Saturday in Corvallis, there will be a rally to show support for Native Americans protesting an oil pipeline project in the upper Midwest. KLCC’s Brian Bull reports.

For months, members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have voiced concerns over Energy Transfer Partner’s plans to run part of a pipeline near lands they deem sacred, and under their water source, the Missouri River.

Support includes Corvallis rally organizer and Lakota tribal member, Ken Runningcrane. He says part of the event will be a teach-in to educate people.

“It’s a water issue. It’s a people issue. It’s all of us together," says Runningcrane. "We all live downstream, like they say. So this isn’t just a fight for tribal sovereignty and rights, and the second-rate citizenship of native people, this is about keeping our drinking water clean.”

Another organizer, Corrine Fletcher, says she’s friends at the protest site near the Standing Rock Reservation. She says an ideal resolution for her would be stopping the pipeline altogether.

“And to include in any kind of decision-making process the voices of people who are most impacted by those decisions in a meaningful way, not just a symbolic way,” adds Fletcher.

But Runningcrane says most likely, the pipeline would be diverted if anything…where a rupture could still affect the drinking water of a few million people, not just Native Americans.

NOTE: The Corvallis rally event is being coordinated on Facebook, and can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1648918925419340/