US President Barack Obama says the US Army Corps of Engineers is investigating possibly rerouting the Dakota Access Pipeline to address the concerns of Native Americans and environmentalists who say it will contaminate the important Missouri River if it leaks.

In a video for the online news outlet "NowThis" and broadcast on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell", President Obama said:  "We're monitoring this closely and, you know, I think as a general rule my view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans."  He continued, "I think that right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline in a way.  So, we're going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans."

Energy Partners LLC wants to drill the pipeline underneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River in North Dakota, less than a mile upriver from where the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation draws its water.  It the pipeline bursts, as pipelines are prone to do, it will destroy the lone source of water for the Rez - not to mention  the potential disaster of contaminating hundreds of kilometers of the Missouri, the main waterway through this part of the United States.

Hundreds of protesters from Indigenous groups across North America and environmentalists have set up camps to try and stop the pipeline.  Police were initially patient with the protesters, but North Dakota is expecting big financial rewards from sending as much as 470,000 gallons of Bakken Crude from the shale oil fields to refineries in the south.  More than 400 people have been arrested as cops donned military gear and deployed MRAPs and other military vehicles to handle unarmed peaceful protesters, often on horseback.  The protesters have said they have been treated abominably, and the United Nations and Amnesty International are now closely monitoring how the cops and private security goons behave.