'They're billin' us for killin' us': activists fight Dakota pipeline's final stretch

Opponents of the 160-mile Bayou Bridge pipeline, which will cross Native American land and 700 bodies of water, have chained themselves to machinery

As the flat-bottom fishing boat speeds through waterways deep inside Louisiana's Atchafalaya basin, the largest river swamp in the US, the landscape suddenly shifts from high banks of sediment and oil pipeline markers on either side to an open grove of cypress trees towering above the water. Flocks of white ibis appear, seemingly out of nowhere, to nest and hunt amid the moss-dripped, century-old wetland forest.

"This is what the entire basin is supposed to look like," explained Jody Meche, president of a local crawfishermen alliance and a lifelong resident with a thick Cajun accent.