Actress Shailene Woodley was arrested Monday morning and charged with criminal trespassing and engaging in a riot while protesting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
The 24-year-old Snowden star explained the reasoning for her protest in a lengthy video she later shared on her personal Facebook page.
“I don’t know if you guys just heard me, but I was walking back to my RV, which is right there so that we can go back to camp peacefully, and they grabbed me by my jacket and said that I was not allowed to continue,” she states in the video. “And they had giant guns and batons and zip ties and they’re not letting me go.”
Woodley described the frantic scene as riot police reportedly surrounded the protesters. The actress was still filming while she was being taken into custody.
“All right I’m being arrested,” she said in the video. “Because I was trespassing like everyone. As soon as you guys asked me to leave, I l left. She was down there; everybody was down there. I’m being arrested. I was down there with everybody else. I don’t know what’s going on? As soon as they came I left… it’s because I’m well known. It’s because I have 40,000 people watching.”
The pipeline — a controversial project that has drawn protests in the past — is expected to transport more than 470,000 barrels of oil a day across four states.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has spent months protesting the pipeline project, claiming that it would desecrate sites held sacred to the tribe.
The most recent protest was spurred by a federal judge’s decision Sunday to reject the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for a permanent injunction to block the $3.7 billion 1,170-mile pipeline.
Morton County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rob Keller told the Associated Press that of the 300 protesters, a total of 27 people were arrested during Monday’s incident.
In August, Woodley participated in a pipeline protest at the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, where a dozen protesters were taken into custody.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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