Peaceful Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in Cannonball, North Dakota were met by a violent swarm of police, dispersed in an effort to crack down on the action. The police proceeded to fire mace, pepper spray and rubber bullets at the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies, among them filmmaker Josh Fox and Erin Schrode.

“We just witnessed a very brutal police repression of a very peaceful protest,” said Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of the documentary Gasland.

"A line of about 300 peaceful water protectors standing in river water up to their waists, freezing, were confronted by about 100 police with shotguns, riot gear, mace and pepper spray," Fox described. "I have never seen anything like it. It was like witnessing Gandhi’s Salt March, then suddenly I am watching people being maced and I hear a pop and see that they shot Erin Schrode with a rubber bullet. How is it possible that from 10 feet away, they are shooting at peaceful protesters, journalists, bystanders, medics?”

Watch Josh Fox's exclusive Dakota Access Pipeline protest footage:

"This was a 100-percent peaceful protest,” confirmed 25-year-old Erin Schrode, the youngest person to run for Congress in California.

“They were standing up there praying for these officers who were wielding guns, looking down their gun barrels at them, occupying their sacred land. I was facing the water with the water protectors on the other side, face to face with the armed police, when I felt the strongest brute-force blow to my lower back. I went down, people scattered and I saw the guy with the rubber bullet gun staring down his barrel at me,” Schrode continued.

Fox believes the treatment of the pipeline water protectors violates their human rights.

“We’re told that people were dragged from their sweat lodges and prayer circles, their peace pipes broken, thrown into chainlink fence enclosures like dog kennels, and numbers put on their arms. It’s dehumanizing and unconstitutional, " the filmmaker said.

"You cannot have a legitimate government that defends an oil company on treaty land against its own people, shoots at them with rubber bullets and maces them in the face, when the people are simply saying, we are here to pray, we are here to be in our own watershed," Fox said, asserting that the Dakota Access Pipeline protest is an "emergency situation."

"Not only do we need more people to come here, but also what we need is our government to step up,” Fox noted.

“Barack Obama says, wait two to three more weeks and then they’ll make a decision about moving the pipeline route. That’s insane. People are being hurt today, civil liberties are getting trampled today, and the kids and elders who are getting arrested are being given harsh felony sentences, and could get locked up for a decade. The president needs to act now," he demanded.

Fox's newest film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, was released April 20.