the Nation visits the Standing Rock resistance

The flags of a more than a hundred Indigenous nations dance in the wind at the entrance to the Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, about 80 kilometres south of Bismarck, the sparsely populated state’s largest city. The camp is now an international symbol for Indigenous resistance to extractive and environmentally destructive resource development.

Others are also showing their support. People of every conceivable background have been making their way to the camp to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux in their challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which would transport fracked oil through sensitive water tables and under the Missouri River. That’s why the activists at Standing Rock prefer to be called “water protectors” than protestors.

“At different stages there’s been three-to-five thousand people at the camp who have a common goal but different ways to perceive, conceptualize and articulate that goal,” Jonnie Aseron, a camp organizer, told two reporters from the Nation during a visit October 7-11. “We have culturally safe spaces, without being overt about it, so that we can come to an understanding of what it means to have such different cultural perspectives in the same space.”

And while people and donations arrive daily, the resistance is shaping up as a David-versus-Goliath struggle. On the night of October 9, the US Federal Court of Appeal denied the injunction filed by the Standing Rock Sioux, which had resulted in a temporary restraining order to DAPL workers within 20 miles of the Missouri River.

In August, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, who has close ties to the oil industry, declared a state of emergency over the protest camp. On September 15, North Dakota’s Department of Emergency Services asked for a $6 million loan from the Bank of North Dakota to help with law-enforcement efforts.

In early October, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department asked for the support of other states to assist in law enforcement efforts. Historically, out-of-state law enforcement has only responded to calls for assistance during natural disasters. But in an unprecedented move, several sheriffs’ offices responded to the call. It’s not just the number of police officers in the region that’s intensifying. With each passing day, security forces appear increasingly militarized.

“There’s definitely been an escalation in police tactics, in many ways, over the last six weeks,” said Patricia K. Hammel, an attorney from the Red Owl Legal Collective. “The police were initially charging people with misdemeanours, and trespassing. The accused weren’t given huge bonds and everyone would be out of jail fairly quick. Then, as there were more actions and arrests, the police re-filed some of the misdemeanour charges as felonies.”

In what has become an iconic image, a man who locked himself to an excavator, Happy American Horse, has fallen victim to this escalation of charges. “Because he had to be removed by a police officer using a cherry picker, his charge went from a misdemeanour to felony obstruction and reckless endangerment,” Hammel explained.

Happy American Horse isn’t the only water protector affected. “Someone riding a horse got a terrorism charge,” Hammel said, amazed. “The DAPL employees have been claiming that they’ve been terrorized by the water protectors and the police have been taking those claims seriously and escalating the charges.”

A direct action on October 10 saw 29 water protectors arrested, including actress Shailene Woodley (from The Divergent Series), who was taken into custody while walking to her RV.

The majority of arrests took place in a teepee erected on the DAPL worksite. One of the arrestees taken from the teepee was an Elder woman leading the group in prayer. The charges facing the water protectors who were praying: felony trespassing and inciting a riot.

“We’ve been charged with inciting a riot for us just going out there and praying,” said Olive, a frontline water protector. “We’re not being hostile, we don’t even want to have direct interaction with the cops, we have liaisons so we can hold ceremony. And that’s what we were doing when we were arrested.”

The facilities those arrested are held in are woefully inadequate. “It was very dehumanizing. There were 20 of us to six beds. Most of us had to sleep on the floor,” said Flo of his experience in custody. “They say innocent until proven guilty, but it doesn’t really feel that way when you’re in there.”

As for the potential of being convicted, legal council for the accused are taking a wait-and-see approach. “It depends,” said Hammel. “There have already been charges that have been dismissed, but who knows? This is a unique situation.”

But according to Hammel, “The sheriff seems to be working on behalf of DAPL as much as he can. They’ve gone to local landowners here and suggested they arm themselves if they don’t like what’s going on here.”

And while tensions simmer in the region, back at camp it’s business as usual as they prepare for a long, cold winter. “Our kitchen has grown and now we have a winter tent,” said one of the camp’s main cooks, Winona Kasto. From the beginning, she’s been cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for 500 people on weekdays, up to 1000 on weekends.

“It’s like having a full-time job without getting paid, but the benefits are rewarding. The people are great and it’s for a good cause,” said Kasto. “I cook for all my community’s ceremonial events and right now we’re in a time of prayer. It’s a ceremonial time. That’s why I’m here. To help the people.”

 On the other side of camp, artisans are preparing prints and ripping fabric to produce rain- and snow-proof screen-printed signs. “I work with the artists and try to mass produce them for action,” said organizer David Folnick. “I’m a sucker, I love it when we have 30 to 40 flags all out drying.”

Life in the camp is a highly organized operation. It begins when the sun rises, and throughout the day, people find purpose contributing to the camp by volunteering and the cause by participating in actions.

“Life has to be an act of willingness or else you’re not really living, and praying has to be an act of willingness or you’re not really praying,” Olive told the Nation. “As a Sundancer, the ultimate things we can offer are our bodies. We go out on the frontlines and we’re praying with our bodies.”

Local pipeline defenders

Many who live in this part of North Dakota support the construction of the DAPL for the economic benefits they believe it brings, the prevailing opinion of non-Native North Dakotans. One local resident agreed to be interviewed as long as his identity would be kept secret.

The Nation: You’ve lived where?

X: In Bismarck for my entire life.

What do you think of the pipeline?

I believe it’s a good thing. It’s going to bring profit to a lot of things. It’s going to foresee a lot of things. It’s going to push a lot of value to the pipeline and everything. It’s going to bring more prosperity to our region.

Do you see the opportunity for a lot of work?

Yes, I see a lot of work. I deliver beer. I see a lot of work, day in and day out. I travel hundreds of miles every day and I see pipeline workers working their asses off. They are making a living.

Do you see the pipeline something that will make money for North Dakota?

Oh yes, it’s a pipeline and we have millions of gallons, barrels of oil in this area. It’s going to bring it to many places that need it.

What’s the best thing you can say about it?

It’s the safest way to transport oil to the masses of people who use it and need it. Yes, we run the risk of jeopardizing the water system and the environment, but there are already pipelines under the Missouri River. It’s still safer than trains, look at Quebec. A pipeline may burst but these are new pipelines, new technology that is safeguarded by so many measures than what was done in the past. When I see news reports none of them seem to mention the existing pipelines. The construction of a pipeline is nothing new to our area so what is the problem? Nobody cared before.

Legalities

The handy little booklet pictured below comes from the National Lawyers Guild in the United States as part of their National Police Accountability Project. If you have any plans to head to Standing Rock, check it out at www.nlg.org. In fact, it should be consulted for any trip to the US.

Non-violence: The Standing Rock camp provides training workshops for frontline water protectors and has onsite lawyers to assist anyone who is arrested. The training helps people facing arrest keep their calm. Non-violent resistance is repeatedly stressed to new arrivals. The main camp does not allow alcohol, drugs or firearms.

Law enforcement: In response to emailed questions from the Nation to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department about outside security assistance, which coordinates the law-enforcement response to the protest camp, Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said his department does have a plan to respond to what he termed “illegal” potential protest activities.

“This is prudent when it comes to what we do and how we prepare for situations,” Sheriff Kirchmeier wrote. “While we have a plan, we do not release details of our operational plans, strategies or confirm the number of officers that we have on hand at any given time to respond.”

An October 7 story in the Bismarck Tribune reported that Kirchmeier had requested assistance from sheriff’s departments across the US. Already there were 268 officers from other parts of North Dakota who had responded to his call to action.

Kirchmeier has worries though. “There are constitutional rights to assemble to protest in the United States,” he noted. “The Morton County Sheriff’s Office is here to enable and support those rights. Peaceful protests are not the issue. There are numerous outside groups, some invited and some not… While they may have come in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, they are also pushing their own agendas. Tribal leaders have indicated to law enforcement they want a peaceful protest. However, not all protestors have been peaceful. Aggression and actions to incite fear or intimidation are not peaceful activities. Protestors do not have the right to disrupt traffic, close the road, trespass on private property, or disrupt other legal activities. They do not have the right to incite fear in the traveling public, local land owners, workers, first responders or law enforcement.”

Mercer County Sheriff Dean Danzeisen painted a more vivid picture. In an October 3 letter to the US Attorney General and the Secretary of the Interior he stated the water protectors are not peaceful protestors. “They are armed, hostile, and engaged in training exercises which can only be intended to promote violence, whether on Corps property or elsewhere,” Danzeisen wrote.

The Nation did not observe any weapons beyond standard camping tools such as axes, machetes and knives. The only training exercises were to ensure that there was no violence.

A day in court

The Nation attended a vigil outside the Morton County Courthouse as a number of arrested water protectors were arraigned. “There’s no warrior left behind” is the motto of the Standing Rock legal team. Several charges were dismissed on the grounds that prosecutors were unlikely to meet the burden of proof. Most of the water protectors, including an elderly woman in her 60s, are facing charges of inciting a riot.

Pipeline facts

• The finished pipeline will be 1,172 miles long (1,886 km) when finished and will be able to transport up to 570,000 barrels of oil per day.
• In the worst-case scenario, a leak from the Dakota Access pipeline would release 19,000 barrels – about 800,000 gallons – of oil at a location near Williston. That is the maximum release on the North Dakota part of the pipeline, according to an analysis Dakota Access was required to complete as part of its permit application with the Public Service Commission.
• The cost to transport crude oil or petroleum products by pipeline is a fraction of the cost of other modes of transportation. The cost to ship crude oil by rail is generally $10 to $15 per barrel; it costs less than $5 per barrel by pipeline.
• Dakota Access, LLC (commonly referred to as “DAPL” or “Dakota Access”) is a company of Energy Transfer Partners formed to transport American crude oil from the Bakken/Three Forks formations in North Dakota to markets and refineries located in the Midwest, East Coast and Gulf Coast regions of the United States.

Standing Rock humour

The Nation met Ben-Alex Dupris, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington state, who has been with his film crew at Standing Rock for eight weeks. He is working on a film titled, “Stand Up For Standing Rock.” The storyline is based on life in the camp.

One of the rules at the camp is not to take people’s pictures without permission. Most of the Native people didn’t care but, said Dupris, “If one more non-Native person came up to me and told me not to take their photo, I was going to slap the shit out of them.” He was laughing but added, “You want to appropriate our culture, our religion, our style, our movement, and now you want to appropriate our anger too?”

Dupris spoke about the hardships in the camp. “You learn really quickly that some of the most mundane tasks that you do in your daily life, like buying a bottle of water, or making a phone call, become excruciatingly difficult because you’re literally camping. There aren’t vendors to sell you French fries if you’re hungry because you missed dinner. If you have less than seven miles worth of gas in your tank, you’re not going to make it to the casino to get filled up.”

The Standing Rock Casino was the only place with wifi for miles around and would be crowded with people texting, Facebooking and using the Internet.

“We take the position that we’re here for a good reason, we’re doing the best we can, but sometimes the food is god awful, because I cooked it, and my shoes are dirty, and we’re kind of becoming very feral out here. I’d like to have the hygiene gods come back from the past and show us how they actually kept clean in the old days because I’m about ready to twist some dreadlocks,” Dupris joked.

“You have to have a sense of humour about the chaos that happens here.”

Oceti Sakowin School: providing traditional education for the youth

Camp life in Standing Rock is organized around its institutions – the kitchen, Facebook Hill (the part of the camp where you get the best reception and can charge your phone), the sacred fire (which includes a bulletin board and a microphone for speakers), the art tent, the wellness clinic, the legal tent and the school.  

“The whole idea of the school is to organize it around how a traditional Lakota education works,” said Blaze Starkey, one of the teachers at the Oceti Sakowin School. “Here we can actually do that, which even in reservation schools is difficult.”

The school is grounded in a traditional, academic and media-based curriculum. The day begins with a prayer, followed by a conversation on a traditional Lakota value and some singing and dancing facilitated by a community member.

Later in the day the focus shifts to academic subjects like reading, writing and math. “We want the kids to excel in the academic world too when or if they do go back to standard school,” Starkey told the Nation.

All the while, the story that’s going on around them is a lesson in itself. As I arrived in the class, a teacher was discussing an article about the camp in the Bismarck Tribune with a student.

“We have the kids engage with what’s happening here. We connect it to the earth and the water and to the question of Indigenous rights and treaty rights, because as Indigenous people, we have to know that,” said Starkey. “But then we also have them critically engage with what the dominant media is saying about the camp and then have them tell their own stories about what’s happening.”  

Teachers ask students questions about how the story is told, and get them to discuss how it should be presented, explained Teresa Dzieglewicz, another teacher at the school. “Whose voices are heard? And whose voices should be heard?” Dzieglewicz asked. “We’re not an accredited school so our only responsibility is to kids, family, community and culture.”

Dzieglewicz has experience in standard education, while Starkey taught Indian education in Alaska. But the two contend that experience in standard education can actually be a negative when teaching at the Oceti Sakowin School.

“We want teachers to be able to think critically about how standard education works,” said Starkey.

The children have also been put to task on larger projects. “The older kids are working on a documentary film project, while the younger ones are making videos documenting Elders and we’re talking about the values of written versus oral tradition,” said Dzieglewicz.

“We want kids to develop skill sets. On Fridays, we have mentorship days and the kids choose what they want to develop. Some are choosing to drum and they’re starting a powwow-drumming group with a mentor. Others are choosing to bead with our super-talented beading mentor,” said Dzieglewicz. “They choose the things they are most interested in and develop them.”

But ultimately the school’s mission is to validate and instill confidence in traditional identities and modes of learning. “We want the kids to feel loved here and to learn how to use their voices more broadly while listening to each other,” concluded Dzieglewicz.

Donate and volunteer

The Standing Rock website accepts donations of money. Simply click on the Donate DAPL Fund link. Volunteers are welcome and encouraged. The Nation was told that Cree with experience with winter camping would be especially welcome as the camp plans to be there year-round.