'Snowden' actress arrested while filming Dakota Access Pipeline protests live

'Snowden star' and activist Shailene Woodley arrested for 'trespassing' at latest protest over the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said it will keep fighting after a federal appeals court rejected its request to halt construction.

American Actress, Shailene Woodley, was arrested by local law enforcement on Monday while joining protesters at the rally site. After being told to leave the protest site, Woodley complied but on returning to her camper van found it surrounded with police with assault rifles. She was told she wasn't allowed to continue; they were not letting her go. In a conversation with a local sheriff she was told she was being arrested for "trespassing," that she had been identified she was trespassing on private land during the protest.

About 100 protesters were on a construction site before cops moved in and put handcuffs on Shailene.

The Morton County Sheriff's department later confirmed that 27 people were arrested at the site. Twenty-five of the arrests were for criminal trespass, and two people, that were chained to construction equipment, are facing felony charges, according to KFYR-TV.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their supporters continued their protest of the pipeline construction on Monday. A day recognized by some states as Columbus Day named after Christopher Columbus who was said to discover America but didn’t but increasingly more states are renaming the day Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

“The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is not backing down from this fight,” said the tribe’s chairman, Dave Archambault II. “We are guided by prayer, and we will continue to fight for our people. We will not rest until our lands, people, waters and sacred places are permanently protected from this destructive pipeline.”

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Sunday rejected the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for an injunction to halt the construction of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

The 1,170-mile pipeline, when finished, would transport 470,000 barrels of oil a day across four states.

The ruling allows Energy Transfer Partners – the Dallas-based company funding the project – to move forward with construction of the pipeline on all privately owned land up to the Missouri River.

The court's ruling acknowledged that it was "not the final word," noting that the final decision lies with the Corps of Engineers, according to AP. While it said the tribe hadn't met the strict requirements of the act to force a halt to construction, the three-judge panel said it "can only hope that the spirit" of the act "may yet prevail."

That note, Archambault said, is the court's signal "to not proceed" with the project.

"It seems they are coming to the same conclusion as the federal government in acknowledging there is something wrong with the approvals for the pipeline," he said. "We see this as an encouraging sign."

The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday it has not yet authorized the construction of the four-state Dakota Access pipeline on federal land in southern North Dakota, according to AP.

The agency also asked Energy Transfer Partners, which is building the pipeline, to respect the government’s earlier request to voluntarily stop construction on private land within 20 miles of Lake Oahe.

The corps statement comes after a federal appeals court ruling on Sunday that allowed construction to resume within 20 miles of the lake.

The corps must still give the company a permit to work on federal land bordering and under the lake, and officials said they're still reviewing whether there need to be reforms in considering tribal views on infrastructure projects.

Last month, the Army Corps, the Justice Department and the Interior Department announced that they would not allow work to proceed on federal land near or under the Missouri River, pending more reviews of previous environmental decisions. That decision, the court said, "is likely weeks away."

Construction had been halted by a temporary injunction issued in late August, which prohibited construction 20 miles east and west of the river, the tribe's main water source.

The pipeline crosses through the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s ancestral lands and within a half mile of the reservation boundary. Construction crews have already destroyed and desecrated confirmed sacred and historic sites, including burials and cultural artifacts.
The original pipeline route crossed the Missouri River just north of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. The route was later shifted downstream, to the tribe’s doorstep, out of concerns for the city’s drinking water supply.

In a related story, activist and actress Shailene Woodley spoke to RT’s Lee Camp on Redacted about her beliefs and dreams. She contemplated driving a “peace” caravan to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.

“With all the violence that is occurring and with all of this anger and aggression it’s so essential that we keep reminding each other that ‘it is okay to be angry but you have to show up non-violently,” said Woodley. “If not then aggression is going to build up and up and you have going to have police in riot gear and women in dresses standing there peacefully. That’s the narrative, that’s the picture we are seeing over and over. So we the people have to stand together and unite and say ‘it is up to us to end all of this.’”