SPEAKER. Jeremiah IronRoad was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in the US. In February 2016 he learned that the Dakota Access PipeLine (DAPL) was heading north of the Standing Rock Reservation. The DAPL is a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) underground oil pipeline that runs from the shale oil fields of the Bakken formation in northwest North Dakota and continues through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil terminal in Illinois. In April 2016 he witnessed people rising up against the DAPL for fear of it contaminating the essential river water as the DAPL pipes would carry 470,000 barrels per day and be one of the riskiest freshwater crossings by any pipeline in the world. Jeremiah went to join the camping in protest of the DAPL being built. Jeremiah and his family started to feed the people at the camp, then one day they stayed the night and didn’t leave. Jeremiah, the Indigenous people of the lands, and Indigenous peoples around the world who joined in, fought against the DAPL. And they still are.
