When visitors turn off a narrow North Dakota highway and drive into the Sacred Stone Camp, where thousands have come to protest an oil pipeline, they thread through an arcade of flags whipping in the wind.
Each represents one of the 280 Native American tribes that have flocked here in what activists are calling the largest, most diverse tribal action in at least a century, perhaps since Little Bighorn.
They have come from across the Plains and the Mountain West, from places like California, Florida, Peru and New Zealand. They are Oglala Lakota, Navajo, Seneca, Onondaga and Anishinaabe. Their names include Keeyana Yellowman, Peter Owl Boy, Santana Running Bear and Darrell Holy Eagle.
Photo: Reuters
On Friday, the US government announced that it was temporarily blocking construction of the pipeline at an important river crossing just up the road from the camp.
“We say mni wiconi: Water is life,” said David Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation sits just south of the pipeline’s route. “We can’t put it at risk, not for just us, but everybody downstream.”
Here are stories about a few of the people who have come to the remote rolling corner of North Dakota.
JOHN THOMAS ARNEL
“The veterans that are here, we fought for this country,” said John Thomas Arnel, Northern Arapaho of Wyoming. “We fought for this land to preserve it for our future generations to enjoy it. We helped defend with non-tribal members and other people that have different points of view from all around the world. We were all united as military, but once you get out and come back to the civilian sector, you’re automatically put into a demographic scale.”
“But,” he added, “we’re all Americans.”
CEANNA HORNED EAGLE
“Many of our ways — our culture, our way of life, our spirituality, our language — we have slowly lost it,” said Horned Eagle, who is from Nakota and Kickapoo tribes of Kansas.
“But I have seen a change. We’re trying to relearn it or to gain it back. And this coming together gives me hope that my kids won’t have to fight as hard as my parents did, as I have,” she said.
JOSEPH MARSHALL
“I’ve been telling her since she was a little person that she’s the storyteller,” Joseph Marshall said of Kinehsche, his nine-year-old daughter.
They are from the Hoopa Valley tribe of Northern California.
“When we’re all gone, she’s going to be the one telling the story. So it was really important that as soon as I found out I was going, I was like, ‘Kinehsche, you’re going with me.’”
APESANAHKWAT
Apesanahkwat, from Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, spent 30 years as the tribal chairman of the Menominee.
“It wasn’t something I chose when I came home from Vietnam,” he said. However, it led him into a career in Washington, which is near where he now lives. When he heard of the events in North Dakota, he felt compelled to drive to the Sacred Stone Camp.
“All of these things that are happening are beautiful,” he said.
THAYLIAH HENRY-SUPPAH
Henry-Suppah, from Paiute of Oregon, wore a traditional wing dress with ribbons, beaded necklaces, shells, otter furs and basket earrings for a ceremony.
“No human being can live without water,” she said.
Henry-Suppah said she kept the Native American proverb in mind while in North Dakota: “Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children.”
HOWARD EAGLE SHIELD
“This is my home, and my granddaughters are going to be here long after I’m gone,” said Eagle Shield, from North Dakota’s Sioux tribe.
He grew up in North Dakota, on the Standing Rock Reservation.
“There was trees all the way through here, all the way down to the Nebraska border,” he said of his youth. “There were trees big enough that it would take five or six guys to hold their hands around to circle those trees. And they’re all flooded out; they’re gone after they put this dam up.”
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