The Dakota Access Pipeline is an oil pipeline being built from Three Forks, North Dakota to Pakota, Illinois, according to Energy Transfer Partners (the company constructing the pipeline).It transfers crude oil, a dirty substance that when burned contributes to the destruction of the Earth, and the pipeline is currently being built under the Missouri River, the primary water source for the Standing Rock Sioux.  They are the main opponents of the pipeline, along with decent people everywhere, and they have good reason to fear for their water.  The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has reported more than 3,300 incidents of leaks and ruptures at oil and gas pipelines since 2010.

The US Army Corps of Engineers ordered the pipeline’s construction to be halted in order to conduct an environmental impact study.  But many of the protestors, or “water protectors” as they’ve been come to be known as, reported the continuing construction of the pipeline.  This is the only action taken by the Federal Government to protect the tribe’s water supply.

President Barack Obama‘s response to the crisis has been slow, with his first public remarks on the issue being on Nov. 1.

“We’re gonna let it play out for several more weeks,” Obama said in an interview with NowThis.  “I think that right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline.”

Obama has a moral obligation to not only to at the very least reroute the pipeline, but preferably to cancel its construction.  The treatment of the tribe and the protestors has been slowly escalating in its violence.  The only recourse must be to listen to the cries of the protestors and to end the abuse of the tribe.

 On Nov 21, the attacks on the peaceful protestors reached a boiling point.  The protestors began to push past a blocked bridge on a state highway when police officers started using tear gas, rubber bullets and water hoses, according to the Washington Post.  It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit when the law officers sprayed the protestors with water hoses.

The Oceti Sakowin medical team, a group working with medics from the Sioux tribe, reported that nearly 200 people were injured and 12 people were hospitalized with head injuries. A tribal elder, went into cardiac arrest but was revived by the medic team.  One protestor risks losing her arm after a small explosion which seems to have been caused by a concussion grenade.

The time is now, people are being hurt. This is a rare day when there is an absolute right and an absolute wrong.  Water is life, it cannot be put in danger because of a profit motive.  The police, according to the protestors, aimed the water hoses at their eyes, at their hands, so they couldn’t fight back. The President has to decide who he wants to side with, the billionaires who own the energy company, or the Sioux tribe and the protestors.  History will see this moment as a defining moment in his presidency, whether he stood by while the systematic destruction of the Native Americans, or he stood by the people who the United States has oppressed for years.  He campaigned on hope and change, and now, in his last months in power, he can show us if he meant it.