Standing Rock Sioux fight enters second decade as Dakota Access Pipeline keeps flowing

Ten years after thousands of water protectors gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Oceti Sakowin people are still fighting in court. Oil continues to move under the Missouri River, with operator Energy Transfer now seeking to almost double the flow.

The 1,176-mile (1,892 km) pipeline crosses Lake Oahe roughly 0.6 miles (1 km) north of the reservation’s northern tip, in unceded territory recognised under the 1851 and 1868 Treaties of Fort Laramie. It currently carries between half a million and 750,000 gallons (1.9 million to 2.8 million litres) of crude oil per day, with Energy Transfer seeking to lift that flow to more than one million gallons (3.8 million litres) a day.

DAPL: 10 Years Later – Dakota Access Pipeline (Retrospective Documentary). Source: KFYR+ via YouTube.

The federal government released a final environmental impact statement on the Lake Oahe crossing in December 2025. Standing Rock formally rejected that statement in a letter dated 26 January 2026, saying the US Army Corps of Engineers had failed to conduct meaningful government-to-government consultation throughout the permitting process.

Lake Oahe is the sole source of drinking water for about 12,000 residents of the Standing Rock Reservation. The wider Missouri River system supplies drinking water to about 10 million people across the US, according to the Izaak Walton League of America.

“DAPL isn’t telling us anything,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe water resources director Doug Crow Ghost told Indian Country Today (ICT). “The Army Corps definitely isn’t telling us anything about if there is a leak, if there is a break.”

The tribe is geographically closest to the pipeline crossing, meaning tribal officials would be the first responders to any spill. In 2024 the tribe obtained a report showing roughly 1.4 million gallons (5.3 million litres) of drilling fluid had been released into Lake Oahe during pipeline construction in early 2017. The Army Corps has not responded to a tribal letter sent on 28 August 2024 requesting information on that spill.

The pipeline has operated without a valid federal easement since a court order in 2020. Standing Rock filed a fresh lawsuit on 14 October 2024 seeking an immediate shutdown. US District Judge James Boasberg dismissed the case in March 2025, and the tribe’s appeal is now before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Janet Alkire, who served as chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe from 2021 to 2025, said the 2016 resistance brought together citizens of 250 federally recognised tribes, along with international supporters.

“I think it was an awakening in regards to protests that this country hasn’t seen since the Civil Rights Movement and the American Indian Movement in the 1970s,” Alkire told ICT.

Newly inducted Chairman Steve Sitting Bear has now inherited the legal fight. In a separate North Dakota matter, a state judge on 27 February finalised a US$345 million damages order against Greenpeace over the 2016 protests – reduced from an initial jury award of more than US$660 million in 2025. Greenpeace International is seeking damages from Energy Transfer through free-speech (anti-SLAPP) legislation in the Netherlands.