There are probably 400 to 500 people, water protectors, north of the 1889 boundary, that was the result of an illegal annexation of treaty territory by the United States against not just the Standing Rock Nation, but the entire Lakota Nation and members of the Great Sioux Nation, the Oceti Sakowin. And so, other tribal governments are weighing in and supporting a fight on the ground, as they have a right to do.
The [Donald] Trump administration is making it very clear that they intend to destroy our only drinking water resource on the Standing Rock Nation and the tens - the 10 million people who live south of the proposed pipeline. Drilling can begin any minute.
We are looking at the potential of an armed raid or a forcible raid after February 22nd [2017], when the Army Corps said that they would declare us trespassers on our own land, the same as the United States Army said they would declare us hostile if we didn't return to the reservations in 1875.
There are 400 to 500 people north of the Cannonball River in the contested zone, in the treaty zone, in the place where, according to the United States Army Corps of Engineers, we are not supposed to be. And they are going to stand their ground.
There are already people en route to join this peaceful, prayerful, nonviolent exercise of our human, treaty, constitutional and civil rights, which are at stake, which are constantly being encroached upon by what seems to be [Donald] Trump tyranny.
I know that there is a difference of opinion, but we stand united with the Standing Rock Nation in wanting the most highly militarized blockade in North Dakota history to be lifted, because it's functioning as a successful economic sanction.
