SEATTLE — Suquamish Chairman Leonard Forsman told opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline Sept. 16 in Seattle that the discussion about fossil fuels and climate change in America “is about to change.”

“I’ve been to Standing Rock and I’ve felt the power [of the movement],” he said. “We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about climate change for quite a while, haven’t we? There’s been too much talk. I think now is the time it’s going to start changing” — from “how much money it’s going to make” to “what it’s going to do” to water, culture, fish, and habitat.

Indigenous peoples have been leading the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.8 billion, 1,100-mile pipeline under construction from the Bakken shale fields of North Dakota to Peoria, Illinois.

The pipeline is proposed to cross Lakota Treaty Territory at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where it would be laid under the Missouri River. Protesters say the risk of contamination to fresh water is too great, and that the project will disturb sacred sites.

Foresman and other Suquamish people spent time at Standing Rock before returning to Seattle, where a march took place.