28 • JANUARY 2017
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TUMBLEWEEDS • SUZANNE BARTEAU
Standing with Standing Rock A woman and her mother travel to North Dakota
T
here are about 1,400 miles of highway between Socorro, New Mexico, and Cannonball, North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is trying to stop the multi-national corporation, Energy Transfer Partners, from completing a 1,200 mile pipeline to transport crude oil from the Bakken oil fields to a distribution point in Illinois. My mother and I have only been on the road for about 15 of those 1,400 miles when a coyote crosses the highway in front of me. I get just a bare glimpse of him in the headlights before he fades into the darkness at the edge of the pavement. We pass through Colorado Springs at the beginning of evening rush hour, and cars are pouring onto the highway by the thousands. Our dependence on gas and oil, and on the industry that extracts it, processes it, and delivers it to our doorsteps, is obvious. At some point the fossil fuels will run out, but in the meantime, using them is becoming so detrimental to the environment that we’ll soon be forced to stop, or risk causing our own extinction. Most climate scientists think we’ve already reached the tipping point, and are calling for a radical paradigm shift. Historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, who coined the term “paradigm shift,” said that crisis leads to insight, at which point old frameworks give way to new ones. The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is an example of old
Maryann Barteau is ready to hit the road to Standing Rock, North Dakota, where she and her daughter traveled in support of those protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline project. (Photo by Suzanne Barteau) framework. Pipelines are prone to leaking and spilling. They’re supposedly a safer way to transport oil and gas than by train, but that doesn’t take into account the people, disproportionately poor and voiceless, whose water is regularly contaminated, whose health is negatively affected, and whose lives are disrupted by the leaks and the occasional explosions. The fuels that gush through the pipes, when burned, release CO2 into the atmosphere, contribute to global warming and ocean acidification, and cause new cascades of crises at every level of the ecosystem. Many people don’t realize that
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the DAPL route, if it went in a more or less direct line from its start in Stanley, North Dakota, to its end in Patoka, Illinois, wouldn’t cross the Missouri River at all. The route wasn’t designed to be the shortest distance between two points, though, or to cross the minimum possible number of waterways the minimum possible number of times. Instead, it goes some 200 miles out of its way to cross the Missouri River not once, but twice. This way, the company is able to stay mostly on private land, to make use of eminent domain, and to circumvent all kinds of regulation and oversight. The first crossing, near Trenton, North Dakota, is narrow. The second was supposed to be near Bismarck, the capitol, but there were concerns about the number of people whose water supply would be affected if the pipeline leaked, so they moved it south, where there were only the Standing Rock Sioux to complain. When we get to Cannon Ball, the fog is so dense we can barely see the signs, and we pass the turn-off for the Sacred Stone Camp before I realize it. We keep going, and turn in at Sicangu, also known as Rosebud Camp. Just past the entrance to Sicangu is a short bridge across the Cannon Ball River, which feeds into the Missouri, and on the other side is Oceti Sakowin, the largest camp of the three. Sacred Stone and Sicangu are on reservation land. As I understand it, Oceti Sakowin is on land that was established as belonging to the Sioux in the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie. Ten years later a local gold rush caused the 1851 boundaries to be essentially ignored. While the Sioux consider it to be “unceded treaty land,” the land where the camp sits is currently under the control of the Army Corps of Engineers, which dammed the Missouri in the late 1950s (when thousands of dams were being built all across the country) creating Lake Oahe. Because of this, it’s the least safe place of all three camps. The Water Protectors can’t be kicked off reservation land, but their continued and growing presence on Army
Corps of Engineers land is risky. At 8 a.m. in the cold and fog, there aren’t many people up and moving at Sicangu. Someone emerges from tent right to the side of the entrance to make sure we’re friend, not foe. We find the head of camp security and the camp manager at the cooking and supply tents and unload our supplies. Then we ask what we can do to be useful, and are invited to help ourselves to coffee and warm ourselves at the Spirit Fire while we wait for the camp to wake up and breakfast to be over. Every camp has a Spirit Fire, and the bigger camps have more than one. The best wood is set aside for this fire, and it’s never allowed to go out. In the larger camps, there’s usually an elder or tribal leader watching over it at all times. From this one, we can see across the river, and we can hear a big commotion, so we walk across the bridge into Oceti Sakowin. Hundreds of vehicles are lining up, in four lines corresponding to the points of the compass. People are jumping into cars, and cramming themselves into the back of pickup trucks. Finally a tribal elder starts chanting and hitting a small drum, and the cars begin peeling out of camp. It takes almost a half an hour for them all to leave. People are lining the road with their arms raised high, their hands clenched in fists, signaling warrior-like solidarity with the departing Protectors. They’re headed, we learn later, for a peaceful demonstration at the state capitol building in Bismarck. It’s less than 30 miles away on Highway 1806, but because 1806 has been barricaded by law enforcement, they have to take a 60-mile detour. When they finally get there, they demonstrate in front of the main entrance for several hours. No one is arrested, or sprayed with tear gas. If we were planning to take part in a demonstration, that would have been the one to go on, but they prefer you to attend a Non-Violent Action Training first, for your own sake and everyone else’s. So, back to Sicangu Camp we go.
There are essentially three ways to be helpful to the Sioux in this struggle. One is to help build winter structures, and winterize the camp. Another, for people with medical or legal training, is to help the Water Protectors who are injured or arrested in non-violent actions. Lastly, people who are able are needed to participate in non-violent actions and risk arrest. We end up doing none of those things. Instead, we sort donations. People have been sending all kinds of clothing to Standing Rock, much of it unsuitable for a harsh North Dakota winter. There’s a tent already filled with summer weight blankets and sleeping bags, and another tent entirely filled with tents of the kind you would not want to be stuck in when the weather turned cold and wet. We pull clothing out of boxes and bags and make piles. Women’s sweaters go in one pile, men’s jeans in another, gloves here, hats there. Everything unsuitable, dirty, or torn goes into a discard pile, to be used as insulation in the walls of the new winter structures they’re building. You can only sort clothes for so long. Mom stays at the fire, talking with people who come by to warm their hands and take a break from their work. I walk around, looking at the huge variety of shelters people have constructed, at the flags flying everywhere. I watch a teepee being built in under an hour. There’s a sweat lodge, and a moon tent for women who are menstruating. Most women walking around the camp are wearing long skirts over their pants, in deference to local custom, as am I. It’s warmer with a long skirt, but it tends to get tangled in my legs and I have to walk slowly and deliberately or I’ll trip myself up. Within the camps, there are smaller enclaves. A yellow flag with a Zia symbol and a few other flags I don’t recognize mark a settlement that’s been continuously occupied by Native Americans from New Mexico and Arizona since June. They come for a few weeks at a time, then when a truck from home comes rolling in with more people and supplies, they take the return trip south. I’d like to take some pictures, but it feels awkward to ask, and asking is necessary. At two o’clock, I go back over to Oceti Sakowin for the Non-Violent Action Training. This camp is so big I underestimate the amount of time it will take to find where the training is being held. I take a wrong path in what I think is the right direction, and wind up completely turned around. The place is a little like Mad Max meets a Rainbow Gathering, with whole neighborhoods that have their own distinct look and feel. There are a lot of raggedy-looking people with ratty hair and mismatched clothing, and art of all kinds is being made
STANDING ROCK
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