Five Lakota peoples were arrested Tuesday at an oil sands blockade in North Dakota, including two who The Tyee spent time with last September.

"We stood our ground for our land, our treaty rights, our human rights to clean drinking water and our coming generations," said Debra White Plume, one of those arrested. "We did this in solidarity with the First Nations people in Canada who are being killed by the tar sands oil mine."

The six-hour blockade started when word spread that two trucks carrying industrial equipment bound for Alberta were driving through the Pine Ridge Reservation, an L-shaped swathe of land abutting the border with Nebraska.

Several dozen local indigenous peoples obstructed the road, including one woman in a wheelchair. As the hours passed, local villagers brought soup, water, doughnuts and coffee.

It's not entirely clear whether the trucks were even headed to Alberta's vast bitumen reserves. But tensions over TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and anything oil sands-related, are high in this region, as The Tyee learned last fall at an emergency meeting of indigenous leaders in the basement of the Rosebud Reservation Casino.

It was there that The Tyee met Debra White Plume and her husband Alex, a tribal band descendent of the famed Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, who was also arrested at the blockade.

The result of that September meeting was a several page Mother Earth Accord, which native leaders later presented directly to President Barack Obama, in protest of Keystone XL.

Through Obama rejected TransCanada's pipeline permit this January, the company has announced plans to build the southern portion, from Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast. And executive Alex Pourbaix said the company will submit a new route plan for the northern half within weeks.

On Tuesday, the five Lakota protesters were released from jail after a couple hours. Supporters offered them soda pop and cigarettes and drove them home.

Geoff Dembicki reports on energy and climate issues for The Tyee.