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A Navajo tribal member who traveled from Arizona to North Dakota to take part in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline is suing law enforcement officers he says subjected him to “excessive violence.”

Marcus Mitchell, 24, who now lives in New Mexico, claims in his lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court that officers in January 2017 fired shotgun beanbag rounds at peaceful, unarmed protesters including himself.

One round “entered Mr. Mitchell’s left eye socket, shattering the orbital wall of his eye and his cheekbone, and ripping open a flap of skin nearly to his left ear,” his complaint says. “The bean bag round became lodged into his eye, with strands of the round protruding out of his left eye socket.”

Mitchell has undergone several medical procedures but suffers from vision, hearing and smell problems, along with “chronic and debilitating pain on the left side of his face,” according to the civil rights lawsuit.

The complaint against Morton County, city of Bismarck and state Highway Patrol officers seeks unspecified money damages to compensate Mitchell for his losses and to punish law enforcement. It’s backed by the Chicago-based MacArthur Justice Center, which uses the courts to advocate for human rights and social justice.