BrieAnna J Frank

The Republic | azcentral.com

Protesters gathered at Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix on Tuesday evening to protest the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, which they say is destroying sacred native lands and will eventually pollute drinking water for humans and animals if completed.

Natives and non-natives alike marched in solidarity down Central Avenue, carrying picket signs and chanting as evening rush-hour traffic sped by, with several drivers honking their support.

Gila River Indian Community member Marcella Gonzalez brought her children to the rally and said she’s passionate about opposing the pipeline because she wants a better future for them.

“Our children are our future,” Gonzalez said. “The reservation, the lands are all that they have, really. That’s what angers me. We don’t have the respect our people need.”

Gonzalez said she hopes the message of the Tuesday protest will reach President Barack Obama, whose administration halted construction of the pipeline last week.

Protesters at the event pushed for the president to permanently end the pipeline’s construction.

The 1,172-mile pipeline is slated to carry nearly half a million gallons of crude oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois.

In a press release for the rally, event organizer Stacey Champion said the pipeline will cut under the Missouri River less than a mile upstream from the drinking-water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota.

And for Ashley Flores-Eschief, a Gila River Indian Community member, that presents a real danger.

“It’s gonna destroy the water,” she said. “It’s not a matter of if the line breaks, but when.”

Eschief said a leak could wreak havoc if it were to travel through the Missouri and infiltrate other connected bodies of water, which would create problems not just for the Standing Rock, but for everyone.

“Water is life for everyone,” she said. “Not just for us as native people, but for us being human.”

Dakota Access LLC, the company responsible for the construction of the pipeline, didn’t respond to The Arizona Republic’s request for a comment regarding the protesters' allegations. However, a letter sent Tuesday morning from Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren to employees and media stated that "concerns about the pipeline's impact on the local water supply are unfounded" and “neither the land abutting nor Lake Oahe itself is subject to Native American control or ownership.”

Warren said the company worked to meet with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe leaders on various occasions in the last two years regarding the pipeline and said the company “values and respects cultural diversity and the significant role that Native American culture plays in our nation’s history.”

He added that Dakota Access LLC hopes to strengthen ties with native tribes as the project moves forward.

Protesters on Tuesday also expressed concern that the pipeline promotes destruction of native lands, especially sacred burial grounds.

Urban and survival wilderness specialist Tina Brown, who doesn’t identify with a particular tribe, said she supports keeping the environment “as pristine as possible,” and said the pipeline’s route through sacred lands doesn’t do that.

“They (the pipeline company) went in and bulldozed sacred lands,” she said. “They didn’t give our people time to even collect the bones from the graves. That’s a disgrace.”

Warren rebutted that allegation in his letter, saying state historic-preservation offices "found no sacred items along the route," and that if such objects or sacred sites were to be found, archaeologists and environmental inspectors will "ensure their proper care and that proper notifications are made."

White Mountain Apache tribal member Marcelina Valencia also went to the event to support her fellow natives, but left early after saying she was disappointed because she wasn’t able to hear the messages being relayed by speakers at the rally.

“A lot of us don’t hear the words way in the back,” she said. “We’re trying to back the Native American Indians up, but they aren’t doing that. We’re clapping our hands when we don’t even know what they’re saying.”

Champion said she didn’t hear complaints about the sound from anyone else at the protest, and suggested that Valencia move to the front if she couldn’t hear.

But, Champion added, a three-day time crunch to organize the event meant not everything could be perfect.

“Had I had time or resources to have a proper sound system, that would have been great,” she said. “But this was a from-the-heart grass-roots event.”

Despite the complaint, Champion said she believes all involved in the event accomplished their goal of spreading awareness and relaying a message of being a “protector, not a protester.”