The Morton County Sheriff in North Dakota is defending the use of what protesters have described as dog kennel-like holding cells, after an increasing in tensions between cops and private security, and the coalition of Indigenous groups and environmentalists opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline.

"Temporary holding cells (chain link fences) have been installed into the Morton County Correctional Center and are used for 'mass arrest' situations only," read the statement explaining the unusual accommodations.  "They are temporary until the Correctional Center can get them (the people detained in mass arrests) processed into our facility or transferred to another facility in North Dakota," it added.

The protesters say the use of the kennels wasn't an innocent temporary solution to deal with mass arrests, but part of an overall program to humiliate and discourage the water protectors that has already included strip searches.  For this reason, Amnesty International is now monitoring police conduct (.pdf link).

"We were caged in dog kennels, sat on the floor, and we were marked with numbers," said Floris White Bull, who noted that the cages were placed in the garage at the Morton County Sheriff's Department, not in any area fit for human occupation, without bedding or anything to sit on.  "This is happening today, this isn't something that we are reading in history books," she said, referencing the US's shameful history of genocide and repression of Indigenous peoples.

Heavily armed, militarized cops in MRAP and armored Hummer vehicles arrested 142 peaceful protesters last week as confrontations over alleged trespassing on private land where the controversial pipeline is planned to carry North Dakota shale oil across the US upper Midwest to refineries at the Gulf of Mexico.  That's a rapid escalation of police tactics, accounting for more than a third of all 411 arrests since mid August.  They'd still be sitting in those cages, except that an anonymous donor stepped up with US$2.5 Million to pay their bail.

"We have repeatedly seen a disproportionate response from law enforcement to water protectors' nonviolent exercise of their constitutional rights.  Today we have witnessed people praying in peace, yet attacked with pepper spray, rubber bullets, sound and concussion cannons," said Standing Rock Sioux Reservation tribal chairman Dave Archambault II.  He's calling on US President Barack Obama and the Justice Department to intervene on the protesters' behalf.  He's still waiting for a reply.

The Indigenous and environmental activists oppose the pipeline because it's designed to cross the Missouri River above the point where the Standing Rock Reservation draws its water.  The Missouri is the Rez's only water source; a spill from the pipeline would ruin that forever, not to mention the rest of the environmental damage that would be done downstream in the upper Midwest's most important river.