Police and company armed guards continue to attack peaceful protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

On 27 October, police unleashed a wave of brutality on Native American “water protectors” attempting to block construction. Some 300 highly militarised police with armoured vehicles and riot gear joined with 80 North Dakota National Guardsmen and 150 DAPL employees to attack protesters with pepper spray, Tasers, sound cannons, bean bag rounds and rubber bullets.

More than 40 people were injured, suffering welts and broken bones. More than 140 were arrested and charged with a list of alleged crimes, from inciting riot to trespassing on private property. Red Fawn Fallis was charged with attempted murder for allegedly firing three shots at the police – a complete fabrication that even the racist local sheriff says didn’t happen.

A man with an assault rifle tried to infiltrate the protest. He was chased down by water protectors and finally arrested by Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Documents show that he was a DAPL employee. Protesters said it was likely he was trying to enter the protests to fire shots, giving the police a pretext to escalate their attack.

Tara Houska, the national campaigns director for the Native group Honor the Earth, told Democracy Now!:

“There were police walking around everywhere with assault rifles. Directly across from us there was a policeman with his rifle trained on us … There were police officers filming, laughing as human beings were being attacked. It was a nightmarish scene.”

Ironically, on the same day, seven right wing protesters who participated in a 41-day armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge last northern winter were acquitted of firearms charges and conspiracy to impede federal workers. They took over the wildlife refuge to demand that it be disbanded and that the federal lands it was on be turned over to them for commercial use.

Non-violent Native Americans protecting their lands and water are attacked while right wingers who stage an armed assault on government land are set free.

The “trespassing” charges stem from the ownership claims by the pipeline company to lands that were originally stolen from the Sioux. These lands near their reservation are considered sacred by the Sioux and include Native burial grounds, some of which have already been bulldozed.

Imagine the hue and cry if Christian cemeteries were bulldozed to make room for a dirty oil pipeline!

A few days after the attack, president Obama made a statement, saying that a review by the Army Corps of Engineers would include a possible rerouting of the pipeline. In addition, he promised that the concerns of Native Americans would be considered in the review, and they would be consulted.

Rerouting the pipeline is dubious, to put it mildly. It would have to go under the river at some point. It has already been rerouted once, from near Bismarck, North Dakota, the state capital, to its present projected route. Bismarck sits on the banks of the Missouri. The 92 percent white city objected. Their reason was that their water supply, which comes from the river, would be polluted by any oil spill.

So a new route was found. Let it go under the river next to a Native American reservation, was the idea. That the river is the source of the reservation’s water supply be damned! Those Indians have no political clout, so they can be ridden over roughshod! But they didn’t count on the massive response as around 200 tribes from the US and Canada rose up to oppose it.

A few days after Obama’s statement, another demonstration was held. Police used pepper spray and tear gas again. At least two Native American water protectors were shot by “non-lethal” projectiles. The US Army Corps of Engineers ordered the police to arrest the protesters and to destroy a bridge that they had constructed over a creek to protect a sacred burial ground.

And the Army Corps of Engineers is to be trusted with reviewing the pipeline?

Meanwhile, the Standing Rock encampment continues to gain support. First of all, from the North American tribes. Longstanding animosities between the Sioux and other Native Americans and Canadian First Nations have been overcome, which bodes well for this and future struggles.

Many other organisations have stood with Standing Rock – from Black Lives Matter, the major environmental groups, to Palestinian Youth and many more. The list keeps growing.

Conspicuously, the misleaders of the major trade union federation, the AFL-CIO, have opposed the protests and supported the pipeline. They have taken direction from the North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and big oil.

The NABTU president said of those who oppose the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, “There is no way to satisfy them … no way for them to recognise that if we don’t want to lose our place in the world as the economic superpower, then we have to have this infrastructure” (emphasis added).

Countering the AFL-CIO bureaucrats are a growing number of unions opposing the DAPL, although they are a minority. Among them are the Amalgamated Transit Union, Communication Workers of America, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Service Employees International Union and the United Electrical Workers. In addition, union locals have joined in, and there are planned protests in solidarity with Standing Rock being organised by rank and file workers.

The AFL-CIO is leading the unions in exactly the wrong direction. If unions don’t stop thinking of their narrow and parochial interests and dues base, and join in with all who struggle against every form of oppression and exploitation engendered by capitalism, they are doomed.