By Lexi DuPont and Madi DuPont
An overwhelmingly heavy cloud of discomfort settled over us, and a feeling of nausea took over as we approached the Standing Rock Native American Reservation in North Dakota.
After driving for two days, we were finally just two miles away from the “black snake,” the natives’ name for the pipeline. Piercing through the sea of darkness ahead were stadium lights that blinded the night with a powerful and sterile ability to make everyone feel crazy. These lights are provided so that the pipeline workers can work through the night in order to speed up production and intimidate the water protectors.
We sat in silence with this uncomfortably heavy feeling, finally turning up the music to distract our minds. Military vehicles, razor wire, large cement blocks and the lights created a giant blockade in front of us. We were closing in on the Oceti Sakowin camp, but we unknowingly drove up to the military side instead of the water protectors’ side, a perspective we would never forget.
The camp is the largest at the site and it is this camp the government will attempt to shut down on Monday, Dec. 5. People of all ages, races and nationalities are camped at Oceti Sakowin and other smaller encampments.
Our first morning, we were woken by a native man yelling at all 10,000 water protectors over a loudspeaker.
“Wake up! Wake up!” he said. “It is 5 a.m. and it is time to get to work. Why did you come here if not to help? Wake up! Wake up!”
We were a small group of Wood River Valley locals who drove 15 hours to Standing Rock, which straddles the border of North and South Dakota, to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. None of us had ever been a part of a protest before and we figured Thanksgiving was a poetic time to give thanks and support to the native people of America. It’s mind blowing how little we knew collectively of Native American people or of the DAPL. In every corner of our country native people are oppressed and native land is exploited. What began in 1492 has never stopped.
Even without the present forms of state violence, the destruction of the environment and the surrounding native communities is a form of genocide. If you take away people’s capacity to feed and hydrate themselves, you take away their capacity to create and sustain life itself. This has always been the story of the white man and the Indians and we wanted to help counterbalance this history.
We rustled out of our warm sleeping bags and frosty tents to smoke-filled air, frozen shoes and freezing temperatures. Still in a sleepy fog from the long drive, we marched up the hill to the main camp, a small and well-organized city that has grown and taken root since the protest began in early April.
The city is filled with yurts, tepees, small houses and wall tents. Frozen dirt roads winding all around and hundreds of massive flags of every color and from every country wave high in the sky. Protest symbols and signs cover everything and ceremonial fires burn in designated areas. You could feel the prayers soaring into the pale morning sky above, but this feeling wasn’t of celebration like most mass gatherings; this feeling was of resistance and emotional hardship.
As we walked toward the orientation tent, we all had flashbacks of traveling in Third World countries in Africa and Asia. Yet, we were in the heart of America on the vast golden plains of the Dakotas. How much more American could you get?
The orientation was held in a massive white dome on top of the hill, but with the overwhelming influx of Thanksgiving supporters, they had an additional four orientation tents filled to the brim with more than 85 people in each one. We crowded in––shoulder to shoulder, nose to back, bum to knee––while listening to the orientation leaders’ introduction to Standing Rock (see side bar).
They reminded us that white supremacy is alive and well in America but the importance of Standing Rock and the historical significance of this moment should go down in the history books forever. It’s the first time in history more than 600 different indigenous people have come together for a common goal: to stop the DAPL and protect the water for generations to come.
They made it clear that we were guests in this movement and a part of a resistance using prayer and love, not a protest using anger and hate. They reminded us that we have all been heart-called to resist and we must keep the resistance central. They said we should remember this is just one step on a path that has been carved out for 500 years, and, most importantly, they advised us be comfortable being uncomfortable, to sit with our discomfort and know that we are unlearning our legacy. They also expressed gratitude for our dedication in traveling far distances to join in their prayers, to have allies with every color and to work together to resist the DAPL.
And then they hit us with the brutal reality that the pipeline is being constructed just to the north of camp where they are speeding up construction and are about to dig under the river. Flashes of our encounter with the other side just hours before lay unsettled in our minds.
The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is designed to transport more than 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken/Three Forks formations in North Dakota, underground to a terminus near Patoka, Ill.
We were also told those working on DAPL have no permit. The owners––Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66, both of Texas––are knowingly building through indigenous land and breaking the law. As oil companies, they do what they want and the federal government protects them. They also have three private security organizations, the Army National Guard and police from across the country protecting them. It’s easy to want to throw in the towel, pack up the truck and go home after hearing these statistics, but the Sioux remind us of a key piece of information regarding the Jan. 1, 2017 deadline and the high-risk financing behind the DAPL.
They said the financial motivations from ETP doesn’t coincide with the interest of Bakken oil drillers or with any economic rationale for increased regional pipeline capacity. Come Jan. 1, investors may choose not to renew their contracts.
On Thanksgiving Day, a peaceful moment occurred between the water protectors and the security forces.
Turtle Island, which sits in the river between the security forces and the water protectors’ camps, is a Native American sacred burial ground. The military has occupied the island, but that day the natives built a floating bridge to it, and also sent people over in canoes. After they crossed, protesters gathered in a prayer circle, marking the moment by holding hands and singing.
The security forces told them, “If you leave, we will also leave.”
The natives took them at their word and left, but during the night the military ripped up the bridge, shot bullet holes into the canoes, making them unusable, and surrounded the island in razor wire. Then the police threw trash onto the island, covering the sacred ground in litter while yelling racist insults at the natives. It was unimaginable.
We must use our voice to make these truths known. There is a great deal for us to learn of the land we call home, and of the people who died so we could do so. They have spent five generations being forced to learn from us, and this is what we have to show for it. We are the largest generation of educated people to ever live and we live in a technologically advanced time where we have access to all information at the touch of a button. We must educate ourselves and trust our hearts. We must come together and use our resources, our knowledge and our voice to come up with a solution and an alternative.
Even if it’s an inconvenience to our ever-growing, overly comfortable lives, we have to make a change and take on the uncomfortable. Send supplies, send love, send money, send yourself and, most importantly, send intentions and prayers in whatever form that may be for you.
Their message is simple:
Water is life.
Water is sacred.
Protect the sacred.
Protect life.