Litigation and Law

In 2016, the NGO Bank Track asked dozens of environmental and Indigenous rights organizations to sign onto a letter asking the banks that were financing the Dakota Access Pipeline to stop doing so, citing amongst other reasons the fact that the pipeline was “cutting through Native American sacred territories.” During the trial in 2025, the […]

An archaeology company contracted by Energy Transfer drew maps of the area previously disturbed by the Northern Border pipeline.

Energy Transfer’s private security team created an elaborate security plan to protect archaeologists as they examined the path of the pipeline for sacred sites. They called it Operation Point Break. (Yes also the name of a 90s Keanu Reeves movie where he’s an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a group of surfer / robbers).

A police report obtained via a public records request, shows that Energy Transfer contacted the dog company in the middle of the night before they bulldozed the sacred sites area — several hours after they learned of the sites from the court.

The North Dakota state archaeologist submitted a statement in court saying that no human remains had been discovered along the Dakota Access Pipeline route.

An affidavit signed by rancher Dave Meyer saying he did not invite the tribe’s sacred sites consultant Tim Mentz onto his land to examine the area for culturally significant sites. Meyer later told reporter Alleen Brown in an on-the-record interview that he did invite Mentz out to his ranch to check the path of the […]

A weekly report from Tiger Swan to Energy Transfer about a protest in Morton County indicates that the same day Cody Hall met a strange person who claimed to be with Greenpeace and offered him money, Tiger Swan had “embeds,” or infiltrators, at the protest, one of which was given a ride home in the […]