Nov. 30
Cold and snow have come at last to Oceti Sakowin,the Seven Fires Camp, at Standing Rock, and no one who has been there can consider winter’s advent, along with the heightening of tensions there, without some misgiving.
Two months ago, winter planning assumed a move to a site on the Standing Rock reservation, away from expected high winds and drifting snow at the current Army Corps treaty site, and the certainty of spring flooding along the Canon Ball River flats where most of the camp stands. Advance planning also assumed about 1,500 people, about half of the summer population, would stay through the winter. Current estimates of the camp’s size range from four- to ten thousand people. Anything approaching that higher number is bound to put a tremendous strain on services, planning, and logistics in the best of weather. In the deep North Dakota cold, everything will be harder, new health problems like hypothermia and pneumonia are bound to increase, while the standard port-o-sans that have been donated and serviced daily by the nearby tribal casino quickly become unworkable in sub-zero conditions.
There’s no doubt that camp newcomers have been drawn by reports of the extraordinary community at Seven Fires, one founded on fellowship, teaching, and mutual improvisation. This has given native people an historic opportunity to build inter-tribal understanding and share knowledge and culture kept separate before now by old tribal animosities and clan barriers. This opening up, a genuine spiritual re-animation, is bound to be Standing Rock’s greatest, and longest-lasting achievement.
Those descendants of the white settlers who’ve made the journey there have had a chance to participate, if only as witnesses, to this great awakening. Because ultimately the message is for the world, everyone at Standing Rock can become messengers themselves. Though all have been welcomed in that spirit, complaints surfaced on social media this week accusing some white visitors of treating the camp as one of their own festivals, playing their music and taking their drugs. The former is frowned upon in what is fundamentally an Indian village, the latter, because Oceti Sakowin is also considered a sacred ceremony, strictly forbidden.
You don’t need a cynical view of human nature to understand the necessity of a sturdy set of rules to guide actions in what is even for Indigenous people a new form of traditional community, combined with a moral and physical force strong enough to ensure compliance. What is manageable for three thousand becomes exponentially harder for two or three times that number, and one more area of potentially over-stretched resources.
What stalled the proposed move to higher, more sheltered ground is unknown. The simple answer may be that the camp was too big. While a tribal council passed a resolution allowing the Seven Fires camp to relocate to the Standing Rock rez, it was by no means unanimous, and was followed shortly after by another vote, this time with no dissenters, asking the Red Warrior Camp, the most militant and best-funded group at Seven Fires, to leave. The Red Warriors were widely seen as instigating a violent confrontation in late October which saw the burning of three vehicles, and resulted in a dramatic and ongoing escalation of police anti-personnel violence — including pepper spray, rubber bullets, a water canon, and bean bag rounds — along with the closing of Highway 1806, the main road between Bismarck and the camp, and, it should be noted, a very popular tribal casino.
The council votes coincided with a series of well-publicized celebrity drop-ins, and were followed by a dismaying national election result that likely gave activists a greater sense of purpose, and mainstream news media, which had ignored the protest during election season, a new conflict to cover. For reasons good and bad, Oceti Sakowin became the place to be.
In the midst of these unfolding difficulties, one is confident that a core spirit, resourceful and determined still prevails. Unfortunately missing from most news reports is a sense of day-to-day life at the camp. Even so, a recent Boston Globe report that, judging by my own experience there, seemed a sincere effort to describe life under stressful circumstances was criticized for not instead emphasizing the malign actions and disastrous ecological aims of the Dakota Access Pipeline company. In this sprit too, others have criticized the criticism leveled at those unserious white visitors as ignoring the true spirit prevailing in the community there.
What has not apparently changed at the Seven Fires Camp, and is likely at the root of these contradictory narratives, is that there remains no guiding central authority, no source of solid information, or particular brand of resistance. What this reporter saw in September, and senses now, is a great, and largely successful, spirit of improvisation, of people able to act in concert while coming and going freely. This is, of course, very traditional behavior of the Great Plains people.
But now blizzard conditions prevail, traditionally a time of rest, repair, and storytelling, something current circumstances will not greatly allow. This past week the Army Corps withdrew its permission for the Seven Fires camp to remain on the site, while North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has ordered, perhaps without standing, an evacuation based on what he calls dangerous conditions. While the Corps action seems largely symbolic — it was soon followed by another statement saying that it will not act to evict people from the camp — Dalrymple’s order seems to allow a restriction of civic services, such as snow plowing camp access roads, along with the searching of vehicles, and a $1,000 fine for those bringing in supplies. The legality of these measures, which only increase civic danger, is certain to be challenged.
As camp access and activity is slowed by snow, and sub-zero temperatures — due later this week — test the resolve of those there, the legal fight, in well-heated courtrooms, is only just beginning. Many wholesale felony charges brought by the county sheriff’s office — itself lacking oversight and reliant on tactical improvisation — were tossed out by a local district judge two weeks ago for lack of evidence, while others, mainly misdemeanor trespassing, vandalism, and riot charges, mixed with a smaller number of felonies, leveled at over one hundred defendants still without legal aid, may not come to trial for months, if at all.
In tandem with the criminal defense effort, another Standing Rock legal team this week filed a class action civil suit in US District Court against Morton County, its Sheriff, and other agencies charging police misconduct at a Nov. 20 protest that created life threatening conditions in sub-freezing weather and resulted in widespread and serious injuries. There are sure to be more suits (one lawyer familiar with proceedings there predicted ‘a wave’ of them). Going forward, this may be the best remedy yet for state overreach.
As outsized and harsh as police response has been, there was no equivalent bulking up of North Dakota’s legal system, which now has a drastic shortage of state certified court appointed defenders, not to mention prosecutors and venues. It appears the system will be overburdened for some time to come.
