Caught by Violence: How one family experienced the confrontation at Standing Rock
By Olivia Vanni
What started out as a communal march from the Standing Rock camp to the construction site of the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly turned into an experience that Elizabeth Hill, of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate people, did not expect.
Hill and her family had traveled from South Dakota to the camp to support the opposition to the pipeline. On Sept. 3, 2016, when they heard a crew had resumed work on sacred land, they and many others rushed to the construction site.
Not anticipating any violence, Hill brought both of her daughters, Anna and Brin, along with her that Saturday. She said that they were born on the same day a year apart and that she wanted “to celebrate their birthdays in a different way than we usually celebrate.”
Hill said she would not have brought her girls had she had an inkling of how tense the situation would become when a private security team used dogs and pepper spray against the crowd. “Me taking my kids there, I was not expecting anything violent or anything like that,” she said.
The participants in the march worked their way up to the fence separating the construction site from the road. Then, without warning, Hill found herself and her daughters on the front lines of a mad dash into the construction zone.
“Me and my daughters were actually there, right at the fence, when it went down,” she said. “I had to immediately turn around and take them someplace safe, or where they could be looked after.”
Hill put her girls in a friend’s pickup, then returned to the fence. Crossing it with the rest of the marchers, she came face-to-face with pipeline security.
“That’s when the pepper spray came out. I had a little bit right here, because I had sunglasses on, but I didn’t get directly hit,” Hill said, pointing to her face. “But I seen that lady, a couple ladies, a guy get sprayed with the pepper spray.”
As the confrontation progressed, people on both sides became more and more agitated, but Hill said she and her brother were dedicated to keeping the peace.
“It looked like they were going to hit some of the trucks, but my brother and I stepped in and were like, ‘No! Don’t touch the vehicles!’ Then a guy [company security] did get out of his car. I don’t know what he got out for. He got out of his truck and it’s like everybody surrounded him. Me and my brother and a few other people were like, ’Let him go!’” she said.
The workers eventually agreed to leave on the condition the marchers clear the way for their vehicle. “So they let a truck through and that’s when they all started getting ready to leave,” Hill said. “They pretty much took off after that.”
On Monday, back in the camp, Hill sat on a chair among a ring of tents, getting her hair braided as her daughter Anna played in her lap. The mood was relaxed and the energy following Saturday’s confrontation had subsided. Hill was getting ready to spend the afternoon working in the camp kitchen, which prepares meals on a daily basis using donated supplies, to feed the more than 1,000 people who were at the camp over Labor Day.
Her partner, Brian Hill, was outside, trying to round up his kids who were playing. When asked when they were planning on leaving the camp he said, “We’re here. This is where we are now.”
