💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › crimethinc-standing-rock-evictions-interview.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:47:52. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Standing Rock Evictions Interview Author: CrimethInc. Date: February 28, 2017 Language: en Topics: interview, Standing Rock, indigenous solidarity Source: Retrieved on 22nd April 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2017/02/28/interview-the-standing-rock-evictions-audio-and-transcript
Since April 2016, protesters have maintained encampments aimed at
stopping the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. On February
22^(nd) and 23^(rd), police evicted the Oceti Sakowin camp. We spoke
with a participant in the Water Protector Anti-Repression Crew, who
witnessed the camp’s eviction, about the past several months of
struggle, the current wave of repression against water protectors, and
how participants’ feelings about leadership and tactics have changed in
the course of events.
CrimethInc. Ex-Worker’s Collective: So, who are we speaking with and
what are you doing up there at Standing Rock?
Water Protector Anti-Repression Crew: I’m a part of the Water Protector
Anti-Repression Crew, which is a group of people who have been at the
camps at Standing Rock for many months. We work in coordination with the
Water Protector Legal Collective and the Freshet Collective helping to
coordinate mass defense efforts, but also working on anti-repression
education in the camps and elsewhere and then also on broader movement
defense development.
CWC: How long has the protest camp been going on, and what are some of
the major events that are important to understanding the timeline of the
camp?
WPARC: The camp first started at Sacred Stone last April. It’s been
going on for almost a year. That camp started initially on Ladonna
Bravebull Allard’s land in April as a small prayer camp and then grew
from there, especially over the course of the summer, and expanded into
what then became Rosebud Camp. This all was on the reservation side of
Standing Rock. Eventually, people crossed over the Cannonball River to
the north side, which became the Oceti Sakowin Camp. This is the camp
that some people know has been evicted as of yesterday and today,
February 22^(nd) and 23^(rd).
The camps have been going on for quite some time and there’s been a lot
of different tactics and some people might characterize it as different
battles that have occurred over the course of that time, catching and
capturing world-wide attention back in September with something that a
lot of people refer to as Day of the Dogs where water protectors were
attacked by privately hired mercenaries that were hired by the Dakota
Access Pipeline to provide security for the pipeline. They used attack
dogs to move water protectors off of what Dakota Access Pipeline
considered its land along the pipeline route. From September 3^(rd)—that
Day of the Dogs—onward, things really escalated in intensity. Then in
early October, again things really escalated in intensity where people
had established a camp that was called the 1851 Treaty Camp. In camp,
people oftentimes just referred to it as Frontline Camp or North Camp.
It was set up in the direct line of the pipeline and it created a shift
not only in an assertion of indigenous sovereignty over whether the
people of Standing Rock wanted a pipeline built on their land, but also
brought into the mix the assertion of treaty rights as well, which is
something that hasn’t really been seen in the States in the last 30 or
40 years on that level of intensity.
That camp was raided and evicted by North Dakota and other law
enforcement brought in from other states on October 27^(th). People
refer to this as the Raid of North Camp or Raid of Frontline Camp. This
was a battle that became particularly heated in a literal way. There
were burning barricades, there was a very difficult direct confrontation
with law enforcement, and there were multiple points of struggle
happening at one time. Moving forward into November, there were again
some moments that really captured worldwide attention.
On November 20^(th), there was the Battle of Backwater Bridge which
captured, again, worldwide attention from people. Many people probably
have memories of Morton County sheriffs utilizing fire hoses against
hundreds of water protectors in sub-freezing temperatures. This resulted
in over 300 people being medically treated for hypothermia and other
injuries from different munitions that law enforcement were using; tear
gas, pepper spray, and other types of less-than-lethal bullets.
Also on that night of November 20^(th) was the night that Sophia
Wilansky was injured, presumably by a concussion grenade thrown by law
enforcement. She nearly lost her arm and will continue to have to have
medical treatment and surgeries, probably many surgeries, to regain any
use of her arm. Another woman named Suzie was shot in the eye and has
lost vision in her eye as a result of the actions of law enforcement on
that night. About a week or maybe two weeks later, there was a temporary
moment of celebration in the camps where there was initially a denial of
the easement to Dakota Access Pipeline that was put out by the Army
Corps of Engineers. In that timeline, around December, at the same time
that the denial of the easement happened, that was also when we found
out that a federal grand jury had been convened. At least one water
protector that we know of has been subpoenaed to that grand jury, Steve
Martinez, and he has chosen to actively resist cooperating and continues
to resist cooperation with the grand jury. There has been quite a lot
that’s happened since April of last year, when about 20 people started a
prayer camp at Sacred Stone. Over the course of almost a year now,
almost 10,000 people have come and gone through the camps. It has been a
long 10 months or so.
CWC: Wait, I thought the 10,000 number was for the most people that were
there at one time
WPARC: I guess that’s probably accurate. Around the time of that denial
of the easement in early December, there were about 9,000 people in camp
at once. Probably the number of people who have come and gone through
camp is higher than that, but that is the peak number of how many people
were there at one time.
CWC: How has the camp changed and shifted since November? What does it
look like now in late February?
WPARC: Things have changed a lot since the end of November. There were
some moment of celebration amongst some when the denial of easement came
from the Army Corps. And there was also, amongst many people at camp, a
sense that this was temporary and unlikely to last. Trump was about to
be inaugurated and take office, he had already been quite a proponent of
extraction during the lead up to his administration, and he has actually
been an investor in the Dakota Access Pipeline himself. On his campaign
trail he had spoken about wanting to see the Keystone XL Pipeline go
through after that had been shut down by Obama some time back, and he
had spoken about his insistence that Dakota Access Pipeline would be
completed. So, even with that denial of the easement, there was tension
within the camp that this was something that wouldn’t last past January
20^(th).
The mood in camp has shifted quite a lot. The winter in North Dakota is
harsh. At the beginning of December, there were a number of blizzards
back to back. It was some of the highest snowfall the state of North
Dakota has seen in many years. People in camp have been in survival mode
as much as they’ve been in resistance.
The ways that camp has changed is definitely the numbers grew smaller
over the last few months. It’s not an easy place to be, and also many
people had put in long months at camp and had given up a lot in their
personal lives. People left jobs, people left their homes, their
families, their relatives, and their communities, to come here and be
not only in solidarity with the people of Standing Rock, but also for a
lot of indigenous people, saw it as connecting to their own struggles in
their own territories at home. People have put quite a lot on the line
and it makes sense that people need to return to their own homelands and
territories and communities. We say it a lot up here that the frontlines
are everywhere, and I think that rings true for a lot of people during
this time.
In the sense that people have been in survival mode at camp, people have
also never really lost that willingness to continue to fight. There have
not been, in the last few months, as intense of battles as there were in
the months of September through November. There have been smaller,
skirmishes with law enforcement as they started to really push the
boundaries and come closer and closer to camp, especially to the big
camp on the north side which is on Army Corps land, the Oceti Sakowin
Camp.
During this time there were a lot of people who were facing harsh
repression from the state. As of today there are almost 800 people who
have open cases in the state of North Dakota. There are 6 people
currently facing federal felonies and looking at long prison sentences,
and there is also this active grand jury that is going on as well. As
the numbers grew smaller at the camps, the intense state repression
started to fully manifest in the courts.
CWC: Can you describe the current situation of repression, and how this
has developed over the course of the encampment?
WPARC: Starting at the beginning of December, we found out about this
grand jury that had been convened, investigating the activities of water
protectors. As I mentioned before, there’s one person, Steve Martinez,
who we know has been subpoenaed and is actively resisting and refusing
to cooperate with the grand jury. That’s been going on since the
beginning of December.
Going back to October 27^(th) again, at that Raid of the North Camp, or
Battle for Sacred Ground, a woman named Red Fawn Fallis was arrested and
initially charged with North Dakota state charges for an attempted
murder on a police officer. They said that she had a firearm and that
she tried to shoot a police officer during her arrest. At first, it was
just the state charges that she had. And then, shortly after that,
around a month later, the Feds came in with federal charges against her.
The charges against her on the federal level are felon in possession of
a weapon, which carries a mandatory minimum of 2 years and up to 5
years. The state of North Dakota never dropped the state charges against
her, the attempted murder charges. They’re just kind of tabled and in
limbo. If things don’t work out on the federal level, if they aren’t
able to get a conviction, her legal representation feels strongly that
the state of North Dakota will proceed with the state charges.
Red Fawn had been a large part of the camps and had been a huge helper
and member of the community at the camps. It felt like at the time, back
in October, that it was a strategic act on the state’s end to have that
kind of chilling effect. If you’re somebody who is integral to support
of a movement, then they’re going to try to incapacitate you and
hopefully frighten others from filling those kinds of roles. About a
month ago now, we found out that one person was also being charged with
federal charges. His name is Michael Markus, also known as Rattler
around camp. He was charged with two federal counts. One, a civil
disorder count, and the second, a use of fire in committing a crime.
During a very unusual release hearing, where an ATF agent who is part of
the ground team here in North Dakota and part of the investigatory body
that the Feds have put together looking into the activities of water
protectors, we found out during his testimony that there’s a pretty
massive federal investigation into the activities of water protectors.
They seem fairly focused on the happenings on and around October 27^(th)
that involved burning barricades. This is what they allege that Michael
Markus was a part of. About a week or two later, a previously sealed
indictment became unsealed and we found out that Michael Markus has 4
co-defendants whom the state alleges were in a conspiracy of sorts
together to use fire in committing a crime. Specifically, that fire was
used to impede the movements and actions of law enforcement on that day
in their efforts to raid the North Camp.
Shortly after that, it was also made public that the joint terrorism
task forces on the ground here in North Dakota as well, were looking
into the activities of water activities. Some of our suspicions from the
Anti-Repression Crew over the last few months were exactly this. The
state of North Dakota is racking up charges, mostly misdemeanors,
although there are some felonies that people are facing which carry a
maximum of 5 years in prison. We assumed that there was also a larger
federal schematic being put together in the background and we found out
through Agent Hill from ATF’s testimony that that was indeed the case.
Today and yesterday there was an eviction of Oceti Sakowin Camp that had
been announced for several weeks by the Army Corps when they approved
the easement, ultimately at the urging of the Trump administration.
We’ve also noticed that ATF and FBI were on the scene of the eviction as
well. Many other law enforcement agencies were also present, including
Homeland Security. Today they had a Border Patrol helicopter doing
surveillance over the camps. There’s quite an amassing of federal forces
here in North Dakota at Standing Rock that seem not only to have the
purpose of shutting down this camp, but it also seems to be very
intentional as this is not the only pipeline that is being built or is
proposed to be built. There are many other pipelines that will be going
through many people’s territories across North America and across the
US. This is a moment where we believe that the Trump administration and
federal government want to make a strong statement of zero tolerance
around indigenous sovereignty and earth defense.
CWC: What has been going on the past couple of days with the eviction of
the Oceti Sakowin Camp?
WPARC: A few weeks ago, when the Army Corps ultimately approved the
easement for Dakota Access Pipeline to drill underneath the Missouri
River at the Lake Oahe point, they gave a deadline of February 23^(rd).
They actually ended up coming in with a fairly large amassing of law
enforcement yesterday on February 22^(nd). There were about 10 arrests
yesterday at the camp. Primarily the people who were arrested yesterday
were independent journalists, legal observers, and one water protector,
someone who wasn’t fulfilling a support or a media role. Yesterday they
seemed to really be targeting media in a pretty overt way. Today around
9 am, they came into the big camp, Oceti Sakowin, in a much more
militarized fashion. Most people had left Oceti yesterday, though there
were a few people who had chosen to remain. There were about 20 people
at the Cheyenne River Camp within Oceti who had made very clear
yesterday and very publicly stated that they would passively resist the
eviction. Many of the people at the Cheyenne River Camp are Oglala
Lakota and come from the Pine Ridge area. Pine Ridge has a long history
of struggle against the State and they also have quite a stake in seeing
this pipeline stopped. They are reliant on the water from the Oglala
Aquifer which is fed by the Missouri River and is actually Pine Ridge’s
last opportunity for clean water, as the remaining portion of their
water is already contaminated by Uranium mining. Not only do people from
Pine Ridge feel very strongly that their water is in danger, but they
also feel very strongly about asserting their treaty rights. A big part
of their choice in passively resisting the eviction yesterday, was to
assert their treaty rights. The land that the Army Corps claims as
theirs in that area is unceded treaty land that was never ceded to the
federal government nor the state of North Dakota and still belongs to
the Great Sioux Nation according to the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868.
There were around 70 other people remaining in Oceti as of the morning.
Many of whom, as law enforcement moved in, chose to move south across
the Cannonball River which is currently frozen. People were walking
across the frozen river to the reservation side, assuming that if they
went over to the reservation side it would be a safe place, as there had
been no eviction notice given to the camp on the other side of the river
at Rosebud where people were fleeing to. But then, in the afternoon the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, entered into Rosebud Camp and also
started arresting people on the Rosebud reservation side as well. There
seems to be an attempt at evicting the Rosebud encampment, and there had
been an attempt to, in a very sneaky, shady way evict Sacred Stone Camp
as well. But Sacred Stone is on land that is privately owned by Ladonna
Bravebull Allard and her family. There seems to be a strong collusion
between tribal governance at Standing Rock and federal law enforcement
and the Trump administration to push out Sacred Stone Camp as well. A
few weeks ago, Sacred Stone was served an eviction notice and the tribe
asserted that they owned 66% of Ladonna’s land, which is untrue.
Ladonna, with the help of a legal team, was able to call off that
eviction and resist that eviction. But we all assume here on the ground
that they will continue to try and find ways to push people off of
Ladonna’s land at Sacred Stone as well.
CWC: Can you speak to the different elements of leadership within the
camp and how that may or may not intersect with collusion with the
state?
WPARC: Any time that you get a mass movement together, in my personal
experience and in my knowledge of history, there are many forces at
play. There is no such thing on the ground as unity. I think this rings
true for the struggle at Standing Rock as well. With as many thousands
of people who have come to and from this camp, there are people who come
for many different reasons. There are definitely NGOs and “movement
manager” types that have come to and from camp; but I think the thing
that sticks out the most, as far as where some dark kind of collusion
with the state or with capital exists, is in tribal governance in this
situation in particular. If people know the history of tribal government
and how they were set up, these are not the ways in which indigenous
communities historically, traditionally governed themselves. This is a
colonial model of governance that has been imposed upon indigenous
people in North America in the US. As much as people want to say they
are here at the camps in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux
reservation, that becomes very blurry. On the ground over the months
that these camps have existed, it has become blurry over and over again,
including for myself. There was a time back in early December when the
Army Corps denied the easement, that Dave Archambault, the tribal
chairman of Standing Rock, came to the camp to announce this and then
drove around camp in his pickup truck telling everyone it was time to go
home. The tribal government has repeatedly insisted that people need to
go home, that this battle is in the courtrooms now, and that the need
for the camps is over. That’s not how people at the camps feel, and
while they wish to be in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux reservation
and the people of Standing Rock, it becomes about being in solidarity
with the people and the land and the water, as opposed to being in
solidarity with the tribal government.
The history of tribal governments across the US is that they often are
in collusion with the federal government and their wishes, or with the
wishes of capital. Over and over again on many reservations, you see
tribal governments sell out their own people and act against the
interests or wishes of people on the rez. This is not an unusual turn of
events when it comes to struggles for indigenous sovereignty over their
lands and waters, but it is heartbreaking for people to watch. There’s
also been moments where individual people’s desires for how struggle is
enacted on a frontline come to a head, where some people have one view
of a tactic that might be useful and others have a different view. Many
people are familiar with the assertion that this is a prayerful
movement, and I think for a lot of people who don’t come from indigenous
spiritual practice, it can be hard to understand what people here at the
camps mean when they say that this is a prayerful movement. For
indigenous people, the way it has been explained for me–I’m not
native–but the way that I’ve heard many people talk about it, who are
native, is that prayer for them is not something that you do at church.
A lot of Christians view prayer as something that you do, and then you
brush your teeth and move on with your day. For indigenous people,
prayer is something that you enact. To set up a prayer camp in
resistance to a pipeline, your prayers are your resistance. And it’s
your words and your ceremony as much as it’s your actions on the
frontline. I think that’s important for people to take into
consideration in this situation. There are differences between
indigenous practices and the practices of tribal government or
individuals’ choices on a frontline and the choices of an NGO that has
grants to uphold and that they hope will be renewed in the future.
CWC: While you’ve been up there, have you seen any shifts in
participants’ views on tactics as a result of their time being at the
camps?
WPARC: I definitely have seen how not just individuals’ views about
tactics have shifted and changed over their time in camp, but I’ve also
seen how organizations’ tactics have changed with their time in camp. An
organization called IP3, Indigenous People’s Power Project, came to the
camps back in September or October. They’re a non-profit indigenous
organization that provides all types of training. They do a lot of
direct action trainings and know your rights trainings across the US in
a lot of different territories. Initially when they came to camp, there
was a very strong dynamic within the camp of elder leadership and that
being very central in indigenous struggles traditionally. But, the way
that played out in the camp became very confusing for many people. An
action would be occurring, people would be on a frontline, there would
be tear gas flying and all of a sudden someone would run up and say,
“the elders say that everyone needs to go home, return to the camp!” But
it was very unclear who these elders were and where they were to tell us
this, and why they had sent this person who is clearly not an elder. Had
this person ever spoken to an elder?
It became really confusing on frontlines many times over, especially
October through November. This dynamic of the frontline, things are
heated, people are battling with the police, and then the elders have
called everybody back. What I watched with IP3 was a shift from
automatically telling their folks to come back any time that some random
person ran up and said the elders say go home, to then starting to train
their people in direct action trainings which they were running every
single day at camp for months. They were telling people that when you go
out to an action, whether it be an action near the pipeline or an action
in town in Mandan or Bismarck, the two big towns about an hour north of
where the camps are, that you go out with an objective and you stick to
the objective no matter what.
On Thanksgiving Day, or “Thanks-taking,” there was an action at a place
called Turtle Island which is a sacred spot for the people of Standing
Rock that’s just on the northeast side of the Oceti Camp. There’s a
creek called the Cantapeta Creek that is a water barrier between where
the camp is and where Turtle Island is. Law enforcement had taken over
Turtle Island. To the people of Standing Rock and to indigenous people
who were at the camp, it was very offensive to watch law enforcement
desecrating this sacred place. There had been many attempts previously
in the weeks prior, to retake Turtle Island [with] people building
bridges or running boats across. Then on Thanks-taking Day, IP3 helped
to organize an action where they successfully built a bridge and got
hundreds of people across onto Turtle Island for prayer and ceremony.
The same thing played out again where suddenly people come from nowhere
saying, “The elders have called everybody back, we need to go home. This
shouldn’t happen, it’s not sanctioned by the elders…” I watched people
from IP3 tell the people who had come for this action, “Stay here and
finish what you’re here to do. We’re here for prayer and for ceremony,
and we’ll complete our prayers and our ceremony before we go home. We go
home when our action is done.”
Even with some of these people we may consider more liberal entities, I
did see their shift and their change. One of the most dramatic shifts on
that front was when Red Warrior Camp established itself at Standing
Rock. Along with Red Warrior came a much more direct action approach.
Back in September, October early November, a lot of direct actions came
through Red Warrior. While some of the more liberal “movement manager”
types worked very hard through a gossip campaign to malign Red Warrior
within the camps at Standing Rock, it also helped to embolden people
from other camps to really step up the kind of actions they were willing
to take. Many people have a lot to say about Red Warrior: they’re wild,
they are not prayerful, they have no elder leadership. None of those
things are true. All of their actions were done with intention and
ceremony and prayer, but they really viewed their prayers as action. In
speaking with people from Red Warrior Camp, that was clear over and over
again. They had their own elders and they knew who their elders were.
They are very aware and in relationship with their elders, as
traditionally it should be. That kind of model shifted for a lot of
people coming through the camps as to what that could look like, what
traditional leadership from your elders can look like. But it also
really needs to be traditional. It needs to be people you are in
relationship with. That started to be modeled in other encampments and
groups of people within the larger camp framework.
When people talk about “the camps” at Standing Rock, there’s actually a
whole lot of camps. As much as there was Red Warrior Camp, there were
like 20 other crews of people that came with their tribe or their
community and set up their own camp within the camp and really had their
own structure within it and were making decisions within their own
smaller encampment. They had their own grandmothers and their own elders
they were getting leadership and wisdom from.
CWC: Finally, what are some of your most cherished memories from
Standing Rock and the No Dakota Access Pipeline resistance?
WPARC: I’m really glad that you asked this. Today and yesterday have
been pretty dark days for people up here, with the eviction of Oceti
Sakowin. The visions in our minds from the last two days are burning
structures that many of us have spent time building. Many of us spent
time in those structures, or for our comrades or loved ones or
relatives, those were their homes for many months. It’s a good time to
remember some of the really beautiful things that have occurred at camp.
When I first came to camp I was spending the majority of my time at Red
Warrior Camp and living there amongst friends and comrades, some old and
some new. There were a lot of times where it was just a mess of children
running around camp while grown-ups are scurrying around and doing the
work of the day, chopping wood and cooking food.
Some of my favorite memories are that, I’d watch people who are very
busy, elders and people who are planning stopping a multi-billion dollar
pipeline also take time out of their day to play with little ones who
are begging for their attention. There are a lot of really beautiful
moments at camp and one thing that I remember someone saying on that
note is from Savage Fam, who spent many months at Red Warrior. I
remember her saying one night at a concert, “We’re not supposed to live
this way. We’re supposed to be at home in our own territories building
up our own people. But we’re here and we’re fighting.” As much as we’re
not supposed to live this way, we’re not supposed to be living in
constant struggle and battle, there’s something really beautiful about
the camps. In some ways, maybe we are supposed to live this way. Not so
much living under the sniper scopes and floodlights of Dakota Access
Pipeline, but living in real community with one another, where there’s
plenty of work to do but no one is leaving their children at home to go
to a job. Their children are alongside of them while they’re doing the
work of their day.
Those moments at camp are things that a lot of people will carry with
them. I’ve also seen some incredibly powerful moments of ceremony and
prayer. Back in December, there was a Women’s March up to where Morton
County Sheriff had barricaded off Highway 1806 on the north end of camp.
That barricade still remains there, it has been there for many months.
When this Women’s March happened there was a group of elders,
grandmothers at the front and it was hundreds of women behind them,
totally silent. All you could hear from the back all the way to the
front of the barricade where these grandmothers were facing down snipers
and a militarized barricade, were their prayers and their ceremony. It
was one of the most beautiful and impactful things I’ve ever seen. I
come from a very different spiritual tradition and practice, but it’s
maybe the most impactful spiritual practice I’ve ever seen, in that
moment, those particular grandmothers on that frontline. I hope that as
much as it has been a dark time these last couple days with the eviction
happening and 45 people sitting in jail tonight, I hope people will hold
onto all those things they’ve experienced at camp and that they’ve
returned to their homes and their territories with, and will carry some
of those ways that we’ve kind of all discovered together. Maybe we are
meant to live a little bit like this.