Reporter staff

Native Americans and supporters gathered Saturday afternoon at Les Gove Park in a ceremonial protest of a four-state, $3.8 billion oil pipeline that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says would cross its ancestral burial grounds and threaten its water supply in North Dakota.

Auburn’s Sarah Blum, a Vietnam War veteran, nurse psychotherapist and activist, helped organize the event with Deborah Guerrero, an Alaskan Tlingit Tribe native, ceremonialist, activist and social worker at Muckleshoot Indian Child Welfare.

“It’s an opportunity to bring tribes together,” Blum said at the peaceful demonstration. “We are pulling together a ceremony with as many drums as we can call in and people willing to drum, sing and pray full heart and in spiritual connection to the many tribes gathered at the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp protesting the pipeline.”

Tribes throughout Washington and the Northwest gathered at remote Cannon Ball, N.D., this weekend to join a peaceful occupation of ancestral lands, where the tribe seeks an injunction to stop construction of an oil pipeline until its waters and cultural resources are protected.

A protest over the pipeline in North Dakota turned violent Saturday after Native American tribal officials accused construction crews of destroying burial and cultural sites on private land.

The proposed pipeline would carry 470,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil a day along a 1,172-mile route from the North Dakota region through South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois.

At least eight tribes from the state – the Lummi Nation, Puyallup, Nisqually Indian, the Yakama Nation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Suquamish, Lower Elwha Klallam, and Hoh Tribe — joined the demonstration in North Dakota.