Journal: Bearing Witness in North Dakota

This gatekeeper had given me much anxiety while thinking about how to cross their path. What I found was five young boys. They did not ask me where I was going. They merely stated that about 20 to 25 miles down the road I would find some protesters and if I made it that far to kindly slow down in that area. I got the sense that they really did not personally care one way or the other about the pipeline. They were just young men earning a paycheck–one of them was even eating a cookie to add to the mental image of adolescence.

Further down toward the Sacred Stone camp, I came across a new camp that was forming. They were calling themselves the Sacred Ground camp. I stopped and asked them some questions. They were kind and asked me to join them. I told them that I had volunteered to help out at the school and had better head on to the main camp.

The main camp is definitely the historic image in the making that is often described. Once there, I was questioned by a young Indian man holding a bucket of burning sage. He asked if I was there to camp or if I was the media. I told him that I would be writing memoirs for a small, independent online paper in Bradenton. Later that day, I learned that the camp was not too welcoming of the media out of the fear the they were working to promote the pipeline.

I dropped off my food donations at an impressive makeshift outdoor kitchen area. Several young gentleman and women of all different races were working hard to cook lunch. They were cooking on firewood over open metal grills.

The camp was so massive that I drove around around a few times until I saw a tent I recognized from the photos. I asked a young child if that was the school. He said no, and explained that that was where they sing. I decided this was a good place to set up. Luckily a young Lakota woman named Heather helped me set up my tent while Orion, my one year old, was napping. She told me that she was a part of security and a medic in case I need anything.

Shortly after my tent was ready, a girl who had fallen off of a runaway horse was drug until she smacked into the tire of my car. Heather quickly got to work helping the girl who was able to talk and move but not get up. I did not want my baby to realize what was going on so we had to leave the area. She was taken out by an ambulance, which it turns out is always on duty in a tent set up at the camp. During the weekend a woman was offering acupuncture services out of the tent for free.


On our first night in the camp, my son and I were warm, so we slept well. The ground is hard here, like sleeping on a stone. We woke up too late for going to the school and to help with breakfast so we slowly made our way to the camp breakfast. When we got there they were out of coffee. They had to heat large pots filled with coffee on a burner. I have no idea how they filtered out the grounds. A new tribe from the Great Lakes came that morning offering water and gave everyone in the morning circle small bits of tobacco wrapped in fabric with those chalky tasting Valentine's Day hearts. They even gave Orion, my one year old, a parcel.

When we finally made our way to the school they were running just as late as we were. The teacher, Teresa, apologized for running late for lunch. I had volunteered to help the kids out during meals. I watched a man teaching kids Lakota hand games. It involve two sticks and a complicated round of guessing that he'd somehow taught the children how to have a more accurate estimate.

I was impressed during the lunch how well the children listened. One six-year-old girl who had been shy to stay with the rest of the class away from her mother sat next to me after my request. It didn't take long until she was trying to pick up Orion. Most of the children threw away their own trash, but two children, a boy and a girl, were selected to come back and help clean.

The little boy didn't help much. Instead he decided to tell me about the Red Road and the Black Road. The Red Road is the path of being a good citizen, and the Black Road is the path of going to jail. I asked him which road was he picking while he let the little girl do all the work. He informed me that he was too young to pick a road and that his mother carried that responsibility for him.

Later that day, I made my way to the casino so I could use the only Wi-Fi in a 15-mile radius. It was good to take the car ride as it was the only way I could get my son to nap. Despite reaching the 40s at night, the sunny days were in the mid-80s, making napping in the tent unbearable. On my way back, I decided to go to the actual Sacred Stone Camp on the other side of the Cannonball River.

I parked my car and began walking. I saw a woman who went by the nickname of Perky, like my grandmother. Her husband, Brad, had a business making solar panels and alternative energy electronics. The couple brought several to donate. I continued walking until I ran across a man named Josh who said he was from Sacred Stone Camp. I asked him if we could go with him and he said "yes, it’s another 10-minute walk down the trail."

Josh informed me that everyday he made the long journey on foot to the 7 tribes camp looking for the Blackfoot tribe. His great grandmother was Blackfoot and he wanted to know more about his family history. This was true for many of us. I commented on how the more pure blood natives were in some ways more blessed in that they had a community of people that would immediately accept them as family and teach them ancient wisdom.

We had a large dip where the bodies of water intersected. I said I was glad I did not bring my car. He replied that no cars could get to Sacred Stone Camp anyway because they had blocked off the area with a car. He also told me that he was with security and I would not be allowed to take any photos inside that camp. This was the first of all of the camps and was far more organized.

They looked like the 7 tribes camp except much smaller. They had a donation tent, a medic tent and a kitchen. I was allowed to take one photo of Orion by their sign after asking security. On our way out, I sat in on a prayer ceremony of song. They were singing to a small boulder and Orion hugged the stone resting his head on top. This made the group happy to have us after initially being apprehensive.



I was attracted to this area that was secluded and far off. When I got there I found a man meditating and crying. I introduced myself to him and he invited me to come back for a moonlight ceremony. Since the days were so warm and the nights were so cold, I began to walk back for the car to change my baby and myself and also hopefully find a flashlight as the nights were so dark. I plugged my phone in at Brad and Perky's station. On my way back to the car I met Curly, who was in charge of security at the Rosebud camp. He invited me to dinner and to pray with them.

We ended up staying at the Rosebud Camp for dinner. From there, through binoculars, we could see that the mining equipment was moving back toward the encampments. The main cook was a woman named Mama Kat. She told me she got the name by camping out in Hollywood to find her daughter who had been kidnapped by the Armenian Mafia. After dinner, everyone in good health without children went into the sweat lodge. Curly said they would do the sweat lodge every day until the threat to the water was gone. I just left and got my cell phone back from the charging station.

While I was there, Brad told me that they had been to the casino that day. There they got to sit in on a meeting between the tribal elders and the Army Corps of Engineers. He told me it was meant to be an open meeting but the Army Corps shut out half of the people who wanted to attend. They then basically told the tribes that they were going to do whatever they wanted.

A storm is brewing and there are endless people here that want more than just clean water. They want jobs, they want prosperity and they want their voices to be heard in the larger political world. To the indigenous people, this movement is about more than the Missouri River; this is about not being taken advantage of anymore. This is about standing together as many nations for what’s right.

Day 3

On our second night, we got to witness a rare aurora borealis. I didn't realize what it was until someone was talking about it the next day. It made the sky a beautiful blue green. It rained long into the night and I was grateful that our tent did not have a hole in it. The rain made things colder and Orion kicked off his pants somehow in the middle of the night. It took a while for me to realize and put them back on.

In the morning, Orion had developed a slight cough. I went to the paramedics, but they didn't have anything to offer him except a ride to the hospital if things got worse. I got some emergenC for myself. It was a short walk from the paramedics to the kitchen. At the kitchen, we got some oatmeal, nuts and breakfast cereal for Orion to munch on.

Day 4

On the third night, Orion’s cough had escalated to an alarming level. He also was having problems staying under the covers. That next morning, Cuny Dog, the Lakota man in charge of security for the camp told me to go to the medic. I told him my experience with the EMS workers. He pointed me in a different direction well into the other side of the camp.

It took awhile but I eventually found my way to where a couple herbalists had an impressive setup. They crushed up a homeopathic pill for me to give my son. Then my son began to have a bout of crying from teething. The male herbalist, Rick, then mixed up a salve that helped to calm him. I laid in the wellness tent nursing for some time.

While my baby had calmed down, I decided that it would best for everyone if I rented a room in the casino so I could keep Orion out of the cold and campfire for the night and the teething baby would keep anyone up. I walked to charge my phone on the solar panel, told the school I wouldn’t be there and to eat some breakfast.

After getting my breakfast, an elderly man sitting in the area for VIPs called me over. I was nursing and trying to hide it as we had frequently been told that this was offensive to the elders. He told me that his name was American Horse. He was not bothered by my nursing in the least bit and was impressed that I had brought my child to stand up for water rights. He said that he was here to make our camp as functional as the original Sacred Stone Camp.

I asked him what we needed to do to get 'ready for battle' like the other camp. He stated that there was too much alcohol and drug use on this side of camp. I had not seen anyone on alcohol or drugs, but admitted that I am generally that last to know those kinds of things. Rick had told me earlier in the wellness tent that it seemed like people were coming to the 7 tribes camp to sober up. All of the camps had strict no drugs, alcohol or weapons rules.

I went back to my camp to tell them I had to go get a heated room for the baby that evening and would be back for my tent. I only found Terry, an Ojibwa Indian I befriended, that I would have to go and asked her to relay the message to everyone else that I would be back at the latest on Friday to pack up the tent. I grabbed only our necessary items, as I was concerned about my baby’s perpetual cough. This day was colder and cloudier than the others.

The hotel told me that they would need until 4 pm to clean up the room. That was almost five hours. I ran into Heather, my Lakota medic friend, she offered to return back to the camp with me and help me pack up my tent. Orion was having a teething fit, and we ended up going to the back of the car where he fell asleep for a short period of time. When I finally got a chance to come back for Heather, I couldn’t find her. So never really seeing a reservation before I decided to drive around and see how the Standing Rock Sioux lived.

I found mostly rundown houses on large plots of farmland. There were many signs advertising taking a sober lifestyle. There were no stores. There was a high school I came across. Many of the roads I drove on were unpaved and I could only pray a rock didn’t get lodged into the oil pan of the Toyota Corolla I was driving. I decided to go to the nearby gas station for juice for Orion. My options were between overpriced Tropicana and Minute Maid. They told me the nearest store was 20 minutes away, which wasn’t appealing as it was almost time to check into our hotel room.

Day 5

While I had hoped that I would be able to stay that next day in the camp, Orion’s cough still persisted throughout the night although the homeopathic medicine calmed it down from keeping him up all night. I decided to rent the room for an additional night as I also felt exhausted unwilling to pack up and begin on the journey home. I still had to make my way to the Spirit camp and the Sacred Grounds camp. We were also running low on the medicine they had given us at the wellness tent.

Orion and I packed up around lunchtime to see the Sacred Ground Spirit Camp, which I found out after taking several winding roads that it was just the actual drive up entrance to the original Sacred Stone Camp. I ran into a girl named Des who was also looking for medicine for the same affliction that Orion had. She told me that sometimes at night she was afraid that she couldn’t breathe because of the mucus in her lungs. We went looking for the medic or wellness tents. We ended up at an unmanned medic tent that had little medicine.

I told her that I would drive her over the herbalists at the other camp after we ate lunch. We went over to the kitchen. I helped wash a sink load of dishes. I was impressed because on the 7 tribes camp the kitchen used disposable plates and cups. This was extremely wasteful and not earth friendly. The Sacred Stone camp functioned using reusable dishes and people were constantly washing and cooking. Their numbers were smaller making this easier. In each camp people were composting left over food.

They were excited to see Orion as that side of the camp didn’t have many babies and tried to give us baby food. Orion prefers fresh fruit and vegetables to most processed baby foods so I had to turn down many of their offerings. I ate a bowl of lentil soup while taking to a Cheyenne man named Seven Thunders and a hippie named Justin about crystals and Fukushima radiation. Justin was quite convinced that zoisite could counteract the effects of the radiation.

After lunch, a woman saw that Orion and I weren’t properly dressed for how cold the day was. I expected the day to warm up like all of the others. She took us to the donate tent to grab a coat and then took us to the wellness tent. Apparently this camp also had a separate medic tent from their herbal tent. I assumed that Des had also found the tent because she had disappeared from my sight during lunch.

Herbalists from The Human Path, who appeared to be more knowledgeable in the different cures and ailments, staffed this wellness tent. The students were from the Austin and San Antonio areas of Texas. Their school often deployed them for emergency situations. They gave me a tincture with mostly osha root and an eyedropper for my son. I began to complain about how eating gluten was flaring up my eczema. I couldn’t be picky about my meals at camp and had eaten a lot of wheat. The student doing her clinical gave me a liver tincture. I had never had any doctor eastern or western give me a real cure for my eczema; either they told me to quit eating gluten or take a steroid cream.


Sacred Grounds was by far the most welcoming of all the camps. They were also the smallest. I immediately met a girl named Emily, who was lying down in the back of her SUV. I asked her about taking photos. She said that it was fine to take photos of the camp but not to take any photos of the burial ground across the road. She explained that they were worried if you took photos of where the pipeline workers dug up the ancestors that they may follow you home and haunt you. This was the first time anyone had given a reason not to take a photograph.

One young man in the group was working hard to build an earthship for the winter. An earthship is basically an igloo made from tires and dirt. Their camp was small–maybe a couple dozen people. I asked them what was exciting in their camp. They told me it was when new comers like myself visited them. I was surprised to hear this because I had heard they were the most likely to be arrested, as they were setup by the side of the road in the county. They told me the National Guard and state troopers were both kind to them and that the county police just glared from a distance.

I overheard two of the gentlemen discussing how they wished the media would portray the camps as what they were–peaceful and not try to overplay any aspect of conflict with the pipeline or the police. I told them that I was writing a story that would do just that. They thanked me for what I was doing–the only group to thank me for spreading the word about Sacred Stone Camp and the Standing Rock Sioux. The group was making a delicious feast of roasted vegetables and chicken, but unfortunately Orion had enough about 20 minutes before it was ready.