I have inside information and work in the Oil and Gas industry in the area . This isn ' t about sacred land to them . I do not work for the owners of the DAPL though and this is what happened . The tribes were offered $ x dollars to run the line through their actual land . The natives got greedy and wanted more . The alternative was to run the line through Army Corps of Engineers land , which is EXTREMELY expensive and tedious . For example if you remove a tree you have to pay many thousand dollars and replant one nearby . The natives then came back and said okay we will do it for the 1 st price by then the DAPL company decided to go with option 2 . This upset the natives and they made this what it now is . A fake protect our water movement . 1 There are already pipelines running near that area , as well as railroads which are much more likely to spill and is completely uncontainable If you look at a map of the pipelines in the USA , it very closely resembles city streets , there are that many and they stretch across the entire country , spider webbing out . 2 In the event of a pipeline spill , the PL can be isolated and the line shut in , resulting in a very containable situation . Pipelines are by far the safest method of transporting oil and natural gas . 3 These people aren ' t peacefully protesting . In fact they are causing what they are protesting by damaging pipelines in the area and causing several firesline explosions spilling into the environment .