Stand with Standing Rock

Native American students from New Mexico State University and supporters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Las Cruces on Thursday evening to join a gathering nationwide protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline that will connect the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, transporting up to 570,000 barrels of light sweet crude to refineries there. There was a similar protest Tuesday in El Paso's San Jacinto Plaza. Construction was halted on a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota earlier this month, and the Obama administration is holding formal government-to-government consultations with Native American tribes about ways to protect sacred lands, resources and treaty rights. There will be a session in Albuquerque on Oct. 27.