Activist and journalist Erin Schrode was conducting an interview on the banks of Cantapeta Creek near the North Dakota reservation when she was hit in the face with a rubber bullet. Schrode was filming at the time and can be heard yelping as the camera suddenly tilts and voices begin asking if she's OK.
Schrode had been filming what appear to be water protectors being maced by North Dakota police on the other side of the creek.
— Erin Schrode (@ErinSchrode) November 3, 2016
The journalist, who works for Fusion and other media outlets, posted about the experience on her Facebook page on November 3.
"I was just shot. Militarized police fired at me from point blank range with a rubber bullet on the front lines of Standing Rock," she wrote.
"My body will be okay, but I am hurting, I am incensed, I am weeping, I am scared. Peaceful, prayerful, unarmed, nonviolent people on one side of a river; militarized police with armed vehicles and assault weapons occupying treaty land on the other, where sacred burial grounds have already been destroyed…. This is a fight to protect and defend the water for 17 million people in the watershed downstream to the Gulf, for a livable planet, for Native and human rights, for the lifeforce of us all."
Activists at the camp opposing the construction of the 1,160-mile, $3.6 billion pipeline they say will destroy sacred Standing Rock Sioux sites and threaten their water supply have been attacked with dogs, teargassed, tased, maced, assaulted with sound cannons and now shot – and journalists have not been exempt from the violent crackdowns. Democracy Now journalist Amy Goodman was forced to appear in court after a North Dakota prosecutor sought to charge her for "rioting" while covering the protest, and Derrick Broze of Anti-Media says he was tased by police officers at the protest after identifying himself as a member of the press.
The Standing Rock Sioux say the pipeline cannot be allowed to pass so close to their lands. A number of US Senators, including former presidential contender Bernie Sanders, have signed a letter to US President Barack Obama asking him to halt the pipeline project. A number of other high-profile politicians and celebrities have thrown their weight behind the cause.
