Just a few days after my father and I booked our flight to Bismarck, North Dakota, a masked man drove into the Oceti Sakowin protest camp just outside of the Standing Rock Reservation. The only thing setting him apart from the dozens of other people arriving to protest the building of an interstate oil pipeline already deemed too dangerous for the white people of North Dakota, was the fact that he was carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. With his finger resting on the trigger, he began pointing the gun at the protesters standing just a few yards away. Eventually, he was arrested by Bureau of Indian Affairs Police. However, it was later revealed that this man was payed by the pipeline company itself and wound up not spending a single night in jail.
We were forced off of the main highway connecting the small town of Cannon Ball to Bismarck, the state capital, by a police roadblock and made to take a winding path of small dirt farm roads to get to the protest camp. On these small roads we began passing semis and construction vehicles as well as pick up trucks filled with pipeline workers. It was one of these trucks that cut in front of us blocking the entire road and boxing us in, with the truck in front and the sheriff’s car behind. A man got out of the pickup truck ordering us to turn around because it was “not in [our] best interest” to continue on the road. He later told us “Go that way or I can have that law enforcement officer escort you.” We arrived at the camp an hour passed the time we were supposed to. I later learned that two journalists, one from NBC and the other from Canada’s CBC, were turned away and never able to get to the protest at all; both described experiences very similar to what happened to us.
No drugs, no alcohol, no guns, no DAPL. These were the rules everyone had to agree to upon entry of the protest camp. Of course, there were a few more rules once we got inside, all to ensure peaceful protest. One was that in order to approach the front line, one must have gone through the opening prayer ceremony and an hour long class in nonviolent protest training. But, my father and I were not there to protest. We were at Standing Rock in response to their emergency call for help and supplies. We brought with us sleeping bags, food, water, and most importantly, camera equipment for the very small number of journalists, almost all of whom were part of alternative media outlets. We spoke with many of the journalists there and gave a few interviews as well. Then we attended an opening ceremony and spoke with many of the protesters. They told us stories of how they were arrested, strip searched, and made to sleep on the floors of dog kennels with numbers written on their arms because all the jails in the county were full. After giving the protesters the supplies we had brought and giving the camera equipment to some of the journalists we left the campsite and flew back to New York.
It was only a few days after we got back when we got a call from one of the journalists we’d met with. In the background we heard screaming and cracks of gunfire. In between coughs, he told us that the police had destroyed all of his cameras, they had shot down his drone, and all of the cameramen working with him had been taken away by medics after showing signs of hypothermia. He sent us a link to a Facebook livestream showing what was happening. It is very difficult to describe the feeling of watching the people you talked with, ate with and prayed with screaming in pain after getting shot with rubber bullets, throwing up from exposure to tear gas, trembling from being shot with freezing water and desperately trying to avoid the loud explosions from concussion grenades, wrapped with tape to create bigger explosions. Worst of all, there is nobody to call for help. It is terrifying, knowing that 911 will not be there to help you. It is even worse that it is the very people who take an oath to protect that are injuring hundreds. A woman lost her arm that night because of a police grenade. Another woman lost her vision from a rubber bullet. It is estimated that around 400 people had varying degrees of hypothermia. All to protect what? I turned on the news to really find out what was happening. The breaking news was that Kanye West just announced he would have voted for Donald Trump.
