Private security forces attacked anti-Dakota pipeline activists on Saturday with dogs and pepper spray during a nonviolent action, according to activists there, who said six people were bitten and 12 maced.

OPINION:
Tribal Dakota Pipeline Resistance the Start of Something Bigger

Activists with the Red Warrior Camp, who led the protest, have been organizing direct actions for a month to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which crosses treaty-protected Native lands and which they fear will contaminate the drinking water of millions if it breaks.

The group of “water protectors” continued their action despite the dog bites and eventually managed to stop construction for the day, they wrote in a Facebook post. One horse was bitten, they added, and state patrol helicopters flew overhead, wrote reporter Ruth Hopkins.

“That kind of approach—with people who are protecting the land from being destroyed, approaching peacefully and unarmed, and met with that kind of violent force—is an indicator of how severely they impact those companies,” said one Red Warrior Camp member who goes by Alas Nocturnas to teleSUR. “When you mess with that money, to them, it is something worth attacking people for.”

The day before, two members of the camp chained themselves to heavy machinery, forcing the company to shut down work for the day.

The U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues wrote a statement on Thursday, two weeks after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe made an urgent appeal for solidarity, to “call on the government of the United States to comply with the provisions recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ensure the right of the Sioux to participate in decision-making, considering that the construction of this pipeline will affect their rights, lives and territory.”