I Buried My Heart at Standing Rock

I realized then that I needed to set a positive example. I am a reporter. I needed to go and bear witness, report and support the struggle for what is right in this world. And I knew just who to take with me. I was taken aback at how supportive my husband and son were about my decision to go.

We three intrepid travelling women powered through the 27 hour drive from Vancouver to North Dakota and back in the space of a week. The Medicine Woman is an old friend. She carries a sacred chanupa (pipe) and makes her own native medicines as a woman of Anishnaabe blood. The third friend was The Navigator of strong Portuguese ancestry. We were on a mission.

 

We had been watching the weather in North Dakota and still we naively brought our summer camping gear to pitch our tent at the Sacred Stone camp on the south side of the Missouri. It was all we had. It is a small 3 person tent, with open vents on all 5 sides for summer camping. It was early November. We had a camp stove, propane, summer sleeping bags, head lamps and quilts. Nana Quilts we called them – made by my Mom.

We felt safe enveloped in the folds of our matriarchal love as we ventured to support a matrilineal society. It felt right and true. It was also fraught with fear.

 

We were instructed by friends who were there and who had been there, to not tell the officers at the border crossing where we were going. Arrest at Standing Rock is not what it is anywhere else in the States or Canada. Anyone arrested there can be randomly strip searched and put in what look like large dog kennels cages. As a Canadian citizen I was at risk of being labelled an “Eco Terrorist”.  As much of a status symbol as that would have been at home, I treasure my freedom to travel back and forth across the border.

We whooped and hooted after we cleared Customs and drove into the States in my 10 year old Toyota. It was now dubbed our ‘Good Pony’. Nothing could stop us now. Everything was a sign, an omen that we were doing the right thing. Bravery came in cigarettes with the cold wind whipping our faces from the open window. Then came the night driving through the mountain passes of Idaho and Montana. Thick fog and winding roads were nerve-racking. The first light of the sun on the plains gave us renewed energy. It struck me how so many names of towns and rivers were Native names. Kalispel, Cheyenne, Buffalo Jump, Shoshone, Nakota…….

When we were well into North Dakota we were hungry and stopped in Mandan, a town about the size of Cranbrook. We found a Hardee’s and pulled in. As we got out of the car we saw two cops sitting in a booth by the window. We flinched. Too late, we were already on our way in. I just caught a bit of what the young, pimply-faced, gnarl-toothed teen taking the orders was saying.

The young guy had told us proudly, out of the blue, that his big brother was a local militiaman and they were all camped out in a secret location to plan their next steps to ‘calm those people down a liddle bit’. It was as though he was apologizing to us about the situation going on so nearby.

He was referring to the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. I had been told by a native woman who had just come back to B.C. from Sacred Stone before I left on the trip, to go check out Fort Rice. That is where the militarized forces were all encamped. She said it was like a scene out of a war movie. It was the first Army Fort and scouting site for General Custer’s men before the raid on Little Big Horn. The gathering at Standing Rock right now marks the first time since that raid in 1876 that all seven of the Lakota Nations have come back together.

We knew from friends that were already at Sacred Stone Camp that the police had barricaded part of Hwy 1806, just off of reservation land, so we had to make a big circular route around to enter the camp from the reservation side. A hand-drawn map and our various phone maps became a major source of frustration. Time cranked by as we drove down gravel roads that seemed hopelessly wrong. Finally we were on the reservation and could see a group of little native kids, around 7 to 10 years old, playing with a remarkably obedient Rez dog. We asked them if they could point us in the direction of the Sacred Stone Camp. They were delighted and called out with glee, “That way! No DAPL! (sounds like apple) No DAPL! Thanks for coming!” We were elated.

Pulling up to the guard house at the entrance of the Sacred Stone Camp was eerie in the early darkness of twilight. Native and non-Native people manning the gate fixed us with suspicious glares and asked where we were coming from, what we were there for and what we were carrying. There is a very strict rule at the camps that doesn’t allow any firearms or alcohol past the gates. The camps are set up for ceremony, prayer and non-violence. Bright lights were shone in our faces. We were proud to say that we had driven from the west coast of Canada. They were suitably impressed. In fact, our B.C. plates garnered a lot of high praise – once people made sure that it was on the West Coast.

The ‘Good Pony’ car took the dusty moguls leading down the hill in stride as we wound our way through the camp to find a spot to set up our modest tent. There were many modest tents and Tipis surrounding the camp fires. People were playing guitar and singing folk songs. You could hear faint strains of native songs that were unfamiliar to me. It felt other-worldly. We had stepped back in time about 100 years. Seeing a bunch of young warriors ride by on horses was normal here. The smell of burning wood and sweet sage brought us down to earth and calmed us as we set up camp.

We wandered around for a while in the dark, tripping over brambles and trying to get the lay of the land. We could see the river and to the north the intrusive glaring lights of the DAPL workers and police Humvees. The unsettling sound of the low-flying planes put me on edge and we knew we were in it. The scene was as I had seen it online in the videos from the camps. I knew that those vehicles were parked on Sacred Land; desecrated land that is still unceded from the Lakota Sioux Nation since the Laramie Treaty was signed in 1851. We were guests there. That made us a target too.

The night was cold and sleep was a battle with the planes circling and the sounds of the camps. In the distance I could hear native singing, prayers and drumming. My mind was flooded with old images of battle, blood and warriors. Tired and rattled, sleep was fleeting.

I’ll never forget the wakeup call at 5:15 AM that morning and every morning that we could hear from the PA at the big main Oceti Sakowin Camp, twenty minutes walk to the west. An elder Native man’s voice boomed, “Pipe Carriers! Peacemakers! Warriors! Gestapo! Get Up! You came here for a reason! Those guys across the river have been working for two hours already! Get Up! It’s almost noon!” It was like waking to the voice of God.

We explored the camp. There were fires burning surrounded by different groups. The organized white action groups with their white boards, the homesteaders with chickens and dusty blonde haired babies, the local natives in their tipis and the colourful ‘Rainbow Kids’ with tie dyed clothes and tinted hair.  The Rainbow Kids, I was told, are really the dispossessed ‘squeegy street kids’ from all over. The Medicine Woman was told by a Native woman at Sacred Stone that most Native people are staying at Oceti Sakowin because Sacred Stone is so full of whites. They don’t see this as a bad thing. She said that the presence of all the white people is what might be stopping the police from outright killing people.

Every American flag we saw as inverted – which is a symbol of distress.  It seemed to me then like an augury of many more of these types of stands to come, especially back home in B.C.

 This is why I buried my heart at Standing Rock. The love was almost overwhelming in the hugs I received for just showing up. My heart beats there still for all of the Water Protectors, their bravery and commitment to non-violence in the face of extreme racism and excessively violent militarized hired police forces. My heart buried itself in the banks of the Missouri when I saw and heard how the camps people sent their love and prayers to the police on the other side.