The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests or the Standing Rock Protests, also known by the hashtag #NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States that began in April 2016. Protests ended on February 23, 2017 when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters.

The pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Many members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and surrounding communities consider the pipeline to be a serious threat to the region's water. The construction also directly threatens ancient burial grounds and cultural sites of historic importance.

In April 2016, youth from Standing Rock and surrounding Native American communities organized a campaign to stop the pipeline, calling themselves "ReZpect Our Water". Inspired by the youth, several adults, including Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network and tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, established a water protectors' camp as a center for direct action, demonstrating spiritual resistance to the pipeline in both a defence of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural preservation. The #NoDAPL hashtag began to trend on social media, and the camps at Standing Rock gradually grew to thousands of people.

Conflict between water protectors and law enforcement escalated through the summer and fall. In September 2016, construction workers bulldozed a section of privately owned land that the tribe had claimed as sacred ground. When protesters trespassed into the area, security workers used attack dogs which bit at least six of the demonstrators and one horse. In October 2016, militarized police cleared an encampment which was situated on the proposed path of the pipeline. In November 2016, police used multiple launched tear gas cannisters and water cannons on protesters in freezing weather, consequently drawing significant media attention.

Pipeline protests were reported as early as October 2014, when Iowa community and environmental activists presented 2,300 petitions to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad asking him to sign a state executive order to stop it. Voicing concerns for damage to wildlife habitat and sacred sites, the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa (Meskwaki Nation) also objected to the route and formally lodged their opposition in early 2015. Tribal members were also among those who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. In a letter to the Iowa Utilities Board, Tribal chairwoman Judith Bender wrote that there were "environmental concerns about the land and drinking water...it will only take one mistake and life in Iowa will change for the next thousands of years."

The tribe sued for an injunction on the grounds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed to conduct a proper environmental and cultural impact study. Protests had escalated at the pipeline site in North Dakota, with numbers swelling from just a bare handful of people to hundreds and then thousands over the summer.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe believes that the pipeline would put the Missouri River, the water source for the reservation, at risk. They pointed out two recent spills on other pipeline systems, a 2010 pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, which cost over a billion dollars to clean up with significant contamination remaining, and a 2015 Bakken crude oil spill into the Yellowstone River in Montana. The Tribe was also concerned that the pipeline route may run through sacred Sioux sites. In August 2016 protests were held, halting a portion of the pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Protests continued and drew indigenous peoples from throughout North America, as well as other supporters. A number of planned arrests occurred when people locked themselves to heavy machinery.

On August 23, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe released a list of 87 tribal governments who wrote resolutions, proclamations and letters of support stating their solidarity with Standing Rock and the Sioux people. Since then, many more Native American organizations, politicians, environmental groups and civil rights groups joined the effort in North Dakota, including the Black Lives Matter movement, indigenous leaders from the Amazon Basin of South America, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, and many more. The Washington Post called it a "National movement for Native Americans." As of September, the protest constituted the single largest gathering of Native Americans in more than 100 years.