Last Days at Standing Rock

11.26.16 Camp stirs under a heavy blanket of snow under the watchful eyes of the Sacred Fire. Last night a female organizer from New Zealand who has been working at the camp for months, raised $12,000 to house the freezing elders at the Prairie Knights Casino (the only hotel in town with hundreds of rooms). When she inquired at the front desk, the young Native American behind the counter in Reservations replied with a frightened look, that they were “fully booked”. Seeing few cars in the parking lot, the organizer walked the empty hallways knocking on doors. No answer. Overnight, every empty room was mysteriously booked on a credit card. The elevators are not working, there is no water, no working toilets, and all of the electrical outlets in the lobby have been blocked.

But let’s go back in time for a moment.

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11/26/16 Traveling home from the Bismarck airport is like Groundhog Day, My original seat mate, the truck company owner with the big hands is at the gate. Rhonda is there. Two young Harvard women, returning home from Standing Rock (also from my original flight) appear. They wave me over quickly, with fear on their faces. Apparently, while discussing their experience protesting the pipeline in Bismarck they were overheard by two young guys who threatened them. The girls point them out to me. Two large, tattooed, menacing rednecks from Bismarck, traveling on our plane, are now staring at me with hatred as well. They want to beat us up.

I check out the gift shop. There are rows of white baby T shirts that say: Drill Baby Drill. Playing cards with stereotypical images of Indians and Cowboys. A deck of cards with an oil rigger. Golden Keepsake Indian dolls, “A Timeless Treasure to Cherish”; refrigerator magnets featuring North Dakota Oil Country riggers and wild black horses rearing up, displayed besides American flags and cheesy Indian souvenirs: Dream Catchers, trinkets, mugs, and “Canned Buffalo” play toys. As I survey this twisted landscape, a young Native American woman appears next to me, looks into my eyes and sadly says, “they are still making money off us Indians”.

On the first leg of my flight home, I sit next to Eli Logan, an architectural grad student from Harvard. He is returning from celebrating Thanksgiving with his grandparents in ND. Both his grandfather and great grandfather are/were architects.

I’m riveted by our conversation, thinking to myself that this young man is the future. He shows me conceptual diagrams of the pipeline he is working on for class, outlining Native and broken treaty lands, now in government control. I ask him if he visited the camp, and he says no, that his family was worried about his safety, but that he’d like to get there someday. I told him that, considering this project he is working on, he needs to go and experience it for himself. I ask him to promise me, and he thoughtfully refuses, but I can tell he is listening very carefully. He belongs to a talented, open minded family who feel that the Water Protectors are diverting law enforcement resources from Bismarck and Mandan.

“We need evidence based, not accusation driven journalism”, he says. I agree.

We promise to keep in touch.

I browse the Bismarck news online. It’s as if we are living on two planets. One journalist writes:

The people of North Dakota — and particularly the people living in south central North Dakota who have been terrorized by the violent, thuggish behavior of the #NoDAPL protesters — feel a deep animosity toward the protest movement.

Americans are generally tired of deep-as-a-puddle celebrities forcing their shallow politics on them. The #NoDAPL movement has a lot of celebrity endorsements. While that has been great for social media messaging and fundraising, I am sure, I doubt it has done much to help persuade people that their cause is just.

Polarization is happening everywhere. Fake news creates the ability to believe whatever you want without being a witness. The virtual world is destroying us.

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Since the women of Standing Rock began their peaceful protest on April 1, 2016, pipeline spills in the U.S. alone have dumped 244,900 gallons of crude oil and tar sands, and 384,300 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline. Last year, there were 132 major spills. That’s approximately one every three days. In what’s being called the first “Trump deal,” Sunoco Logistics Partners has announced a nearly $20 billion dollar merger with Energy Transfer Partners, the Dallas-based company that’s building the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The move would consolidate two pipeline giants: ETP owns 71,000 miles of crude oil and natural gas pipelines in the United States and Sunoco is one of the country’s largest pipeline operators.

I am reminded of a Cree prophecy: “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

Today, well over two thirds of the population of Standing Rock is below the poverty level. The land and the River are all they have. The Standing Rock protest camp represents not only their future, but the future of all of us.

I begin to do some research into Indian history. How has it come to this?

Many Americans are still blind to the facts. We are talking about a genocide of traditional people losing a value system as a distinct people that set them apart from the industrial world. Viewed as dirty heathens, Native Americans were gradually stripped of their traditional ways of life and their spirit as a proud people. Missionary schools did not allow Indian culture and values to be taught; braids were chopped off, women were sterilized, voices of beloved elders silenced.

Legal services were stepped up in the 60’s, but then the US government stepped in and halted it. In the 1970’s, all legal services were withdrawn. Indians lost their property rights, their easement rights, hunting and fishing rights. Treaties continued to get broken, pipelines were built, burial grounds desecrated, their lands became toxic waste sites.

From here it gets more complicated: Our system betrayed them further. Natives were forced to become dual citizens, US and tribal, a major obstacle towards individual freedom. They were subjugated and lost their sovereign rights. Their own tribal governments (BIA- Bureau of Indian affairs) became corrupted, mismanaged- greed took over amongst their own people like a virus. Leaders are supposed to work for a better way of life but instead it became an incestuous world of tribal politics.

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At last count, 10,000 native and non-native Water Protectors have descended on Standing Rock. 2500 Veterans for Peace are on the way. Everyday scenes at Oceti Sakowin Camp rarely make it to the headlines. Some say that DAPL undercover operatives and a few outsiders were paid to disrupt the peace. I can’t verify this. Perhaps there may be some younger members at the camp misbehaving. What I do know is that there have been three occasions of inhumane police brutality; most recently on Sunday, November 21st, when militarized police from 24 counties, 16 cities, and 9 states fired rubber bullets at unarmed Water Protectors of all ages, dousing them with tear gas and cold water — even as the temperature dipped to as low as 23 degrees. Yes, jobs are on the line in Bismarck - but real life is messy and complex and we must learn to bear witness and listen carefully before rushing to judgement. Mainstream media is asleep at the wheel. The hour is growing late; as I write this, press access, wifi, and all supplies to camp are slowly being cut off.

Myron Dewey is grateful to those that have travelled far to bear witness: Those that dig deeper will find our indigenous ability to resist injustice comes from our visceral desire to peacefully coexist. Your story is your own. Thank you for leading the way in helping us heal from the trauma of colonialism. We need each other.

1,000 Female Water Protectors march in silence to Backwater Bridge. Above them, armed guards flank the cliffs at Turtle Island, a burial ground for the ancestors of the Standing Rock Tribe. The women gently halt in front of frozen barbed wire and concrete. Starhawk, of the Great Sioux nation delivers a prayerful water ritual to the entire group in the falling snow:

We are one family on this walk, on this journey, on this planet. I love you all. Let’s do this together. In a proud dignified manner. And let’s show our love for the people on the other side. We do not hate them. We do not have time to hate, We do not have time to fight. We have love in our hearts. We must gather as a human race. We need to find the police new jobs. I believe that we will win.

I’m not so sure. Maybe.