I visited Standing Rock from November 12th to the 14th. My mission was to photograph the actions in order to help document this amazing, impactful, peaceful uprising.
It’s a well-known fact that the media aren’t giving this the time it deserves, and I wanted to photograph everything I could in order to organize a traveling photo exhibit so that people around the country could see what is truly going on, unfiltered by whatever does appear in the news.
After arriving, I realized that my original intent in going, the actions/protests, was not the story to be told. Survival of the water protectors is the story to be told.
Note: this is the second of a multipart account of a visit to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Each week a new part will be published by the author.
Oceti Sakowin Camp is the largest water protector encampment at Standing Rock Reservation. At this time, it’s basically a tent city where all the needs of the residents are looked after. Food, sanitation, health and mental health services are provided. A midwifery tent takes care feminine health. Everything is 100% free to residents.
Life at camp is defined by work. Part of this are the actions.
People wake up early, before sunrise, for prayer ceremonies. After that, those who will participate in actions are organized and given direction as to where to go. Most actions are not in the proximity of the camps.*
* This article originally stated that there were no actions at main camp. On the day the article was being written, a confrontation took place. It was serious, and many people were injured. Most notably a woman whose arm may have to be amputated, and an elder who had a cardiac arrest during the confrontation. To read more about this, please click here.
A person involved with the actions told me that they would go to different locations. Most of the actions involved obstructing the pipeline construction.
Every day that the pipeline construction is stopped, it costs around $2million to the builders. Therefore, these actions are making it very costly to build there, which also incentivizes the builders to build elsewhere, away from the water.
Other actions taking place are protests not at the pipeline construction. A day after my arrival, I heard of events in Bismarck. One of these was during a Veterans’ Day parade.
On the news, I saw a protest at the building housing the Army Corps of Engineers. Regardless, these actions are all peaceful and they stay on message.
Although the actions take most of the news coverage, they are not the only thing that camp residents do. There is a lot of work done at the camp by a large number of people who do not participate in the actions.
Food, for instance, is a major endeavor.
A very large kitchen sits in the middle of the camp, relatively close to the main entrance. The camp has expanded, so now some residents live farther away from the kitchen, but it’s still a relatively short walk.
The kitchen is equipped with a massive, covered grill. It is three times larger than any professional grill I’ve ever seen. Everything is cooked on it.
California State Assemblymember-Elect Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) told me that when he visited the camp with a small delegation from the South Bay, he saw a whole squash being grilled. Another resident told me that she brought elk when she arrived at the camp. This too was cooked on the grill.
The pantry is extensive, and it includes everything from buckets of flour, to pallets with fruits and vegetables, to other goods. A large truck provides water to camp residents.
Chopping wood for the grill is a very important task that never ends. The wood is chopped daily and constantly. The need for firewood in the cold nights is such that the wood for the grill needs to be protected. Not that people are “stealing” the wood, but since everything is provided many assume that the wood is there for the taking. Therefore, a large sign indicating that the wood was only for the kitchen was necessary.
Wood has become quite relevant in the camp. There is wood everywhere. First, of course, is the wood used for cooking and heating.
But structures are being built in preparation of winter.
The sound of power tools can be heard from almost everywhere. I got “showered” by wood dust more than once. Now, the police are cracking down on that, with what I believe is a stratagem to prevent the water protectors from resisting throughout the brutal North Dakota winter.
The police are a constant presence at the camp. They aren’t in the camp proper, but everywhere around it.
The camp is located on the south side of the Backwater Bridge that crosses a segment of the Missouri River. For a visual of the bridge, click here. This is about one hour south of Bismarck.
Police enforcement is located at the north end of the bridge. There is also a police presence on the camp side of the bridge, but it’s a command unit with few officers. The satellite antennas protruding off the command trucks are imposing, though. The command unit, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is located between the camp and the casino, at the intersection of Highway 24.
I never realized it was the Bureau of Indian Affairs until I stopped to take the picture. The “Police” painted on it was very large. The lettering of the BIA was very small in comparison. I wonder why the BIA was there siding with the police. Shouldn’t they be at the very least neutral mediators? It shocked me to see that the BIA was on the wrong side of the equation.
The satellite image does not show the massive police presence, but it’s a constant, menacing presence there now. Anywhere from 20 to 50 police cars can be seen on their side of the bridge. Google Earth only shows very old photos, so this is not a conspiracy to hide anything from the public. I’m providing the bridge location so that my narrative makes more sense to you, the reader.
All the camps are considered to be sanctuaries for the water protectors. The police cannot come in, and as long as one is in the camp, one is technically safe.
Yet, the ever-present visual of the cops, plus flyovers by unmarked aircraft, make it impossible to forget that the camps are technically under siege.
At least twice a day a helicopter or a propeller plane, sometimes both, fly at extremely low altitudes over the camps, especially the main one. Both types of aircraft are painted yellow and white, and have no kind of identification numbers whatsoever. On normal planes, there are numbers painted on the underside of the wings, which work as license plates of sort. The same is true of normal helicopters.
As a result of these aircraft having no identifiable markings, there is no way by which anyone outside of law enforcement can 100 percent positively identify them or who they belong to or represent. Imagine if police cars didn’t have ID numbers or cops didn’t have their badges on them. This law enforcement anonymity is representative of the constant pressure that camp residents live under.
Just to illustrate how bad it can get, on my first day I focused my photography outside of the camp. I walked up the road, ND 1806, northwards.
I had no idea what I would find there.
I saw beautiful vistas of the camp, especially Turtle Island, which I began to photograph. I got off the road, sat on the dry grass that rustled below the equipment I placed on the ground and me after I sat. I photographed Turtle Island from any angle I could.
Then, I went back to the freeway and continued to travel north on the bridge.
I eventually found the leftovers from previous confrontations.
There was a burnt car, and up ahead were two incredibly large trucks that had also been set on fire. They were so burnt and twisted that at first I was unable to recognize what kind of trucks they were. On the other hand, it was painfully obvious that those trucks now formed a blockade between the factions. I walked towards the trucks, trying to figure out how to best photograph them.
I reached an orange line on the ground that was spray painted. It was very clear to me what it meant: do not cross this line. Nothing else indicated that, no signs and no warnings, but my instinct guided me. Later I knew I was right to not even step on it. Some people told me that that line was indeed a boundary.
I photographed the best I could. I was trying to get a shot of the bridge, the burnt trucks, and the line of police cars behind the trucks. It wasn’t easy, so I did the best I could and walked away. The molten pavement and the graffiti on it caught my attention, so I photographed those too.
When I was done taking pictures, I noticed a wall of people on the road behind me. I became excited that maybe an action was going to take place right there and then, so I rushed back to them. I asked what was going on, if there an action was going to take place, but most people didn’t know why they were there.
I saw a man looking at me, smiling, and trying to get to me. I smiled back, and once he reached me he asked me about the cops. “What cops?”
Turns out that I was flanked by law enforcement on both sides of the bridge while I was taking photos. Two on one side, and three on the other; or so I was told.
I was so focused on what I was doing, so lost in my art, that I lost any sense of my surroundings. I entered the creative vacuum where the only thing that matters is the subject, and nothing else. And if it does, it’s nothing more than a distraction to be ignored, even if it is the cops. Only inspiration exists.
The man explained to me that this was the reason everyone had congregated on the road, and on a small hill on the side of the road. There must have been about 100 people all together who came to possibly rescue me from the police. Granted, most people I talked to just saw a crowd forming and decided to check what was going on.
The camp is considered a safe place. The road between the camp and the bridge is considered a safe place. Yet the police presence is omnipresent and hard to forget. And if you happen to get lost in the daily activities of the camp, a plane or a helicopter will remind you.
Be it building shelters, erecting teepees, chopping wood, cooking, providing care to others -be it medical or legal- people in the camp are busy. Being busy is an excellent distraction from the tension of their situation. Resistance of this nature isn’t easy.
No one is there for a nice vacation with the kids -and if they are, they should leave.
This is a dangerous situation for all involved. All it could take is a careless photographer for the tensions to explode and a confrontation to begin. Yes, one feels safe on one’s side of the bridge, but that is an illusion. We all need this illusion in order to survive. If the illusion were to be shattered by the reality of a raid or something like that, we will find ourselves in an apocalyptic world of the horrors of injustice that all seek to avoid. Therefore, the illusion of safety is essential to survival in this crazy dystopic reality.
