Malia Obama, the daughter of former US president Barack Obama, has been spotted attending a protest against the building of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
The 18-year-old was photographed at a solidarity event held on the same day President Trump signed executive orders to forge ahead with the pipeline, which had previously been halted by former president Obama, this week.
Actress Shailene Woodley, who has been long-involved with the cause in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe on whose land the pipeline is proposed, told Democracy Now it was "amazing" to have the teenager present at the event.
"It was amazing to see Malia," Woodley said. "To witness a human being and a woman coming in to her own outside of her family and outside of the attachments that this country has on her, but someone who's willing to participate in democracy because she chooses to."
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According to Woodley, Malia attended both the public protest, as well as a private event with Standing Rock Reservation Chairman Dave Archambault, one of the key figures in the resistance to the pipeline.
The 18-year-old left her family on their post-Inauguration Carribean holiday to attend the film festival with friends, before starting her work placement with Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in February.Malia Obama joins Dakota Access pipeline protest at Sundance https://t.co/8RtAHZ9jQV pic.twitter.com/o7aboCYycG
— Mercury News (@mercnews) January 27, 2017
She will commence her college studies at Harvard in September.
The building of the pipeline looks set to go ahead after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect this week.
Former president Obama had previously halted the project until an alternate route could be found, a decision which came after mass protests from local Indigenous communities and allies throughout 2016, who say the project will affect water quality and supply, and disturb sacred burial and archaeological sites.