a deeper threat to community: abuse of sacred lands.
“Many times these companies would rather pay a fine than fix (the problems) and build pipelines in very precarious places.”
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