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- As we're driving down the road just now,
I said, oh my God,
we're coming to the place that changed my life.
For years, people have fought this struggle,
fought for our land and water.
And I was at a point where I felt like nobody cared.
And now
it was like somebody shook me awake again
and said, it's okay to stand up.
It's okay to want a better life.
In our Lakota way, Mní wihóni
means water is life.
And every living being and animal and plant on this Earth
needs water to flourish.
(soft music)
We move that part down and then start taping that other one.
There we go.
- Good? - That's good.
One, two, three, four, five.
Maybe he gave us too...
[Woman] You're awesome.
- I mean, this one's all in, so...
The idea to have this encampment,
in a lot of ways, it is protecting our way of life
because it is not only asserting our right to be here
and live here and having clean drinking water,
because when you rip away all the layers
of everything that's going on right here,
what it all comes down to is wanting clean drinking water
for our children.
(voices clamoring)
- So we just wanted to get a little bit of an idea
of how many people are gonna be staying like in your camp.
- We got four families, one family to each yurt.
Each family has about four to five kids.
- And you are gonna be here through the winter?
(both laughing)
- What we are doing here is also living our sovereignty
because this is treaty land that we were guaranteed
by the United States government in 1851.
It's Lakota treaty land.
So in a way, it's like coming home.
I just got here, so.
- We've been here since like eight.
So we have like three more to set up,
and then we're gonna be done. (dog barking)
Anyway, I just got here.
- Okay, well we were back here still all day.
Okay.
Is that Duke?
No, that's Gus.
Gus?
- I lived in the riverbed all my life.
I drank the water from the Missouri
and we had our own gardens, our own food,
and it was a beautiful life.
I lived there before the army Corps removed me
and I went back and I lived there today.
Wow, you're tall.
- Hello. - Hello.
Can I go in?
Please, right foot first.
[Phyllis] So neat.
Did you have to use nails or anything?
- [Man] No, there's no nails in the Mongolian yurt,
and nor is it anchored to the ground,
not to harm the ground.
So it's camel rawhide that attaches the walls there.
The ropes are made of horse hair.
Wow.
Because I will be in one of these.
[Man] That'll be an honor.
- The women's meeting will now come to order.
Oh cool, no backhoe.
- Did anybody show up down here from Denver or?
I used to say to my mom,
why did you have to name me Waste Win?
In English, it looks like waste wind,
and people make fun of it.
And they butcher it every day.
And she would say, that's your grandmother's name.
Her name was Waste Win Chatwi.
And that is to be a good, giving woman.
So don't ever be ashamed of your name.
We were saying that putting up a tepee
seemed so easy compared to a yurt.
(propellors whirring)
You don't think so?
The planes and helicopters
were just flying over like nonstop.
I think they thought we were doing something illegal,
but the yellow helicopter is the one hired by Dakota Access.
(wind rustling)
(soft music)
- When we first learned that the Dakota Access
was gonna come, we started the Sacred Stone Camp.
Start praying for this proposed pipeline
that is supposed to be going in.
(light music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(voices clamoring)
And I invite you to go down to the encampments
at Standing Rock to see the strength,
the beauty, the perseverance, the generosity.
(singing in foreign language)
Every day, we have 10, 12 other nations
coming in to stand in solidarity with us.
And we're showing the world who we are
in a nonviolent manner.
That's all we've ever wanted was to be respected,
left alone.
A nation isn't defeated until the hearts of the women
are on the ground.
We have grandmothers and mothers that are prepared
to be here on the land for the long run.
We're not going away.
(bright music) (rhythmic chanting)
And then we got the 48 hour notice,
Dakota Access was gonna start construction.
I'm asking each of you to come stand with us
at Sacred Stone Camp.
The battle has just begun.
(singing in foreign language)
The wind today is awesome.
And I bask in her glory, because she's a female
of the thunder beings, the clouds, rain,
the thunder, the lightning.
The day the Army Corps announced
that they were granting the right of way for access road.
There was the biggest storm in the morning,
and there was the biggest storm in the evening.
Justice will prevail for our people
If the laws are obeyed and followed.
We will hold onto our treaty territory at all costs.
- And we are peaceful, prayerful people,
but it's come to a point now where enough is enough.
(motors roaring)
Someone went through camp,
calling out that they were bulldozing over sacred sites.
Criminals.
You guys are criminals.
Go get your money somewhere else.
(protesters yelling)
- [Reporter] The bulldozers are still going.
And they're yelling at the men in hard hats.
One man in a hard hat threw one of the protesters down.
* We're not leaving *
Sir, reporter from New York.
What are you spraying people with?
- I didn't spray anything, ma'am.
(voices clamoring)
- [Reporter] People have through the fence.
Men, women, and children.
(dogs barking)
Are you telling the dogs to bite the protesters?
No, we didn't.
- [Reporter] The dog has blood on its nose and its mouth.
(all screaming)
- Even with all of this chaos going on around us,
this elder walking next to me as I was crying,
she said,
(sighing) walk in prayer.
That's when I knew that, you know,
what we were doing was a sacred thing.
This is personal to me.
My dad's buried up there.
I buried my cousin who died of cancer
two weeks ago up there.
And we can't let Dakota Access go through there.
- [Reporter] What happens if they do?
What are you going to do?
We'll pray.
in front of the bulldozes.
We'll pray.
And they will shoot us.
- [Reporter] Today that Dakota Access unleashed dogs
and pepper spray.
It was also the 153rd anniversary
of the Whitestone Massacre,
when the U.S. Army killed 300 members
of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation.
- [Ladonna] The massacre happened
on the east side of the river.
With the soldiers coming in,
the people cross the Missouri River.
And so the people on the Northern side of Standing Rock
come from this massacre.
For our people,
we've never been able to come back as a nation.
We are all living on different reservations
and we became the remnants of families.
- I have a number, SRU-10258.
Much like the Jewish people had a death number,
we have a prisoner of war number.
- A lot of people think that the Dakota Access pipeline
is just about Native people standing up
for their environment, but that's not true.
There are 18 million people that rely on the Missouri River
for their water who are downstream from us.
This isn't just a Native issue.
This is for everybody.
Perfect little tiny wild onion, little miniature guy there.
One of the whole reasons why I got started,
involved in this issue from the very beginning is,
as an ethnobotanist,
I have seen the absolute wealth
of incredible medicinal and edible plants
that are right there in the path of that pipeline.
And so I could see what was getting destroyed.
To a lot of people as they drive by,
they might just think, oh, it's just grass.
It's not just grassland.
There are sacred medicines there.
And there are literally thousands of them getting bulldozed
by Dakota Access every day.
- Make sure to fill your holes back in please.
- [Waste] The thing about the Dakota Access pipeline,
a lot of people think that it's business as usual,
that we have all of these hundreds of pipelines
buried all over the United States.
But actually this pipeline breaks world records.
It's 178 pieces.
And what they do is they put it together
and then they yank it all through underneath
for a mile and a half.
There's bound to be some structural integrity issues.
If you ask a lot of engineers, they'll admit to that.
Numerous leaks can occur.
But the problem is these tiny leaks,
not only are they perfectly legal, they're not detectable,
which will be taken up by our plants
and they'll pollute our water.
And we won't know it until our water intake gets clogged.
(somber music)
(singing in foreign language) (rhythmic drumming)
- You know, the original pipeline
was to go through North Dakota,
but it was going through white people's land.
So they redirected it, put it through the Indians.
- The proposed route was going to pass 13 miles
north of Bismarck.
But the North Dakota public utilities commission
denied that permit
because if there would have been a catastrophic failure,
its proximity to the water supplies would be affected.
Standing Rock is downstream,
sending the message that our people, our community,
are expendable.
And my kids, they already know,
Mom, it's poisoning the water.
Mom, what are we gonna have to drink?
What they're doing is bad.
- In this Missouri River, this is our lifeline.
Where are we gonna go?
This is it for us.
This is it.
And our ancestors stood strong
for us.
It's a gift that we have here.
And so I think that that's part of our resiliency
as Indigenous people is knowing that
we have a responsibility to acknowledge that gift.
It doesn't end or begin with human beings.
In fact, it's probably in spite of human beings
that we're still here.
So I think that has a lot to do with it.
(soft music)
(wind howling)
- [Woman] Many of our creation stories,
we emerge from the earth.
The earth is not just something that we put our house on,
that we pollute, that we take advantage of, that we rape.
The earth is our mother.
She has given us all the opportunity to live and to breathe.
And she has never asked anything in return.
Every time we deny the earth the right to be who she is,
we're denying women all around the world
the right to be who they are.
(dramatic music)
(voices clamoring)
On September 3rd,
the Democracy Now team came to North Dakota
to the resistance camps,
videotaped the dog with blood dripping
from his mouth and his nose,
biting protestors or protectors.
These images went viral.
14 million people almost immediately
saw these images around the world.
We will continue to cover what happens behind the bars.
More than 140 people have been arrested so far.
What I was most struck by was that the first people
to take on the bulldozers to say, go back,
stop desecrating our sacred sites, were women.
[All] Water is life.
- Women are central in this struggle.
(crowd chanting)
As far as I know,
Mitchum's the first baby born here.
She came about 4:45 in the morning.
I wouldn't have been able to be here
without the support of the women who came with me
and who came and joined me.
Because I had some of my own fear around having her here
and having her in a place of conflict.
(crowd chanting) (rhythmic drumming)
- They talked about our people saying that, you know,
it would be our children that stood up first.
And then it would be our women.
And then finally our men would stand up.
I firmly think that our men need our women to stand up
and be strong.
They need to be reminded of the world that we live in now
and their responsibility to make it safe for us.
They need to make it safe, you know, for our daughters
and for their mothers and for their sisters
and their aunties for the wome they don't know
and the women they've never met.
- [Reporter] What will you tell her about her birth?
- I'll tell her where she was born.
I'll tell her she was born in her mom's teepee
along the banks of the Cannonball River,
near where our people gathered
since the beginning of our time here,
where they gathered to gather power.
- There are acts of war that have been committed
against our people.
The state of North Dakota, they have denied the desecration.
They have denied going through our Aboriginal territory
and our sacred objects.
We understand why we're here.
The water is sacred.
The water is the first gift of life.
And as women, we have a right to protect that water,
the water of Mother Earth, because all life starts in water.
We have an obligation to maintain and continue,
continue in peace, continue in prayer.
And there will be no black snake
going across treaty territory.
(speaking in foreign language)
(audience cheering) (audience applauding)
- My mother was in the American Indian movement.
We were always active in issues.
We're always expected to act a certain way.
And growing up, we would joke about like,
why do we have to be the ultimate Indian?
And it's just how we were raised.
Even in my community,
they're like, oh, your mom's Phyllis Young?
People know, but I'm proud of that.
You know?
- I co-founded the Women of All Red Nations,
and we had to rise to the occasion of sterilization.
The highest rates were here in this region.
And it was an Indian woman doctor from Oklahoma
who became an MD and practiced in the Indian health service
who exposed that.
We went throughout the United States and formed partnerships
with women in all the cities and the universities.
And so Congress passed an act to prohibit sterilization
of Native people.
We also stepped up because of the adoption
of Indian children.
So the Indian Child Welfare Act passed in 1978.
These two very critical acts came from Lakota country.
(singing in foreign language) (rhythmic drumming)
- When I was younger, I used to say to my mom,
I can't believe they killed us off.
And I can't believe that we're so small of people
and really try to like put it in perspective
in my younger mind,
but then also like trying to be pitiful.
And that's something that we're not allowed to be.
And my mom and my little sister always say that
out of all these billions of people on the earth,
like we get to be from Sitting Bull's people.
Like we get to be from Rain-in-the-Face.
We get to be with the Lakota's Crazy Horse.
And we get to like carry on that legacy
of fighting for our way of life.
(propellors whirring) (dramatic music)
[Officer] Down on the floor
or we will put you on the floor.
You can't stay here, you have to go home.
- This is water we're fighting for.
We don't want to.
Look how you guys come.
We pay y'all.
This is shameful.
- [Officer] We don't want anybody to get hurt.
We do not want anybody to get tased.
[Cop] All right. Forward!
(ominous music)
- [Waste] On October 27th, our North Treaty Camp was raided.
I stood with a Mní wióni banner for six hours.
(propellors whirring) (voices clamoring)
Hold the line, hold the line!
Cut her off!
(alarm blaring) (voices shouting)
(fire crackling)
- [Officer] Ladies and gentlemen, stay back.
[Waste] You're shaking so bad,
but all you could do is pray.
(water spraying)
(all shouting)
[Cameraman] Put your gun down.
Those are live rounds.
That is not less than lethal ammunition.
Put your gun down.
No one is armed here.
- Put your weapon down. - We're peaceful.
(ominous music)
- And then to see the buffalo coming over the hill,
it was like I was in a dream.
(soft music) (hooves thundering)
- [Reporter] Tonight near Cannonball, North Dakota,
this is the tense face-off between an army of police
and Native American protestors blocking highway 1806.
- [Man] North Dakota's Governor Jack Dalrymple
mobilized the state's National Guard to end the protest.
- [Jack] We cannot allow our state highways
and our county highways to be taken over by agitators
from other areas of the country.
(solemn music)
(fabric tearing)
- No people on Earth ever enjoyed a freedom
like we Indians enjoyed
before the white man came to this country.
Everything was free.
We were free.
And so were the animals and the birds and the rivers.
Then Columbus and his gang hit this country by accident.
We're sorry that they did.
Our instructions didn't tell us
what to do about the white man.
We welcomed him when he came here, we fed him.
We took care of him.
We believed God had sent him here to help us.
God gave the white man powers we never saw before,
material powers.
He was supposed to share these powers to make life better
for all of us.
He didn't.
Now our great chieftains are gone.
Our buffalo are gone.
Our weapons, our bows and arrows,
our tomahawks are in the museums.
They sell our arrowheads and even our bones for souvenirs.
(voices clamoring)
Maybe if we didn't remember how it once was,
it wouldn't be so hard for us.
We could just become like everyone else.
I grew up in a town
that was predominantly white ranching families.
Come up.
I'm gonna adjust right here for this next one.
- I was one of the only Native kids in the whole town.
And it's very alienating
because I didn't look like the white women
on the magazine covers or in the movies.
But as soon as I realized
that these were all manifestations,
that these were all creations by the invader
to make me hate myself so that I could try to assimilate
and be the whitest I could be,
then there was no longer a problem.
And that I had been hating something in myself
that I should have been embracing.
(hands clapping)
My jujitsu family.
They're like my second family.
They've taken me in and accepted me,
goods, bads, you know, rights, wrongs, positives, negatives.
And they really tried to encourage me
to be the best form of myself.
And honestly I don't know where I'd be without them.
And so, I'm really thankful that I've found this place
and this family to kind of help mold me
into the person that I am today.
My mom has been abusing alcohol
probably longer than I've been alive.
And it's ultimately destroyed her life.
Our relationship was very physically abusive
when I was younger.
And then even after the physical abuse stopped,
there was still a lot of psychological trauma
that took place.
Many young people do, I was a cutter.
I have scars all over my arms and my legs from it.
But she is a product of colonialism.
And that's been one of my biggest purposes in this life
is I'm gonna hold somebody accountable for that,
for what they did to my mom,
because they deprived me of my mother.
And they're depriving Native children all over the world
of having healthy, happy, functional parents.
I'm not the only one by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm one of millions because it's intentional.
It's not coincidence that all of us have parents
or family members who are strung out on meth
or have severe drinking problems.
I mean, all of those things touch Native people
at such an intimate and ridiculously high rate
that it's criminal.
(birds chirping)
- [Frances] Come on, sweetie. Let me comb your hair.
How old are you?
- Five. - You're five?
Everything was taken from us
and that's the biggest part of why our people
are on meth and using drugs.
I worked under the meth plant
and we seen what meth and using drugs was doing,
not only here but everywhere.
And so we put everything into fighting and raising awareness
because this'll cause us to be extinct.
- [Reporter] Tell me about her mother.
How did she get involved in meth?
She got with a guy
and he was the one started her using meth.
And it just, now, I mean, she's just lost to it.
- [Woman] My daughter gets caught with meth again.
So it's just a hard situation
because they're gonna take my granddaughter.
I don't have no right.
Baby wakes up every night with night terrors.
And she's looking for her grandma all the time.
And I'm the only one that she knows that protects her.
(child crying)
In Standing Rock,
they've got every advocate from all over the world there.
You know, what I'm doing here is for our children
that are just as sacred as that water.
So I stay here and I fight this battle.
(propellors whirring)
(singing in foreign language)
- I've been compiling Standing Rock history
for about 25 years, compiling the genealogy.
And one of the things that I learned
is if we are allowed to know our history, our culture,
our language, our way of life and our spirituality,
we can be balanced people again.
And then we can choose to follow this way or not.
It's our choice because we're a whole people.
Right now, our people walk around
With post-traumatic stress syndrome,
with damage of itself, of being taken from their families
because you're Indian, you don't belong here.
(singing in foreign language)
- The Navajo, through the agencies of the government,
they are being rapidly brought from their state
of comparative savagery and barbarism
to one of civilization.
Here, on the one hand, we have the Navajo
as we find him in his desert home today.
Here, we have a group of Navajo children
from the Western Navajo,
Albuquerque Indian schools and the Haskell Institute.
(bell dinging)
- How many people know that United States
didn't allow us to raise our own families?
We won that right in 1985, to raise our own families.
1985.
I'm a boarding school person.
My husband's a boarding school person.
It wasn't that long ago.
(solemn music)
- Father Francis used to come in our little girls' playroom,
and he used to come in there almost every evening.
And he would sit on this big chair
and he would hold different girls on his lap.
It got to a point where we used to all hide when he came.
We used to all run and hide and stuff.
(wings flapping)
I was so afraid, they put the fear in me so bad.
I was so afraid.
And I think that's what they did to a lot of our children.
They just put the fear in us so bad with the hell
and with that belt and with abuse, physical abuse and stuff.
And either they'd come after you at night,
if you didn't behave during the nighttime,
and take you someplace and made you do things
you didn't wanna do.
And you thought it was your fault.
You blamed yourself.
And you thought you were the only one,
but you wasn't.
There was a whole bunch of children.
(clock ticking)
(somber music)
But I was really fortunate
that I wasn't really scarred on my body or my,
'cause those kind of go away.
But the ones in your heart and your whatchacallit,
they never go away.
And I think it's important for people all over to the world
to know that they're not alone.
The most important thing in people's lives,
no matter where you come from, no matter where you are,
it's your identity, to know who you are.
And I try not to think about it
and I try not to have it part of my life
because if I do, it's gonna ruin my life.
I find my own blessings in being able to survive
and being able to bring my children and my grandchildren.
But,
now that I'm a grandmother,
I get a second chance to be a good mother.
- We cannot allow our people to be hurt anymore.
And the missionaries are already out
with their assault rifles.
And so we're keeping eye on everything.
They have been issuing alerts,
come to the frontline.
Nothing's happened on the front line.
They're coming to take the kids.
The police are coming in.
All of these things when there's nothing really happening.
But I'm trying to figure out all these things as I go.
I don't have the answers.
This is not something I planned as part of my life.
And some of this stuff just shocks me.
(propellors whirring)
We got word that you can see them,
Dakota Access is trying to move in.
- [Cameraman] What's their intention?
We don't know.
And that's why we're cautious.
Between the rubber bullets, the bean bag guns,
the batons, the pepper sprays, the dogs,
dragging people outta ceremony.
If we don't know what they're doing and we're not prepared,
somebody's gonna get hurt.
(voices shouting)
(water splashing)
[Protestor] Stop shooting.
Save lives.
- Don't incarcerate us, protect us.
Those are burial sites up on that hill.
There's 11 to 14 graves up there.
We're here to stop this with prayer.
(rhythmic drumming) (singing in foreign language)
(water spraying) (protestors shouting)
- And there was people in the water lined up
along that bank right there.
They were just pepper spraying them.
They had those big plastic bin things,
just like goin' like that.
So it was like wafting back to them.
(woman laughing)
'Cause they were pepper spraying themselves
and they were just blasting it back to them.
(tense music)
- You're standing on a sacred site.
Recognize.
That's a place of prayer.
And that's where you standing.
(somber music)
- [Woman] They really tried to paint us
as these violent out-of-state people
when the movement begin with women from Standing Rock.
And how they can
vilify our people for standing up?
It's as though they are saying, how dare you.
(motor rumbling)
- [Phyllis] We have always been here.
Then one day we wake up
and they say we cannot step on our burial grounds.
We cannot step on our sites anymore.
I just, I don't understand that whole concept.
- [Reporter] The standoff over the controversial
Dakota Access pipeline keeps growing.
- [Man] Yesterday, President Obama weighed in on the fight.
- [Obama] Right now, the Army Corps is examining
whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline.
So we're gonna let it play out for several more weeks
and determine whether or not this can be resolved
in a way that, I think, is properly attentive
to the traditions of the First Americans.
(voices clamoring)
- [Woman] This is my daughter, Shimi.
Nice meet you.
- The Colonel's inside a meeting with the vice chair.
And we're waiting to talk to him.
- That's Colonel Henderson, the Army Corps of Engineers.
Yep.
- He could say full environmental impact statement.
Or does he give the go ahead for the permit too?
- [Woman] This is really alarming.
And we should make sure the White House knows about this.
For sure.
- [Man] I can't believe this is in writing.
- It's in conflict with what the president
himself has been saying.
- To me, it's beyond comprehension
that if you have this joint statement
from these three federal agencies,
and then it just flies in the face of it,
that what they said was going to happen,
which was listening sessions
and reviewing the permitting process.
And then here you have a letter from Colonel Henderson
asking Morton County for law enforcement,
for more resources to
commit these horrible acts against our people,
our people who are just trying to pray.
- One of the police officers told the guys in water
that the Army Corps had delegated the jurisdiction
to the Morton County sheriff.
And I said, it can't be.
It can't be delegated.
This John Henderson, this colonel, he's a little boy.
He's a young boy.
I call him, I told him you could be my grandson.
You're so young.
- Phyllis is a former council member,
but council member for life,
and is also contracted by the tribe to fight DAPL.
And one of the strategies that they have
is based on an agreement the tribe made with the DOJ
in the mid-2000s on 13 environmental laws,
Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, down the list.
Those laws apply here.
We're facing 55 pipelines
and this Dakota Access is a strategic one.
We need to stop this one.
Our demand was army Corps,
grant us a full environmental impact statement.
They have never done that.
- [Man] You have four Army Corps officials
who run DAPL, and the conflict of interest that is obvious.
- [Cameraman] We have the right to go and pray on our lands.
- So, we work really hard with the tribal leadership
to try to prevent any kind of conflict
or any further incident.
- Listen-- - I, I, I don't know
if tribal leadership is gonna help us.
This is Martin County.
- It takes all the leaders to be engaged.
They aren't coming here.
They were on Army Corps land today,
- threatening us. - Construction workers.
No, construction workers were.
[Ladonna] No, the police were.
- Thank you. - On the water.
(voices clamoring)
My position to the Army Corps is how can you come here
when you already have developed your position?
And you're trying to acquiesce the rights that we have
on the river.
(crickets chirping)
(rhythmic drumming) (wind howling)
(voices clamoring)
(guns firing)
- I got hit with a rubber bullet.
I see this one just coming straight for my eye.
So I get hit in the eye.
I turn around, I try to run.
I get shot in the back of the leg.
I fell to the ground and I yell
(speaking in foreign language), help me.
I was gushing blood.
(singing in foreign language)
- So you can see, I had some stitches here,
also along the whole eyelid.
And my eye is trying to open now, but I'll never see again.
(rhythmic drumming) (singing in foreign language)
If I do see anything, it'll be less than 5% chance
it'll be some form of light.
My IHS plan was not good enough,
even though it was an emergency.
And I didn't see a retina specialist till almost a week
after driving around from a hospital to a hospital,
from doctor's office to doctor's office,
basically doing the same steps over and over and over again.
And that's the failure in our healthcare system
as Native Americans.
And that's what's sad.
That's what's sad.
(voices clamoring)
(wind howling)
[Man] Moment my whole life
to the Lakota Dakota Lakota people to be united.
- I'm a veteran from the Vietnam era.
I'm 60 years old and I'm a ex-police officer.
And what is happening here is horrifying.
And I'm here to support my people.
And I'm so happy everybody is here to support this.
And thank you.
(crowd cheering)
[Man] Goin' to meet the fans?
- Better believe it. - Better believe it.
There ya go.
- Better believe it, I like that one.
- [Driver] Hey, do I know where I'm going?
Where's the trailer?
I didn't hear anything yet.
- [Man] They just said that federal stopped the pipeline
just right now, man.
That's just what I was told.
- I'm never gonna believe a newsman.
- [Man] I didn't say they did, I said this is what I heard.
- I got a whisper this morning about possibly
some positive news.
I don't have any validation or verification of that.
Until I do, I'm not doing jumping jacks around my teepee.
(voices clamoring)
[Man] Be united.
[Crowd] Be united.
- [Reporter] Protestors are celebrating
an unexpected victory
in their fight to block an oil pipeline in North Dakota.
- [Newsman] Cheers erupted and tears flowed
as news spread throughout the camp
that pipeline construction would not continue
under the Missouri River.
(Ladonna laughing)
- Army Corps of Engineers denied to permit to Dakota Access.
My reaction?
None yet.
- [Reporter] You've been through this before,
where you've been made promises.
Does this just feel like another one of those?
We're cautious.
So people can celebrate, but I'll wait and see.
I know, got it.
- We did it. - We did it.
Yeah.
- Grouchy old ladies, but we did it.
(laughing) We did it.
We drug everybody along kicking and screaming.
You won't have work.
(both laughing)
You will have peace.
Yeah.
- Even though Army Corps denied the permit,
I do not have full trust that Dakota Access will stop.
They have not followed any law codes to this point.
All that will happen now is the state and the government
will pull out
and we will be at the mercy of the mercenaries.
I know that President Trump will be president
here in January and he says that he will give permission.
And so for me, the battle has only just begun.
- I wanna thank you, all of you who have helped us.
You have helped us. I am overwhelmed.
And tomorrow we are going to have a celebration
and we will dance in full regalia.
We will celebrate the killing of the black snake.
(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language)
So today we have done a very historic happening.
We have made peace with the United States of America
and we will go forward as good Americans
and good Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota.
On behalf of our own country,
we will go to the front lines of legislation,
we will go to the front lines of litigation,
and we will go to the front lines
to make changes in the Constitution if we have to.
We will go forward in the front lines to defy the doctrine
of discovery that says we are not a race,
that we are wandering beasts.
And because we are not Christian,
we are not entitled to the land.
The black snake has never stopped.
And if they didn't stop desecrating our graves
of our ancestors, they'll stop at nothing.
(solemn music)
(singing in foreign language)
Back in the 1950s and '60s,
they built a series of dams along the Missouri River.
The people of Standing Rock and Cheyenne River
basically witnessed almost a complete cultural genocide.
They relied on the Missouri River
for everything that they needed,
all the foods and the medicines grew either in the river
or around it.
Hundreds of vitally important foods and medicines
were decimated overnight.
And it changed the way of life for the Lakota people
here forever.
It's so heartbreaking to think that they have to go
through that again.
They have to see the destruction of their land again.
And so when people ask, why is this the end of the line?
Why are women standing up and finally saying no, this is it?
We cannot let this happen again.
It's because they've seen this happen
to their children before.
And just when they're starting to try to recover
from all that was taken,
here comes another project that threatens
that way of life again.
(singing in foreign language)
- [Reporter] President Trump is signing an executive order
approving the Keystone XL Pipeline
and the Dakota Access pipeline.
Let's listen in.
- [Trump] This is, with respect to the construction
of the Dakota Access pipeline,
something that's been in dispute
and it's subject to a renegotiation of terms by us.
We'll see if we can get that pipeline built.
(cameras snapping)
- Let's go look in the yurt, I wanna see it.
Fuckin' DAPL helicopter flying over us.
(propellors whirring)
They fuckin' permitted that pipeline to go through.
And it's devastating with what happened,
Trump's administration.
And our spirits are all tired, but we don't have a choice.
- I'm a little angry because we came out here
and our whole camp, you know, from where we first started,
it is all gone.
That's where we all became friends at, you know?
A lot of us and it's gone now, it's just gone.
I don't get why they just, didn't have to do that, you know?
- [Reporter] And how was Waste Win feeling?
We're all sad.
It's all happening all at once. I mean, I don't know.
[Waste] Two, three years ago,
I worked for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and I testified
at the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission
that Dakota Access had not been consulting with the tribe.
And at that time I was so resigned that nobody cared,
and so for it to take on the life that it has.
But, with the army Corps's blessing,
with this we'll lose everything.
There's nothing left.
It's just heartbreaking.
- [Reporter] The Army Corps of Engineers
told Congress Tuesday it will allow
the nearly $4 billion oil project
across under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota.
The tribe is now promising a legal battle.
- The Army Corps has issued their intent
to approve of the permit.
And so they're notifying Congress.
So between now and the end of the day tomorrow,
we have to file some kind of action.
And DAPL has been fined $15,000
by the North Dakota Utilities Commission.
So what's 15,000 for desecrating 26 graves?
It's horrible to us, but nothing to them.
So this has been 10 years that we have been in this fight
and struggle against Keystone, Keystone XL, and DAPL.
So it's been a long haul.
And never giving up and not stopping.
(wind howling)
(machine whirring)
We had been meeting about,
you know, what is our next step?
What are we gonna do?
And we decided to have another prayer camp.
And we were singing our ceremony songs,
our sundance songs.
And as we were having ceremony,
they called a code red for law enforcement,
all officers to respond within a 100 mile radius.
And they surrounded us.
There was 76 of us that got arrested.
They loaded up two vans and headed to Cass County jail.
They write our names and they take a picture of us.
Then they put us in like big dog kennels.
So then the men were on one side,
the females were on another side,
and there was a tarp separating us.
But some of the National Guardsmen and police
were going behind the men, in front of the men,
and then taking selfies.
They were like really laughing and posing with the men
in the cages behind them.
But as I was standing there,
I looked at some of the men in the van
and they were yelling, you know, stay strong, sister.
(somber music)
(Waste crying)
- Little in, although that things like that
just bring us closer together.
- Then when you know you get booked, you have to get naked.
And the jailer told me to
give them my underwear
and I just, you know, acted like it was nothing
because if you act like it's something,
they're just gonna play games with you even more.
- They want a reaction for everything.
- You're never gonna break our spirit.
If anything, you're gonna embolden and empower us
to even stand up more so for our children
don't ever have to go do things like that.
(voices clamoring)
(knife chopping)
(pan sizzling)
Put all of it in there this time.
[Son] I don't like onions.
- You don't even notice all the stuff you have
with onions.
Don't complain.
- [Man] I was trying to order it today,
but scheduling found out.
(girl screaming)
That little white dog, it's right there.
- [Reporter] Was it weird coming back to life in your house?
Yeah, it was kind of sad.
It was really sad, I think.
For me it was.
And then now with the like upcoming deadline
for them to close the camp and everything,
it's even more real, I guess.
You okay?
Even after Trump's done,
you know, there'll be, there still will always be hope.
Being at camp,
being out there's really has really strengthened me.
It's hard though because it affects your life
like so intensely and personally,
it kind of basically takes over everything in your life
to make the stand that you do,
and relationships suffer.
(rain pattering)
Kristen, text my mom for me.
Just tell her we're all on our way to court
at Morton County.
(wind howling)
- [Cameraman] What happened, ladies?
- We plead not guilty to engaging in a riot
and criminal trespass and they will set our court date
for a jury trial at a later date.
- [Reporter] The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
say they will not extend today's deadline,
but officials have made it clear
today's mandatory evacuation order will be enforced.
- Man, these things are slippery.
We don't have our cell phone.
Nobody's going in,
so we figured we could come in this way and walk.
- [Cameraman] What do you think's happen today?
- They're gonna arrest everybody, try to.
'Cause they're protecting everyone.
(soft music)
Now I've experienced this whole new, different life
with the camp and this movement
that I'm always gonna wanna strive for that now.
I'm always gonna want that for my children.
So despite what anybody says,
this was a movement out of love.
(rhythmic drumming) (singing in foreign language)
- [Reporter] Some protestors began ceremonially setting fire
to parts of their camp,
preferring to burn it
rather than have it seized and destroyed.
Many of the protestors vowed to persist
and keep Standing Rock in the spotlight.
(somber music)
[Waste] I have 79 messages.
[Woman] Ho.
Hope Shay gets to spend her birthday here.
- [Reporter] So you're saying you're getting
a lot of birthday wishes?
- Yeah, a lot of people wish me happy birthday.
And I tried to like thank them.
- [Driver] So where are we going?
- [Waste] To Washington Monument.
[Driver] I think it's this.
- [Waste] You're gonna arrive in one minute.
Look it right now.
You guys are gonna get charged with jaywalking.
It's cool.
Those two red light top on top look like eyeballs.
(singing in foreign language)
- This is what America believes in,
like all these flags, all these buildings, big architecture.
Homage to all these presidents that killed Natives.
But outta respect,
our grandparents all fought their wars for them too.
So out of respect, let's all try to be positive here.
At the Washington monument, Connie sang the Flag Song,
which is our Lakota national anthem,
because there's flags all the way
around the Washington Monument.
And I felt angry
thinking of our camp is all displaced,
yet we came together today.
[Woman] What do we want?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] When do we want it?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] What do we want?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] When do we want it?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] What do we want?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] When do we want it?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
[Woman] What do we want?
[Crowd] Keep to themselves.
I'm tryin' to do a Live Feed.
But it keeps cutting me off.
* Mní wióni *
* Water is life *
* Mní wióni *
* Water is life *
* Mní wióni *
* Water is life *
* Mní wióni *
* Water is life *
(crowd cheering)
(bright music)
This is a new day.
We are together.
We stand with Standing Rock!
(audience cheering)
(rhythmic drumming)
(singing in foreign language)
- The experiences that I went through
alongside hundreds or thousands of other people
affected me so much that I have obligation
to honor the journey that we've been through
and the collective movement that happened
to keep it moving forward.
- We're still gonna pursue the legal avenues.
We have 56 actions that we pursue at all levels.
But we are also going to the United Nations,
and we're going to create footprints in the world court.
If nothing else, I have to leave a footprint.
(horns honking)
I helped to coordinate the conference in Geneva.
The first time that Indian people had gone to the UN
since 1926.
And so it's been an endeavor of generations
and intergenerational work.
Madam Chair,
I have had the honor and privilege to be at the heart
of the two largest American Indian gatherings to date,
both hosted in Standing Rock,
the homeland of Sitting Bull's people,
the Hunkpapa Lakota and Ocheti Sakowin.
We, the First Nation representatives,
share the same intent as the original colonists
who left the government and homelands
to form a new government because they could no longer
support a nation that oppressed them.
They had no voice and were slaves to the elite,
which led them to take their family to escape the tyranny
and live as free men, so ordained by their creator.
We're all setting on a path to reclaim everything
and make them responsible and accountable.
(audience applauding)
- [Trump] I'm pleased to announce
that the Dakota Access pipeline
is now officially open for business.
A $3.8 billion investment that was stalled
and nobody thought any politician
would have the guts to approve that final leg.
And I just closed my eyes and said do it.
(audience applauding)
- Waste Win Young is a former tribal
historic preservation officer
for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe,
where she currently lives.
We are thrilled to have her here to speak about the past,
present, and future of the NoDAPL movement.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- One of the big pushes has been to divest
from financial institutions.
And when we went to Norway,
we met with DNB Bank and they announced
that they were pulling a $250 million credit line from DAPL.
I don't know if you guys seen it, but DAPL already leaked.
And we're going to do a divestment tour.
We're meeting with the banks in Paris
and Brussels and Amsterdam.
Then we're ending at the United Nations in Geneva.
Our community does not support or want or never consented
to the Dakota Access pipeline.
Wealth should not come at the expense of Indigenous people.
It should not come at the expense
of marginalized communities.
- So Phyllis, what do you think of (indistinct)
having been in Europe
doing the type of work you used to do?
- [Phyllis] (laughing) Well, I'm glad she went,
and she went in my stead.
I'm confident that she can hold her own.
She comes from a circle, a (speaking in foreign language).
And that's just the way we are.
- I ask that the Swiss people stand with us.
- How have you seen Waste Win change
since all of this began a year ago?
- I watched her go through some pains
because she was a national voice.
So I'm very proud of her.
And I know the efforts that she made
on behalf of all of our people.
And I would never ask for anything more than what she did.
(voices clamoring)
- So the next award is for Standing Rock water protectors.
Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, Phyllis Young.
(audience applauding) Welcome.
(speaking in foreign language)
- I extend my hand with a good heart.
I'm woman who stands by the water
and woman who loves the water.
(speaking in foreign language)
This is for you.
We are Lakota, Dakota and Nakota,
and it means friend and ally.
And you put W-O in front of (speaking in foreign language),
it means peace.
We represent the 1% left of Indigenous people
in this country.
We have endured and we have survived every atrocity
that has been imposed upon us and we will continue.
- What did I do so wrong other than say,
my water has a right?
I watch everybody talk,
but do you understand what it's like to have those roots
going right out of your feet, straight down into the ground?
You cannot separate us from this Earth.
- Remember we Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Oceti Sakowin,
we are the predecessor sovereign of this territory.
And if no one likes it, they need to secede from us.
They need to go away from us.
(audience applauding)
I was good American for 40 years.
Time to be a good member of Oceti Sakowin.
I owe the rest of my life to make the best
for my own people.
The oratory is over.
The rhetoric is over.
In America, it's time for action.
(audience applauding)
- [Woman] The solution for Indigenous peoples
is not in the halls of the Supreme Court.
It's at Standing Rock.
That's where our answers are.
It's wherever the struggle is.
It's wherever people are daring to be free.
(wind rustling)
- I'm not sad, which I thought I would definitely be,
but I'm not.
We took a stand for our water.
Like we lived here and stood our ground,
so nobody can ever take that from us.
No matter how the local media tries to portray us
or tarnish our names or paint us as
violent,
lazy,
bad.
We're just people from here that stood up
and asked
everybody to come and stand with us.
And they did.
(dramatic music)
(singing in foreign language)
(rhythmic drumming)