Yaqui guitarist celebrates Dakota pipeline decision

Next time Yaqui guitarist Gabriel Ayala goes to North Dakota near the Missouri River, it will be to celebrate, not to protest.

Ayala, a Tucsonan whose classical, jazz and flamenco guitar work has taken him to concerts worldwide, spent three weeks over the last three months as a “water protector” at a camp near the Missouri. He stood with many thousands of others in support of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s fight against a proposed $3.8 billion oil pipeline.

On Sunday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it won’t approve a Dakota Access pipeline route under a Missouri River reservoir, a route that had drawn the protests. The Corps will consider alternatives to the proposed route the Sioux said threatened its water source and cultural sites.

“I’m ecstatic and excited that somebody finally took the initiative to stop this pipeline. It’s been way overdue. It’s been months in the making,” Ayala said Monday in an interview in Tucson.

The pipeline’s future is uncertain. President-Elect Donald Trump has said he supports it. On Monday, a Trump spokesman reiterated his boss’ support, but declined to speculate on how he’ll act. The pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, says it won’t move the route; it has finished most of the project. For supporters, the pipeline is seen as one more way of achieving energy independence.

If Trump pursues the disputed route, Ayala said he and many others will return “in full force.” They were slated for eviction from the site by the Army Corps on Monday before the agency reversed course Sunday.

“We’ll return in double,” Ayala said. “We’ve seen obviously that this has worked.”

For now, he only plans to go back in a week and a half to visit what he calls his “family,” a group of pipeline opponents with whom he’s gotten close since September.

Reflecting on the past three months, Ayala said, “It’s unfortunate that people had to get seriously injured, lose an arm and finally get shot at before something was done.”

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He was referring to a recent incident in which a 21-year-old female protestor had much of an arm blown off in an explosion that authorities and protestors blamed on each other.

At the pipeline site, Ayala would stand in silence, pray, perform, sing at rallies and walk near a tributary to the Missouri River to protest construction.

The project would transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to an existing Illinois pipeline for shipment to Midwest and Gulf Coast oil markets.

Ayala left the thousands of what he calls “protectors, not protestors” at the encampment about a week ago after his last visit, after repeatedly flying to and from the pipeline area and on to concert engagements.

About 525 people were arrested during the protests, mainly for trespassing on the pipeline site on private land. The protests centered on an unbuilt section under Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir.

At times, authorities pepper-sprayed and shot rubber bullets at the protestors, with the two groups disagreeing over whether those actions were provoked.

Ayala wasn’t arrested or pepper-sprayed, but said his nephew Tiki was shot with a rubber bullet, arrested and strip-searched at a local detention facility.

Rob Keller, a Morton County Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said, “Law enforcement uses less-than-lethal force and matches the aggressive actions of the protesters who refuse to obey orders given multiple times. ... Pepper spray and tear gas are used as a means to control the crowd.”

Speaking of the protests, the 44-year-old Ayala said, “So many things are happening across the U.S. in Indian country, hopefully now there is an awareness and people understand what we’ve been fighting for. We’ve been fighting 500 years. No matter what they try to do with mental tactics to humiliate us and hold us down, physically try to abuse us, they have never broken our spirit.”