Water protectors crossed the Missouri River on Thanksgiving morning to reach a hill that is a sacred burial ground for the Sioux. Police officers on the top of the hill sprayed the protestors with water cannons just after this photo was taken.
Local caravan delivered winter supplies and support to Standing Rock
By Marcy Stamper
As people across the country celebrate a decision announced this past weekend that denied a permit for an oil pipeline to cross Sioux tribal lands in North Dakota, some Methow Valley residents are experiencing the outcome on an especially personal level.
Local musician and activist Laura Love was one of eight valley residents who traveled to the encampment on the Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, to deliver supplies, support the people there, and to bear witness, she said.
The encampment was like a small city, with twice the number of inhabitants as the Methow Valley. Some people were settling in for the winter.
Phyllis Daniels also knew she wanted to help. “When I saw all the tribes coming and joining forces, I just knew this was one of the most significant things I could remember,” said Daniels.
“It was like marching with a thousand Gandhis — the most peaceful, loving people I’ve encountered,” said Daniels.
While the vigil at Standing Rock has been largely peaceful, Love was indeed a witness to one of the tensest and most violent episodes in the eight-month-long standoff. The night after they arrived, Love joined hundreds of people on the front lines on a bridge over the Missouri River as young men were blasted with water cannons in the frigid weather and grenades flashed around them.
Love heard the commotion on the bridge from camp, about a fourth of a mile away. “The entire camp was yelling and screaming. You could hear grenades. It was impossible for me to stay in my tent,” she said.
Armed with her phone, Love would shoot half a dozen videos and then run the quarter-mile back to a hill where there was a strong-enough signal for her to upload the videos. She came to call it “Facebook Hill.”
Laura Love, left, and Phyllis Daniels made a video the morning they arrived at the encampment to relay their greetings to everyone back in the Methow.
“That became my mission, to get it out on Facebook,” she said. “I was so focused on getting the message out that I was too busy to be scared.”
Love described chaos and violence as some of the protestors, who call themselves Water Protectors, tried to walk across the bridge. “They were shooting water cannons at Indian kids who had their hands raised in peace signs. Their clothes were freezing and they were hypothermic,” said Love.
Officers also fired rubber bullets and threw flash-bang grenades as people who had been praying tried to walk across the bridge and cross a line set by the law enforcement authorities.
When Love, Daniels and the others arrived at Oceti Sakowin, the Lakota name of the encampment, on Nov. 19, 3,000 to 4,000 people were already gathered there but, when they left five days later, the occupation had more than doubled, as a steady flow of people arrived from around the world. There were people from Ireland, Maoris from New Zealand, and indigenous peoples from across the United States and the Brazilian rainforest. Some had walked or paddled to the site, said Daniels.
“It was sort of a harmonic convergence,” said Love. “I think the entire world saw the 500 years of suffering our indigenous people have endured, and all the broken treaties.”
Some at the encampment also protested fracking, saying that the technique for extracting oil harms the environment.
The convoy of three vans and one trailer from the Methow delivered blankets, tents and stoves, high-end ski parkas, and thermal socks and boots that had been donated at a vigil in Twisp. “People just glommed onto us as soon as we arrived, because we understand winter,” said Love.
The Standing Rock occupation began in the spring when a group of women urged people to join them in prayer on the banks of the Missouri River to stop the pipeline. They urged the government and the pipeline company to consider a route that wouldn’t traverse Sioux lands, desecrate their burial grounds and threaten their water supply. They have also challenged the route in federal court.
On Sunday (Dec. 4), the federal agency responsible for granting an easement for the route heeded their requests.
“Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it will not be granting the easement to cross Lake Oahe [part of the Missouri River] for the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline. Instead, the Corps will be undertaking an environmental impact statement to look at possible alternative routes,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II in a statement after the decision was announced.
The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline is part of a $3.8 billion oil project intended to carry over a half-million barrels of crude oil across four states. The pipeline is about 90 percent complete, but Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, had not obtained the necessary easement to cross the Missouri River.
“We are not opposed to energy independence, economic development, or national security concerns, but we must ensure that these decisions are made with the considerations of our Indigenous peoples,” said Archambault.
Daniels said she was moved to speak one day after a group built a footbridge from plywood and Styrofoam at a narrow river crossing. ”It was a quiet morning and people were praying,” she said. “I asked the police who they thought they were protecting. I told them, ‘I could be your grandma.’” Only after she spoke did she realize that an officer was aiming his gun at her.
“Over and over and over, they helped me see how to do peaceful activism. To me, it’s the epicenter of the shift,” said Daniels. “It was a life-changing experience.”
