Soon the protectors began to chant, quietly at first and then louder and louder, “Native land, Native water. Native land, Native water. Native land, Native water.” Over and over again the words rolled across the prairie. Soon the sound was almost deafening. When it was obvious that the protectors weren’t about to move, the foreman signaled his drivers to turn around.
The chanting, however, continued until every last bulldozer, tractor, dump truck, and front-end loader was parked back where it was when the day began.
Then the Native man who began the chant raised his hand and signaled for the chant to end. The rolling hills immediately fell silent. The only sound to be heard was a gentle wind blowing across the prairie grass.
Then, triumphant yells of victory erupted from the army of protectors as they celebrated their successful attempt to stop the machinery. Rhonda jumped back into Grandma’s truck.
“Can you take me to the generator truck?” she asked. “I need to post this as soon as possible.”
“Hoka hey!” Grandma yelled as she turned the truck around. “You go, girl.”
After the video was posted on multiple social media channels, Rhonda and Grandma walked to the camp’s central ceremonial circle. Camp leaders had called for a meeting to discuss the morning’s events.
Grandma sat on one of the tree stumps that had been placed in a circle around the fire pit. Rhonda stood behind her. The Native man who’d led the chant earlier stepped into the center of the circle.
“For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Vernon White Bull, and I work with the Native Environmental Network,” he said as he slowly rotated in a circle so everyone could hear him.
The circle of people erupted in applause, war cries, and ululations, as they were excited that this man and his family were with them.
“Of course, this morning’s victory feels good,” he continued. “You all did good, but I want you to prepare yourself for what’s bound to come next.”
The crowd quieted.
“I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and I don’t want you to have any naive expectations about where this is going,” he said. “The oil company will retaliate with an armed response.”
The crowd grew even quieter.
“Maybe not tomorrow or the next day,” he admonished, “but soon.”
The mood in the camp was somber the rest of the day. Of course, all the campers, including Rhonda, carried out their duties as usual. But the seriousness and potential dangers of their actions seemed to sink in more than ever before.
Meanwhile, out in the cyber world, something spectacular was happening. Rhonda’s video began to go viral. Native, environmental, and social justice organizations shared the startling images throughout their networks, and then the individual members of those groups did the same. Along the way, someone added the caption, “Showdown at Standing Stone” to the front of the video.
By nightfall, the video had found its way to local, regional, and national news outlets, appearing on television, cell phone, and tablet screens all over the country.
CHAPTER
10
Breaking News
Over the next few days, nervous water protectors showed up at the front line each morning with signs, banners, and protest chants ready to take on whatever response might be coming. To the west, pipeline workers also showed up each morning, expecting to start their equipment and move the pipeline further eastward. But nothing happened. Well, not exactly nothing.
More caravans of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs streamed into the camping areas. With them also came bloggers, vloggers, reporters, and photographers. In turn, a steady flow of news reports, interviews with protest organizers, and images of the growing camp began streaming out to the rest of the nation and the world.
Rhonda was busier than ever with Billy and the ground crew, directing newcomers to designated camping spaces, helping set up their camps, and doing every logistical and maintenance job imaginable.
And not only had her video gone viral on the web, but also word of who shot the video went viral throughout the camp. Rhonda, unexpectedly, became sort of a folk hero to everyone involved with the protests. Her mode of remaining the invisible girl who blended in with the background vanished. Thrust into the camp spotlight, her levels of anxiety began to rise, and her need to retreat from view spiked. At a time when others might have welcomed the attention, she shrank from it.
By lunchtime on the fifth day of her unwelcome fame, Rhonda had to hide. When folks began asking Grandma where Rhonda had gone, the elder returned to the RV. There, cowering under a Pendleton blanket, was Rhonda.
“Don’t like the attention, huh?” Grandma said as she sat on the edge of Rhonda’s fold-out bed.
Rhonda merely shook her head.
“I bet you’re feeling nervous and agitated,” the elder said.
Rhonda nodded.
“After your suicide attempt, I bet you got a prescription for anxiety medication, didn’t you?”
Rhonda sat up, realizing something.
“I ran out of the pills a few days ago,” she said. “But I’ve been so busy here, I forgot to do anything about it.”
“Let me take you to the tribal clinic on the rez so you can get a refill,” Grandma offered. “You’ve made amazing progress in your recovery, and I’d hate for you to suffer a setback now.”
“How do you know so much about me?” Rhonda asked as she slipped out from under the blanket. “I feel like you can read my mind or something.”
“Haven’t you heard?” she replied with a smile. “I’m a wise Indian elder!”
The gleam in the elder’s eyes let Rhonda know Grandma was kidding, but the teen knew it was really true.
“In my long years of life, Creator has gifted me with insights, and living on the rez has shown me plenty of pain,” the elder continued. “I know it when I see it in our people’s eyes.”
Grandma drove Rhonda to the nearest tribal clinic about thirty miles away. While the girl talked to a doctor and got a new supply of medication, the elder spoke to the clinic’s director about the need for emergency medical personnel out at the camp.
“Tribal Chairman Smoke said we should be on call and ready to go in case people suffer injuries during the protests,” the director, a pale man wearing black-rimmed glasses, said. “We told him we could be out there within two or three hours.”
“That’s not good enough,” the elder replied. “You need to have a couple of ambulances and medics on-site, because there will be injuries in need of immediate treatment within the next two days!”
“I’ll have to clear that with my boss at the Indian Health Service,” the director said nervously.
“Well, you do that,” she replied politely. “But I’m chairwoman of the Standing Stone Elders Committee, and we’ll be calling for your resignation if you don’t have those vehicles and techs stationed at the camp by tomorrow morning!”
Grandma left the man speechless in his office as she met up with Rhonda who, with medication in hand, was ready to head back to camp.
When the elder and the teen awoke the following morning, two ambulances and four medical technicians had set up a medical tent not far from the HQ tent. Mission accomplished, Grandma thought.
It was a good thing, too, because the very next morning, uniformed men and women wearing protective vests and carrying nightsticks greeted the protectors when they arrived at the front line. Were these law enforcement officers from nearby agencies? None of the Water Protectors could tell for sure, but patches on uniforms contained only the word “ProForce.” An added threatening element accompanying the humans was a contingent of twelve trained dogs. With teeth bared, the animals strained against leashes held by a dozen of the uniformed people.
Grandma and Rhonda positioned themselves nearby, as they’d done the last time there was a confrontation. What was different this time was that a dozen other people with various kinds of cameras had already taken up positions at strategic vantage points to
capture the action. Some were streaming live online. As they filmed, events began to unfold.
Led by Vernon White Bull again, the protectors lined up shoulder to shoulder facing the dogs and their keepers. At the signal from their leader, the protesters simultaneously raised their hands in the air as if they were under arrest. This showed they were unarmed and nonviolent.
At that point several of the guards pulled out cans of pepper spray. The guards with spray cans and the guards with dogs moved toward the protectors at the same time. Egged on by their keepers, the dogs strained harder against their leashes and barked ferociously at the protectors. Cameras continued to record and stream.
As the front row of protectors got pepper sprayed, they covered their faces and eyes. Unable to see, they were easy prey for the attack dogs that began clawing and biting them. Some protectors screamed and ran for their lives. Others fell to their knees in place and cowered in the fetal position with their knees tucked under their chins.
After the protectors began to scatter, the guards turned their attention toward the people on the fringes who were recording the event. Running alongside their dogs, these guards pursued anyone with a phone or camera. One pair charged toward Grandma’s truck, where Rhonda was again recording the action.
“Hold on to something!” Grandma yelled out the truck window. Rhonda squatted in the truck bed as the elder put the gear in reverse and sped backward down the gravel road. The guard and his dog turned toward another target. Hitting the brake pedal hard, Grandma put the truck into a spinning, sliding stop on the gravel surface. When the dust settled a little, Rhonda could see that they were now facing forward toward the camp.
“Get in!” the elder yelled to her passenger.
Rhonda jumped out of the truck bed and into the cab. Grandma put the pedal to the metal and steered for the medical tent. In no particular hurry, the medics were loading medical supplies into their ambulances.
“What’s the matter with you?” Grandma demanded. “Get your butts in gear and get out there. We got people blinded by pepper spray and bitten by vicious dogs!”
Hearing this, the medics sprang into action. Quickly loading the rest of their supplies, they flipped on their sirens and raced toward the wounded campers. The guards and their dogs withdrew when they heard the sirens. Arriving on the scene within minutes, the medics were able to quickly treat the injured while cameras clicked and video was recorded.
By that evening, images of the morning’s violent attack on defenseless protestors reached every corner of America. Everyone from government officials to legitimate law enforcement agencies denounced the events. Quick investigations revealed that the oil company had hired the ProForce private security company to deal with protestors. Politicians, mostly concerned with their public image, strenuously called for further investigations.
The oil company, concerned with their own public image, tried to make apologies for the “unfortunate circumstances in which they found themselves.” They decided to pause their construction efforts for the time being to see what their options were for future action.
However, the sheriff of the county where all this was taking place issued a media statement calling the protestors terrorists and blaming them for what he called an “unlawful riot.” He said the guards were attacked by protestors wielding posts and flagpoles and any such action in the future would result in arrests and jail time.
None of that mattered to the thousands of people outraged and motivated by images of the attack dogs and pepper spray. Day after day, protest supporters streamed into the overflowing camps. Many set up tents right in the pipeline’s designated path, on both sides of the river.
CHAPTER
11
Tasers, Batons, and Rubber Bullets
By midsummer, the little tent city grew to a medium-size tent city as the number of protest campers grew to around four thousand. And when Rhonda’s eighteenth birthday rolled around on July 15, thousands of people were ready to celebrate their local folk hero, including her uncle Floyd.
“I’ve been following you on Facebook,” he said when the teen answered her ringing phone. “Quite a mind-expanding experience you seem to be having over there. I guess you aren’t missing us back here at Blackfeet.”
“My best friend is dead, and my other friends are kind of lame,” she replied flatly. “My mother’s in prison, and my grandmother is a total witch. So, what’s to miss?”
Floyd didn’t answer.
“Oh, and of course there’s you, who I completely miss every single day!” she said. You could hear the smile in her voice, she was so happy to hear from him.
“Whew, I’m glad to hear that,” Floyd answered. “You had me worried there for a minute.”
“This is a mind-expanding experience, and I’m totally into it,” she said. “Things I learned from you I put to use all the time.”
“Well, happy birthday, Miss Eighteen-year-old,” he said. “I really mean that, because you deserve to be happy today and the rest of your life.”
Floyd wrapped up the call with a promise to keep following his niece online.
All that day, campers stopped by the RV to drop off various kinds of food they had cooked on their camp stoves or dug out of their ice chests—lopsided cupcakes, large and small cookies, cans of soda, strange-looking salads, hot dogs, sandwiches, vegan dishes—whatever they could manage.
As practical and giving as ever, Grandma suggested they invite the nearest campers to a little birthday party that evening so the teen could share all that food. Of course, nearby campers spread word of the party to campers a little farther away, and on and on it went.
At the appointed hour, Rhonda and Grandma stepped out of the RV to be greeted by the happy faces of hundreds of people spread out down the hillside from the Spirit Camp.
Rhonda had never seen anything like it. Her first impulse, of course, was to run and hide. But Grandma and the youth council convinced Rhonda that she deserved the praise and attention that was coming her way, so she reluctantly accepted it. The girl who wanted to remain invisible was now semi-famous.
By summer’s end, the medium-size tent city grew to a large tent city, boasting at least eight thousand residents. Campsites lined both sides of the river and also filled several hundred feet of the pipeline easement. This worried Grandma because she knew those people were trespassing on property controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency monitoring the pipeline project.
Meanwhile, the pipeline construction was being delayed. The oil company and the tribe legally fought each other in front of state and federal judges, as each side attempted to have the conflict settled in the courts once and for all.
Back at the camp, movie stars and politicians began arriving to show their support for the protest. The entertainment reporters and political journalists who followed these celebrities fed news stories and images of these appearances to the national media, keeping the protest in the national spotlight.
As summer gave way to autumn, Rhonda spent less of her time with the ground crew and more of her time in the main HQ tent, the Spirit Camp lodge, and the central lodges of the other camps. During Labor Day weekend, Pam left the camp to begin her life as a college student.
Before leaving, Pam had some encouraging words for the Blackfeet teen.
“You catch on to things so fast,” Pam said. “And your ability to size up a situation and quickly take action is amazing.”
“You and my uncle are good teachers,” Rhonda replied modestly. “No big deal.”
“It is a big deal, so I hope you’ll think about stepping into my shoes when I’m gone,” Pam said.
The thought hadn’t entered Rhonda’s mind, so she talked about it with Grandma later.
“Go for it,” the elder quickly said. “There’s nobody better suited for the job than you. And if you need guidance, I’m here for you.”
“Go for it,” Rhonda said more to herself than to Grandma. “If I think about it too long I’ll ta
lk myself out of it. So here I go.”
Immediately, she walked over to the HQ tent and boldly presented herself as Pam’s replacement. She was surprised to find that Pam had already given her a ringing endorsement. With no hesitation, the camp’s leadership committee gave Rhonda the job, along with a new walkie-talkie, a clipboard with camp duties that needed to be filled, and a pat on the back.
During this same time, camp populations grew even larger, drawn by the continual flow of media coverage. However, Grandma, who regularly surveyed the camp from the cab of her red Ranger, noticed a disturbing pattern emerging.
From Grandma’s point of view, it seemed that news broadcasts often focused on the conflict and drama of the protests. People angered by what they’d seen online and on TV arrived at the camp driven by that anger. And many of those same people ended up on the fringes of the original encampment, out of reach of the already overworked and understaffed camp volunteers. So they never heard the important message of keeping the protests peaceful, nonviolent, and well coordinated.
Being famous was the goal of some of these protesters, Grandma thought, as they pulled what could only be called publicity stunts. They made sure a camera recorded their actions as they chained themselves to bulldozers or front-end loaders. Others punctured the tires of oil company trucks or vandalized the construction equipment in some very visible way.
These actions drew multiple law enforcement agencies to the pipeline construction site. Local and state police, accompanied by National Guardsmen, arrived at the scene dressed in riot gear. Carrying assault rifles, these forces came to clear the pipeline’s path of protestors and their camps.
Rhonda and Grandma watched in horror as these forces, using an assortment of Tasers, rubber bullets, and clubs, created an impenetrable moving wall to evict people from the construction zone. Dozens of unarmed people were injured by the action. More than one hundred and thirty were arrested, their tents torn down, and their personal belongings thrown into dumpsters.
Standing Strong Page 6
