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OJAI MAGAZINE | SPRING 2023
On Sacred Ground THE MOVIE
The industrial pipes used to build the Dakota Access Pipeline are almost … pretty. Light blue, shiny and smooth. They hide the black snake within.
The $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile underground pipeline, which starts at shale formations in North Dakota and continues southeast through South Dakota and Iowa to Patoka, Illinois, carries more than 500,000 gallons of crude oil per day. On the border between North and South Dakota, the pipeline runs under Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, home to the Lakota and Dakota nations. To the Indigenous people who live there, it is sacred ground. For them, water is a physical and spiritual source of life, and the pipeline crosses Indigenous burial sites and land they
consider theirs. But a Lakota prophecy describes a slithering black snake determined to bring sickness, destruction, and disease to the tribe. For the Lakota Sioux, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is that dark serpent, which is why people from hundreds of U.S. tribes gathered at Standing Rock in 2016 to set up camp and peacefully defend their way of life. They called themselves “water protectors” — not protestors, because they are not standing against anything, but rather for their land and traditions. Their movement became known as “NoDAPL.”
by KAREN LINDELL
Photos courtesy Big Picture Ranch