As North Dakota Pipeline Is Blocked, Veterans at Standing Rock Cheer

FORT YATES, N.D. — After four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, after being hit by a roadside bomb and losing two friends to explosions, Jason Brocar floated from job to job, earning enough to pay for long solo hikes where his only worries were what he would eat and where he would sleep. He was deep into a rainy trek through Scotland when he noticed friends back home talking about a place called Standing Rock.

He decided to join them, which is why he was lined up inside a huge shed this weekend with hundreds of other veterans, some of them Native Americans, who have come to North Dakota to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s fight to block an oil pipeline.

On Sunday, they cheered the Department of the Army’s announcement that it would seek other routes for the pipeline and would not allow a crucial section to be drilled under the Missouri River just upstream from the tribe’s reservation, where there were worries it could pollute their drinking water and cross near sacred burial sites.

But President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for finishing the pipeline means the saga is far from over. His administration could undo the Sunday decision and order the pipeline through, though the tribe and environmental activists would almost surely sue to stop him. Reflecting the continued uncertainty, the veterans were out singing and marching on Monday in gale-force winds and driving snow.

The presence of many hundreds of veterans — organizers were anticipating 2,000 or more — adds another potent layer to a fight that is already steeped in sharp contrasts, between a tribe and an oil company, between environmentalists and pro-energy advocates, between tan-shirted sheriff’s deputies armed with rubber bullets and water cannons and protesters wearing traditional dress and feathers in their hair.

“Fall in!” came a cry one night this weekend. Hundreds of men and women packed into the building to get their orders from Brenda White Bull and Loreal Black Shawl, who are leading the veterans’ groups at the protest camps.

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The orders, they said, were “peace and prayer.” No confrontations between veterans and law enforcement officers who are guarding a still-closed highway at what protesters call the front lines. On Monday, many protesters defied an order by the Army Corps of Engineers to leave a campsite north of the Cannonball River.

“You guys are very symbolic,” Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, told the lines of veterans at a meeting at Sitting Bull College here on the tribe’s reservation. “What you’re doing is sacred.”

Law enforcement officials leading the response to the monthslong protest in Morton County say they have only used force when threatened or attacked by protesters.

Sheriff Paul Laney of Cass County said that officers wanted to calm things down after weeks of rising tensions and violent flare-ups, and that they were willing to pull back from a blockaded bridge where several confrontations had occurred. He said protesters first needed to meet conditions like agreeing not to cross the bridge and not to tear down barriers or wires that law enforcement had put up.

“We all want this to de-escalate and end peacefully,” Sheriff Laney said.

Veterans’ views are hardly monolithic, and as the veterans began to arrive, the Morton County Sheriff’s office — whose ranks include veterans — sought to show it had the support of local veterans. The county released a video featuring Raymond Morrell, a Marine veteran. He criticized the protests and questioned why veterans arriving from outside North Dakota would join what the sheriff has called an unlawful protest.

At a news conference, Sheriff Laney said he had received information that an “element” within the protest camps wanted to exploit veterans with post-traumatic stress and goad them into acts of violence. Tribal leaders and protesters say they are nonviolent and have no weapons.

Several of the veterans who lined up wore caps saying, “Native Veteran.” Some were old men, veterans of Korea and postwar Europe, who said they had grown up in Indian boarding schools where they were beaten for speaking their language. Some drove in from reservations across the Plains.

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Some of the arriving veterans have spent years in the antiwar movement after returning from Vietnam or Iraq. They said they saw the pipeline protests as a new chapter in that activism. They came with open letters and leaflets, and they raised flags in the camp that fluttered alongside the names of Native American nations.

Many said they came ready to form a barrier between protesters and law enforcement.

“A lot of people here are willing to sacrifice their body, willing to give their life,” said Vincent Emanuele, 32, a former Marine who served in Iraq and has spoken out extensively against what he called a futile war. “You might as well die for something that means something.”

Others said they did not care much about politics and had never joined a protest. But they said they had been moved by the tribe’s fight to block a crucial section of the 1,170-mile pipeline. Or they said they were angry at seeing images of violent clashes between lines of law enforcement and Native Americans.

“I just couldn’t believe what was happening in the United States,” Mr. Brocar, 44, said. “Even in Iraq, there was some rule of engagement. If these guys don’t have weapons, it just doesn’t make sense to me that it’s a shooting gallery.”

Like other veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who came here — any many who did not — he said he had grown disillusioned with the grinding wars and their human toll. On his wrist were two metal bracelets with the names of his two dead friends — “hometown guys who joined to save the world.”

After the meeting ended, the veterans dispersed across the dark plains to sleep, some heading to tents and yurts at the camp, others to borrowed beds. Robert Abbey, 37, a former soldier who joined the military at 17 and deployed once to Iraq, ended up sleeping at the community college.

He said he came because he wanted to help, and to see what was unfolding five hours north of his home in Hermosa, S.D. Some of the veterans here said they might stay for weeks, but Mr. Abbey had to get back home for an appointment at the local Veterans Affairs agency.