Tag: Heidi Heitkamp

Andrew Gregerson, a drug addict, showing his scars and tattoos while in Cass County Jail - photograph by Logan Macrae

High costs of addiction

April 14, 2018 / / 2 Comments

The legal underworld of addiction, incarceration, and wasted resources

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Justin Lee Dietrich was an addict. A long rap sheet haunted him, barring him from joining a society that rejected him at every turn. Court documents show he had issues with sobriety, was ordered by Cass County District Court to attend sobriety programs, chemical dependency evaluations, and given two years supervised probation, after he pled guilty to terrorizing charges in 2016.

Before four Fargo Police SWAT shooters took the 32-year-old man’s life on March 12 for posing an “imminent deadly threat,” in West Fargo, he asked to live in F5 Project housing, but the nonprofit organization that coordinates services and living spaces for released felons had no beds available, a Facebook post by the organization’s founder, Adam Martin, stated.

His family tried to get Dietrich committed but he was turned down every time, as he didn’t meet the “danger to himself or others” standard.

“I think about all the times police were called, how the officers with Fargo PD were patient with him when it would have been far easier to do otherwise, but also how hiring the right defense attorney can repeatedly help a person avoid any real consequences,” Matthew Bring, Dietrich’s brother-in-law, wrote in a Facebook post.

Justin Dietrich and his dog, Harley Bell – Facebook

“I think about how he’s been on probation with little or no actual supervision or oversight, and about the arrest warrant that was issued more than three months ago but never served. It’s frustrating, thinking about this broken system in which his family try so hard to get help from the very institutions set up to do so, and are repeatedly told there’s nothing more that can be done.”

Dietrich’s sister, Alyson Jean Bring, emphasized that she and her family tried repeatedly to seek help for her brother.

“My family filed numerous civil commitments in an effort to get Justin help and every time we were told by Southeast Human Services that he didn’t meet the legal standard of being a danger to himself or others,” Bring said in an email. “At one point I was literally told that we wouldn’t be able to commit him unless he was found with a gun in his hand and threatening to take his own life.”

Southeast Human Services personnel took 15 minutes to interview her brother, but would not consider her family’s extensive knowledge of his usage history, she said.

Bring, a former attorney with the Cass County State’s Attorney’s Office, said her brother was supposed to be supervised, but found little oversight. When the courts ordered Dietrich to go through treatment, the stays were too short. Counselors continuously had to justify treatment procedures to insurance companies, Bring said.

“In sum, the very institutions that are set up to help people are not working.”

Dietrich loved motorcycles and his pet, a Rottweiler named Harley. He had a beautiful singing voice, once sang at the North Dakota Adult and Teen Challenge approximately a decade ago. Friends and family said he was humorous, had an infectious smile, someone who went out of his way to make people feel important.

Once, he saved a neighbor from hanging himself. He cut down the rope, took the person to get food and groceries, and saved the person from suicide.

“It’s no secret that Justin was an addict and struggled with this disease for many years,” Bring wrote in her brother’s eulogy. “But I think it’s important to stress that each one of us has issues and our issues don’t define us. Addiction was merely part of his life.”

Bring also works as an attorney handling DUI cases, never before realizing how widespread addiction and alcoholism in the area are, affecting people from all walks of life.

“I don’t think the public at large realizes how big of an issue this is and that most of the people who enter the criminal justice system are either chemically dependent, mentally ill, or both,” Bring said.

Her brother was someone who helped whenever and however he could, Bring said, and she hopes to honor his memory by testifying at the next legislative session to try and implement positive changes for those struggling with addiction.

“I think the frustrating part for me is that, while everyone has issues, for some reason addiction is so incredibly stigmatized, and I think a big part of that is because, while it’s easy for people to hide most issues, typically addiction eventually can’t be hidden and becomes public,” Bring said in an email. “I think our society has made some strides in viewing addiction as a disease just like other mental health or physical problems, but I think we still have a long ways to go.”

Justin Dietrich’s dog, Harley Bell, and a Harley – Facebook

Adam Martin
The name, F5 Project, is a double entendre. It stands for the reset function key, but also because Adam Martin has five felonies on his record.

“I’m not a mental health professional, I’m just a guy who has a bunch of felonies who is an addict, that found a solution that works,” Martin, founder of the F5 Project, said from his office. Feet propped up on his desk, he’s the picture of calm in a turbulent world. His office is behind the only white frame among a dozen hard oak antique doors on the eighth floor of the Black Building.

Although the F5 Project is barely two years young, he’s grown the organization from nothing to seven houses that help put roofs over felons’ heads. His organization’s goal is to lower recidivism and homelessness rates through education. Martin calls his organization the “anti-disenfranchised movement” because he breaks all the social rules: answers the cell phone at 2am, is active with those under his care on social media, and goes to inmates before they’re released to find out what they want.

Adam Martin, founder of the F5 Project, describing the difficulties of the current justice system – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Martin knew Dietrich, called him a “super awesome dude.” Dietrich was someone that Martin enjoyed, and not the person the media has painted. Current Fargo city codes was one of the reasons why Dietrich was turned away shortly before he was gunned down after failing to comply with police demands.

In Fargo, a house or unit is allowed to hold three non-related people, no matter how many rooms are in the house.

“It’s an archaic code that robs many of opportunity,” Martin said. Because of a previous infraction of the city codes, city leaders and others have called him a slumlord. He’s facing potential fines. Some ask him why college students are able to get away with breaking the same city code, while he, housing felons, cannot.

“My argument for that or my belief on that is I’m not mad that the college students are getting away with it, I think they should,” Martin said. “I think there is a big problem with housing in this community and it affects people with backgrounds and it affects college students. What does that tell me? It affects people below the poverty line.”

A legislative incentive passed in 2017 offering landlords the chance to collect double security deposits for felons looking for a place to live, is about the only help the state has given. The law, introduced as House Bill 1220 by the House Political Subdivision Committee, overlooks a crucial factor.

“They totally missed the boat on what the real problem is,” Martin said. “It’s not just the felony background, the majority of people coming out of jails or prisons don’t have money. Again, we’re creating opportunity for people with money.”

Money is the largest contributing factor in attracting the help people really need, Martin said. Proper funding is also the dividing factor between nonprofits such as the F5 Project and others as they’re all chasing the same donations and grants.

Money – billions, if not trillions of taxpayer dollars – is also being wasted every year keeping felons in a rut from which they cannot climb out.

Frank Hunkler
Dressed in corduroys, armed with a Pilot G-2 fine-point pen and a thick notebook of data, Frank Hunkler paused before speaking about the day he decided to commit suicide.

He’s a decorated Vietnam War veteran, a felon, an addict, has had PTSD since childhood, suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, and has been a full-time volunteer peer mentor in the Fargo-Moorhead area for 37 years. He includes himself as one of the 256,934 reported civilian non-institutional people in America who were told they cannot work if they wanted access to health care including mental health. At a minimum of $10 an hour, that’s more than $5 billion in lost wages, and approximately $900 million in lost federal taxes every year.

He knows about addiction, started using drugs in high school and went to prison in 1979, back in the day when felons paid their dues, but were welcomed back to society after finishing their sentences.  

“It’s harder to get clean and stay clean today than it was in 1980 or 1990, much more difficult,” Hunkler said.

Why?

“Access and prejudice,” Hunkler said. “In 1980 we did our crimes we did our time, we did our crimes and did our time. In 1980, very few people went to jail for drugs, almost unheard of.”

Frank Hunkler describing his path as a veteran, an addict, a felon, to recovery – photograph by C.S. Hagen

The war on drugs and the war on terror are pieces to the puzzle behind mass incarceration, Hunkler believes. America has five percent of the world’s population with 25 percent of the world’s prison population, and the hours of lost work, lost taxpayer dollars, and lost productivity, add up.

Nationally, the number of people enrolled in drug treatment programs has halved in recent years, although the demand for mental health treatment continues to rise, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Budget cuts to support the war on drugs and the war on terror, coupled with widespread disregard and an automation of human services have left addicts, felons, and the needy, forgotten.

Among comparable countries, America has the highest rate of death from mental health and substance abuse disorders. The number is almost off the charts, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, with America double the rest of the world in death rates per 100,0000 people in 2015.

America’s death rates due to accidental poisonings or drug overdoses per 100,000 people is also twice as high as the worldwide average, numbering 12 people per 100,000 in 2013, compared to 4.9 per 100,000 in comparable countries.

Stress is the common denominator linking addiction, the current criminal justice system, recidivism, or the habitual relapse into crime or antisocial behavior patterns, Hunkler said.

“The process of seeking help, in preventive ways, is not in vogue,” Hunkler said. “The inhumane and failure-inducing requirements of seeking help in an emergency take a simple medical emergency to a personal catastrophe in which stress levels are exponentially raised.”

Although Hunkler has been clean for 37 years, his PTSD could bring him to suicide. Returning to drug use is not an option, he said. Suicide would be the only choice.

“With PTSD it could happen easily, not today, but over a period of months,” Hunkler said. “Right at that edge where life-or-death decisions are made every day by persons with use, abuse, mental health, addiction issues. I believe anyone who has even short-term struggles with mental health, use, abuse, and addiction issues has symptoms of PTSD. Often less from the struggles than from the lack of 24/7 access to emergency facilities and safety from themselves and others, forcing them to return to the situations that are killing them. Each refusal of care is another traumatizing event.”

His PTSD stems from childhood abuse, he said. He remembers little of his war experience, but has the medals to prove he fought with valor. As a gay man who lost 52 of his friends during the AIDS epidemic, his battle has been even more difficult than others, but he draws and writes almost every day to remind himself that people are basically good, and he must help them.

On social media, he begins all his posts with three simple words: “I love you.”

I am forgiven – by Frank Hunkler

Remembering the day in 2003 when he decided to commit suicide didn’t come easily. While walking home, and passing in front of the offices of Minnesota Legal Services, after the Fargo VA refused help one last time, the director came running toward him. Hunkler said the director must have noticed that all was not well with him at the time. He was trying to get help, but insurance premiums and deductibles were out of reach. Medical bills, lawyer bills, were eating up his income.

“I was not depressed, I was freaked out by the world,” Hunkler said. “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is progressive and fatal. I had been clean from drug use since 1980. Using was not an option.  Suicide held the only dignity I knew.”

The director of Minnesota Legal Services pulled him into the entry of the building and asked him why he was not on disability, Hunkler said.

“No one had ever asked me that. I said because I could not afford the expensive tests needed to find out if I had any real problems. I could not afford insurance and the VA had just told me they would not serve me under any circumstances. I had too many confrontations with staff over being refused help. I was a security risk to myself and the facility.

“She told me they would help me get help. I had to promise to quit work and promise to not work again ever, get completely destitute by a certain date to qualify for services, and 300 hours of their help later I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, PTSD, learning disabilities, and was given Social Security disability and a permanent VA disability pension.

Past has passed away – by Frank Hunkler

$1.015 trillion: a drop in the judicial bucket
“Since I got on disability I have 29,000 and some hours that are lost,” Hunkler said. “Taxpayers have paid me over $500,000 in 14 years in monthly checks. I get a check every month, but that doesn’t mean I got medical health. I was under this crazy notion that if you’re on social security disability you get medical help. I was given a disability pension and then told to go away. I assumed that meant I got psychiatric help, but there is no such connection.

“How do you describe this to people that not only are they paying me to leave the work force, just to get medical help, I don’t know if you know this but when veterans get a disability check – it was not created to give us medical help. It’s basically a lawsuit, where each veteran is expected to get a million bucks. Congress did not mean this to be like Social Security disability to keep us alive, it was meant to replace the money we would likely lose in our lifetime.”

Hunkler is a part of the aggregate economic burden of incarceration to taxpayers, which exceeds $1 trillion every year, according to Advancing Justice, a Los Angeles based nonprofit and civil rights organization, and the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation, at Washington University in St. Louis.

Costs to corrections are approximately $91 billion, and lost wages – calculated at minimum wage – add up to more than $70 billion every year.

Reduced life earnings of those behind bars total more than $230 billion, while costs of non-fatal injuries to the incarcerated total $28 billion.

The aggregate cost to society swells from there, which including other aspects already adds up to more than $490 billion. Felons have adverse health effects from incarceration and poor health care. Infant mortality rates increase. There are divorce complications. Children’s educational level decreases, thereby lowering wages when they become adults. Child welfare costs go up; homelessness increases. There are increased criminality issues with children of incarcerated parents. Property values in troublesome areas decrease. Divorce rates rise, and the interest on judicial debt inflates.

In total, the cost per year for the current criminal justice system backing the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the current judicial system is $1,015,000,000,000, most of which is taxpayer dollars, according to statistics released by Advancing Justice.

“Expenditures are not adding value to the economy and are not, for the most part, improving the productivity of the incarcerated person and their families or adding value to the quality of life in the community for generations to come,” Hunkler said.

The costs do not end there. In 2018, the federal and state budgets for incarceration, probation, and parole is $80.7 billion. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, declared more than $50 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services, or HSS, announced $80.03 billion, and the Department of Education needs $59 billion.

Although numbers have decreased slightly in recent years, an average of 2.2 million people are behind bars on any given day, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics. If 2.2 million people had minimum wage jobs at 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, at an hourly rate of $10, the federal government loses more than $4.2 billion in taxes every year.

Wages earned by America’s total population of approximately 138 million taxpayers every year to pay for incarcerating 2.2 million people totals at $9.03 trillion, of which a total of $1.2 trillion is used to pay for the current incarceration system, according to Advancing Justice.

Additional unintended costs extend to more than half a million prison guards, who suffer from PTSD at more than double the rate of soldiers, and with suicide rates twice as high as the general public, according to analysts.

Simple numbers show the fiscal burden of incarceration is far more expensive than offering help to the millions of addicts sent into jails across America. The national average for treating one person in detox is $1,500, with an inpatient cost of $20,000 a month, according to the Center for Disease Control. For a fraction of the annual price to taxpayers, more than 11 million addicts – which is also the approximate number of people who enter jails in the United States every year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation – could be treated for $375 billion.

Few jails offer addiction treatment services. At Cass County Jail, Captain Andrew Frobig is working toward alternatives to incarceration for low-bail offenders, but doesn’t have treatment services, yet, he said. Most help comes from the outside, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the Sex Offender Program, the F5 Project, the group Hunkler works with, Narcotics Anonymous, or other nonprofit groups.   

“It is very difficult to find anyone who claims, in 2018, that prisons and jails are for rehabilitation,” Hunkler said. “The inmates are not getting mental health help, are not being financially productive, are not learning skills, and the prison guards are losing out too.”  

[Editor’s note: For more information pertaining to the criminal justice system in Fargo and North Dakota, a February 21 story pertaining to the “High costs of low bail” can be found here: link.]

I am in shape politically – by Frank Hunkler

Center for heroes and excellence
Frank Hunkler has a dream. His dream is to create a brick and mortar building, a one-stop 24/7 emergency center where anyone with a use, abuse, addiction, or mental health issue can go, keep safe from themselves and others, have all their emergency needs met, food to eat, a place to rest if needed, and given an advocate to get them connected to all the services they need.

“The community would guarantee to leave no one behind, get them the services they need, and find a way to pay for them,” Hunkler said. “Just like with heart disease, lung disease, type II Diabetes and other mostly preventable diseases. The commitment of the metropolitan area community would be to leave no one behind and provide the seamless services needed to return the person to maximum productivity as quickly as possible, no questions asked. To walk through the door and ask for help would make each person a community hero.

“By diverting funds, diverting facilities, ending the war on drugs, there is money enough, and the idea of this center in this town, number one, we need to have a campaign that encourages people to ask for help,” Hunkler said. “That’s the first problem, that’s probably 80 percent of the problem. Asking for help when they need it. That’s the heroism part.

“There’s no reason that anyone should have to use in this town, if we had access. There are enough treatment centers, homeless shelters, mutual aid agencies, if they had a central place where anyone could come to 24/7, I actually believe, right now as I know this community, there are days of the year where if we have that one center, existing facilities could serve every person who walks through that door without adding a bed.”

Fargo’s metropolitan area is smart enough and wealthy enough, Hunkler said, to become the first city in the world to help all our kids, felons, and addicts, and turn no one away.

Such a center would bring together all the agencies and services, voluntary and professional, Hunkler said.

“As each person is served, seamlessly and as a whole person, all agencies and services will benefit and maximize their potential,” Hunkler said. “At one time or another in our lives, we will likely all need those services unless we are wealthy enough or connected enough to get services we need when and where we want them. For now, only members of Congress and the very wealthiest have such access. A Medal of Honor winner cannot walk into a VA facility and demand services. A member of Congress can and does not have to demand them or stand in line for services.”  

Adam Martin, of the F5 Project, compares the judicial system to the educational system, and finds that many of today’s issues start in schools.

“We have a whole social structure built on helping those who are convenient, and I think about that all the time,” Martin said. “We have this idea of what is not normal, and when something is not normal, we involve the police. Police have become more about arresting to create a culture than arresting to create public safety.”

Martin said he was in learning disability classes when he was in school in Fargo. The system is based on automation, and doing what is convenient.

“Let’s be open and honest about it,” Martin said. “Are you doing the same thing the educational system has done, and you’re sending people to learning disability classes because they’re inconvenient, they’re not normal, they’re not like other kids? Are you identifying them with learning disabilities because you suck as a teacher and you’re not actual teachers you’re reading out of a book? Or are you actually trying to create an environment to learn for all people. I think that kind of mentality has gone into the justice system, it’s gotten into even the technology world.

“All the systems in America are based on low hanging fruit. Nobody really wants to work.”

Rules on top of laws is not the answer to solving the current criminal justice system, Martin said.

“We’ve turned into a very legalistic nation,” Martin said. “If you’re familiar with the Bible and Pharisees and legalism, they were putting rules on top of laws and then holding people accountable as if it were a law, so that they wouldn’t actually break the law.”

Joyful performance – by Frank Hunkler

Criminal justice reform is not ‘hug a thug’
While preparing for her nomination at the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Convention, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is up for reelection this year, said she would support criminal justice reform.

“On one condition,” Heitkamp said. “That we have re-entry services. And I will tell you why. I think that if you take someone out and you say ‘Okay, you’re serving time for a drug offense that didn’t jeopardize anyone’s life, you weren’t caught with guns,’ whatever the line is, I would say that’s fine, but you need to make sure they stay in treatment and that they have opportunities that help them transition their life back.

“If we don’t do it with that, we will have re-offenses, in fact I know that’s already happening in North Dakota, and that will frustrate law enforcement, it will frustrate the public, and it’s the wrong way to do it.”

Heitkamp stated she wants to know what reentry plans would include.

“When they come out of prison, how do they come back? They come back to the exact same conditions, and friends and associates that basically led to their incarceration. We need a reentry program for federal prisoners. This is one of the things that I’ve been pushing and doing a lot of work on.”

Former North Dakota Attorney General Tim Purdon said the criminal justice system is a three-legged stool: one leg is enforcement – some people are dangerous and need to be kept from society – a definition both Martin and Hunkler also agree with.

The second leg is crime prevention, and the third is reentry, Purdon said.

“Criminal justice reform is an issue that over the last three or four years – setting aside the current Attorney General – is something that has had large bipartisan support,” Purdon said. “There’s been a recognition in this country that we cannot afford to continue our criminal justice system on the road we’re on because the cost of running prisons, federal and locally, is exceeding our ability as a society to pay for it.”

He is a part of the Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, and currently a partner with Robins Kaplan LLP, and said money can be redirected toward crime prevention and better delivery of mental health and addiction services.

“If you take the dollars that are being spent to warehouse people who have addiction and mental health problems, you take those dollars and redirect them at crime prevention programs that those people can get the chemical dependency treatment they need, they can get the mental health services they need,” Purdon said. “We are woefully behind a minimal constitutional standard for mental health care in the state of North Dakota.

“Look at the people coming out of prison and look at their recidivism rate. If you reduce that recidivism rate, give them a chance and integrate them back into society, you’ve reduced your crime rate.

“Reducing the recidivism rate isn’t hug a thug, this is making the community safer by making sure the folks coming back don’t reoffend.”

Concentrate on all three legs and incarceration rates will drop, he said.

Mandatory minimum sentences are one aspect of the current criminal justice system that needs change, Purdon said.

“Mandatory minimum sentences are a sledgehammer for every case, whether the case is an elephant or a gnat. We’ve got to get away from mandatory minimum sentences, particularly for people with addiction problems.”

The issue has become a hot topic today because the opioid crisis affects all levels of society, he said.

“The opioid crisis, unlike past drug crisis, hits populations in this country that have political power,” Purdon said. “Why are we talking about the opioid addiction as a national crisis as opposed to the crack epidemic? Why are we looking at it as a public safety issue instead of purely a criminal justice issue? It’s because its impacting communities that have some political power.

“It’s sad that that’s the case, but that is the case. There is a possibility that when you start to look at opioid addiction as a medical issue — and all addiction should be viewed as a medical issue, in my opinion — not necessarily a criminal justice issue but a health care medical issue, those folks need treatment, and hopefully that can support some of this recent bipartisan support for comprehensive criminal justice reform.”

Other states have begun taking dollars away from locking people up and putting funds toward treatment, and have reduced crime rates while reducing prison populations, Purdon said.

While mental health issues continue to be put on the political back burners, organizations like the F5 Project and volunteers like Frank Hunkler plan to continue struggling to find beds for the addicted, jobs for felons, words for the hurting.

“All that is lacking is people of goodwill putting partisan opinions and feelings aside and sitting as equals around a round table, with all stakeholders, and win this war on stigma and fear,” Hunkler said. “This fear of addiction and mental illness is based only in itself – fear.”

“It’s going to have to be a lot of awareness of the similarities between felons and non-felons, the similarities between the education system and the justice system, and how they’re treated, and the similarities between mom and dad approaches when it comes to people with felony backgrounds,” Adam Martin said. “When people see that and break the matrix in their minds, that’s when the help is really going to come.”

Andrew Gregerson, a drug addict, showing his scars and tattoos while in Cass County Jail – photograph by Logan Macrae

 

North Dakota’s Body Hunter, Seeker of the Missing and the Dead

April 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments
Human Trafficking Part 1: Missing persons posters are everywhere, stapled to telephone poles, taped to post office doors, fed through Facebook feeds and chats. They pop up every few days as desperate cries from family of loved ones who suddenly disappear. The posters are usually ignored, until the tragedy hits home, victims say. Sometimes, the missing are found, but most of the time their trails grow cold, police either don’t file reports or have no more leads, and that’s when Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase picks up the hunt. 

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – A body hunter’s untiring enemy is spring, with all its melting snow. While the days lengthen and the sun thaws the prairie grasses, Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase enters what she calls panic mode. 

Ponds flood, potentially covering evidence. Prairie grasses can grow up to seven feet tall. There are cadaver dogs to arrange, volunteers to enlist. Preparations take money, which comes in the form of donations and from her own pocket book. On the Dakota plains, snakes stir, looking for warmth. Coyotes grow brave from from lean winter months and begin to scavenge.

“I got tracked by a mountain lion once, and chased by a few buffalo,” Yellow Bird-Chase said. Most summer weekends she spends searching for corpses in the North Dakota plains. “Almost got the snot slapped out of me by a badger. Adds character, my son told me.”

Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase taking video of suspected burial area – photo by C.S. Hagen

Formerly a bounty hunter, she’s now a body hunter, an independent “seeker for the missing.” who like the badger, never gives up the hunt. The dead leave clues, sometimes hidden within juniper bushes or a few feet under disturbed topsoil in the Bakken oil patch. Clues point to trails – linked piece by seemingly inconsequential piece – sometimes hundreds of miles long. 

Many missing persons’ cases delve deep into North Dakota’s underworld of drugs, human trafficking, and cash-hungry oil workers. Yellow Bird-Chase has worked cases where men have been buried alive, where women have been shot execution style, and cases fit for a television miniseries season of “Fargo,” such as the double homicide-for-hire case stretching from North Dakota to Washington. 

“I’ve always been good at scouting people out,” Yellow Bird-Chase said. She is a Fargoan, and the founder of the nonprofit group Sahnish Scouts of North Dakota, a citizen-led organization dedicated since 2014 to finding missing people for their families. Sahnish means “the people” in Arikara. 

“If we knew there were dead somewhere, we would go and try and recover them,” Yellow Bird-Chase said. Her group started as a recovery team in the Bakken oil fields, and over time built a reputation. Her work attracted the attentions of the New York Times and Associated Press. Soon, the cries for help began pouring in. She has worked on dozens of missing persons’ cases over the years, and is currently focused on the case of Ron Johnson, who at 74 years of age went missing near Spirit Lake in 2011. 

She is also working the cases of: Kristopher “KC” Clarke, 29, Damon Boyd, 29, Edward Ashton Stubbs, 15, and Joseph Lee, 44, and her investigations take her to primarily four states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. 

Yellow Bird-Chase, 49, is part Arikara, part Mandan, part Hidatsa, and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She’s patient as a bullsnake, nimble as a Bighorn Sheep, leaping over “quick mud” and gullies. Deer, pheasants, and mountain bluebirds stop to watch. She calls to them. 

“Hey you, have you seen K.C.?” 

She’s been searching for Kristopher “K.C.” Clarke for nearly five years. The 29-year-old’s murderers are behind bars, but his body has never been found. 

Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase investigating a bone – photo by C.S. Hagen

Clarke was killed by a murderer-for-hire on February 22, 2012 after he left the overworked employment of his one-time Texas friend, James Terry Henrikson, “the boss,” an owner of the trucking company Blackstone, LLC. She began combing a part of the Badlands near Theodore Roosevelt National Park nearly two years before police caught the killers and obtained confessions. 

Shovels – photo by C.S. Hagen

She’s not psychic, she said; she simply has indescribable feelings, instincts, at times even forewarnings. Before police solved the case, she said she was threatened and her car wheel fell off on the interstate near Valley City. Not long after, the same thing happened to her daughter’s car, she said, which proved foul play. The murderers were trying to get rid of her, another on their growing hit list, she said.   

The searches intensified, and after five years she believes she is close to finding Clarke’s final resting place. She’s waiting on cadaver dogs, and even if the next massive search toward the end of April doesn’t succeed, she’s not giving up. 

“I’ll find him,” she said. Stratigraphic columns filled with layers of black coal, red fossil soils, and yellow paleosol fill her hunting ground behind her like a natural canvas, more precise and rugged than any Georgia O’Keeffe painting. 

Yellow Bird-Chase’ fingers are blackened from her day job as a welder, she works her “true calling” every summer weekend and most every other winter weekend. During the weekdays she works from her Fargo apartment, papers piled from dining room to office, an organized mess, she says, but still knows where everything is. 

During the years of searches, she experiments with the earth, sometimes filling holes with watermelons and then filling them in to see what happens to topography a year later; other times studying a corpse’s bone scatter by wild animals. 

Yellow Bird-Chase has three rules for everyone who helps on her searches: don’t fall behind, come prepared, and never lie. 

The Bakken – photo by C.S. Hagen

The oil murders 
Yellow Bird-Chase’s mission to find the missing and the dead began shortly after her release from prison on drug-related charges.

“About five years ago one of my aunt’s daughters called me and said, ‘Hey, there’s this white kid whose name is K.C. Clarke working in the oil fields and he went missing.’” Yellow Bird-Chase said. “He was white, and went missing on the rez.” 

She slipped into the gray area – the no man’s land between sovereign tribal law and US and state governments, she said. Native American communities fall under a combination of tribal, state, and federal laws. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is primarily responsible for investigating and prosecuting federal crimes such as murder and rape; misdemeanor cases are mostly prosecuted by tribal law enforcement, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who are typically first on any crime scene. 

Cattle, flaring, and oil on Fort Berthold Reservation- photo by C.S. Hagen

The law also differentiates Native American from the non-native, meaning BIA cannot investigate a crime committed by someone not belonging to the reservation, and federal or state police typically have legal troubles investigating a crime committed by a native who is on the reservation. Poor communication between tribal law enforcement, state, and federal authorities inadequate resources, and an increase in crime lead to a “maze of injustice” and loopholes those who know how to work the system can exacerbate. 

As a Native American and private citizen, Yellow Bird-Chase could help investigate both worlds, she said. 

“It was a jurisdictional conundrum, a big circle of jurisdictional denial,” she said. “At first, I was like, yeah, okay, whatever, but that started the big K.C. adventure.” 

Clarke’s murder led in part to the downfall of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation Chairman Tex Hall tight-fisted rule, and also to the arrests and later convictions of five men involved in two murders over Bakken oil money.

According to court documents of the United States District Court Eastern District of Washington, Henrikson hired Tim Suckow, 53, aka. “Donald Duck,” to kill his former friend for $20,000. 

James Terry Henrikson “the boss”

Clarke was a personable guy, according to Scott Travis Jones of the United States Attorney’s Office, who liked motorcycles. Yellow Bird-Chase agreed, but said the young man also had problems, like everyone else. Clarke became a salesman for Blackstone as he was constantly at customers’ job sites. He worked 24-hour-shifts, showered, and went out on another 24-hour shift repeatedly. He lived out of his pickup truck, and was not happy about it, Jones said. 

Clarke decided to jump the fence for Running Horse Trucking, a competitor of Blackstone due to the mistreatment. 

The decision “enraged” Henrikson, according to Jones, who said “He was going to kick K.C.’s ass, kill K.C., and that K.C. was stealing contracts from him.” His thoughts turned to murder, and he ordered Clarke to go on a mandatory vacation for two weeks. 

“The shop” where K.C. Clarke was killed – photo by C.S. Hagen

Hardly halfway through the vacation, Henrikson, through his wife at the time, Sarah Creveling, called Clarke back to “the shop,” a building the company worked out of and situated on Hall’s property. After Clarke placed a new handgun back into his pickup truck, Henrikson distracted Clarke with a new motorcycle while Suckow snuck up behind him and smashed him in the head with a floor jack, a tire-changing tool used for semi trucks. Four blows, and Clarke’s skull “went soft,” Suckow said. 

Clarke’s truck was first dumped outside of Watford City, and later moved to Williston, where the vehicle sat for four months along the side of a road, according to court documents. Clarke was put into a toilet box and buried in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. His handgun, a .45, was shredded by a Sawzall, and the barrel crushed.

For nearly two years, Clarke’s disappearance puzzled law enforcement and family, and not until DNA evidence found in a welding glove linked Suckow to a second murder of a Blackstone investor, Doug Carlile, did Clarke’s case break. Carlile was shot seven times in his Washington home over a plot of land supposedly rich with oil. Henrikson needed more investment, hundreds of millions to begin his own drilling operations, and potential investors didn’t like Carlile, court documents reported.

Yellow Bird-Chase said she learned about ill intentions toward Carlile and warned him twice. Both times, Carlile was more worried about his investments than to take the threat seriously. 

Once again, Henrikson turned to Suckow, who, along with accomplices Robby Wharer and Lazaro Pesina, later confessed to both murders, saying they were following Henrikson’s orders. 

Other Blackstone investors and a former business partner were targeted by Henrikson, according to court documents. One man on Henrikson’s hit list, Jed McClure, escaped unscathed after Todd Bates, hired Chicago hitman Martin Marvin “The Wiz” to kill McClure. McClure was also an original investor in Blackstone who claimed early on that Henrikson and former wife were fraudsters, and were complicit in Clarke’s disappearance.

Jay Wright, a former employee, and Tim Scott, to whom Henrikson owed money, were also on Henrikson’s hit list, according to court documents. 

Man camp – photo by C.S. Hagen

The entire ordeal began with rights to work on Native American lands. Henrikson obtained three Tier 1 “TERO” cards, which helped him obtain special preference for bidding on contracts, according to court documents. After being fired from two companies, Henrikson’s vehicle “conveniently broke down in front of Hall’s home.” He asked for help, and over time Henrikson and the chairman struck up a business partnership, according to court documents. Although Hall denied they had a relationship outside of business, Henrikson took Hall’s adopted daughter, Peyton Martin, as his mistress, and both men were photographed together while on vacation in Hawaii.

Henrikson is currently serving two life sentences plus thirty years in a high-security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, according to the Bureau of Prisons. His right-hand hitman, Suckow has found religion and is serving a total of 30 years for both murders. Wharer is serving 10-year sentence for driving the getaway car, and Pesina a 12-year sentence for breaking into Carlile’s home. Others involved are also serving time behind bars. 

 

The hunt goes on
Before Clarke’s murder was solved, Yellow Bird-Chase posted more than 50,000 fliers, she said. She met with Homeland Security, sheriff’s deputies, and court officials regularly, trying to learn news of Clarke’s body. Clarke’s family and information off the Internet helped direct her searches, but she still searches. 

Not long from her release from prison, Yellow Bird-Chase said her initial involvement in hunting the missing and the dead changed her life. 

Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase comparing maps – photo by C.S. Hagen

“I always had that carrot in front of my head,” Yellow Bird-Chase said. “Okay, I don’t have to worry about the dope, just have to wait until I get out of prison. Okay, I just got to wait until Im off parole, okay, I just got to wait until I am off probation. When I was getting off probation, I was like, ‘Oh, shit,’ I was doing good. My head was clear, but there were so many things. I felt guilty for what I did: helping people with their addictions, so I wanted to find a way to give back.”  

She missed the first years of North Dakota’s oil boom, and when she returned to the area to search for Clarke’s body, she experienced a type of culture shock, she said. 

“Buzzing traffic, oil workers, oil drills pumping up and down. I had to acclimate myself to this whole situation. There were a million people all over the place where before there wasn’t anybody.” 

Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase on the hunt in the Badlands – photo by C.S. Hagen

Her search for Clarke’s body so far has been comparable to “looking for teal-covered sand at the bottom of the ocean.” Clarke’s body was identified by both men who assisted in his death and ensuing coverup, but both men pinpointed the burial site with a difference of a quarter of a mile, according to court documents.

In those days, law enforcement rarely helped her, she said. “I’m kinda known as the fire under people’s asses,” she said. “I will call them out, I will go to jail for it, I don’t care. If someone has a missing family member, I will find them. I know what to do. If the police have a problem with that, how are you going to deny a family their loved one? It’s either you don’t care or you’re just lay. Or maybe you’re not educated and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do.”

She has distracted police while her volunteers fan out to search, once finding a body that had evaded police for hours within thirty minutes, she said. 

Blue bird – photo by C.S. Hagen

“Before I was met with, ‘You can’t be here, or you’re impeding an investigation,’” she said. “They used to see me as a threat, now they see me as a threat that won’t go away. Now we have the full cooperation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we’ve even been offered assistance on any reservation in the United States from that department. 

“It’s been a long time coming, but it made a complete turn around.” She’s even had “anonymous tips” from law enforcement leading her in directions the police didn’t go, she said. 

Morton County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on one case Yellow Bird-Chase is working in their jurisdiction, according to Morton County Public Information Officer Maxine Herr. 

Ground soaked with oil spills at unattended storage area near Fort Berthold Reservation- photo by C.S. Hagen

Official statistics aren’t accurate, she said. Rarely do families report missing people immediately, and police sometimes fail to file a report, which is crucial in order for discovering information on national databases on any potential victim. Many of the missing are victims of crime, but many more fall prey to human trafficking. 

NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, reports North Dakota currently has 31 open cases of missing people. 

Reports of human trafficking in North Dakota have been on the rise since 2012, according to the Human Trafficking Hotline Center. In 2016, a total of 66 calls were made, resulting in 19 active cases, compared to a total of six human trafficking cases in 2012. 

Director of the state’s human trafficking coalition FUSE (Force to End Human Sexual Exploitation), Christina Sambor, reported that the North Dakota Human Trafficking Task Force assisted with 79 cases of human trafficking in 2016. A total of 66 victims were involved in sex trafficking, while 26 victims were children. 

Fargo’s most recent trafficking case ended on March 10, when nine people were arrested in a joint undercover operation, according to the Fargo Police Department. Among those arrested, five were from Fargo, one was from Bismarck, one from Grand Forks, and another from Halstad, Minnesota. All face felony arrests for Patronizing a Minor for Commercial Sexual Activity, a Class A felony punishable up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. 

One of the men arrested was Dan Kenneth Durr, 42, president and CEO of Don’s Car Washes, Inc. Don’s Car Wash began in 1958, and Durr took over the company as president after Duane Durr retired, he said in an interview on Fargo/Moorhead/West Fargo Chamber of Commerce. 

Although Native Americans in North Dakota comprise only five percent of the population, they are the hardest hit ethnic group from human trafficking, according to North Dakota Council on Abused Women’s Services or CAWS North Dakota.

“The rate of violent crime estimated against Native Americans is well above that of other U.S. racial or ethnic groups and more than two times the national average,” CAWS North Dakota reported.  

Senator Heidi Heitkamp D-N.D., is an avid fighter against human trafficking, and released a podcast earlier this year called “The Hotdish,” a platform for discussing issues to combat the traffic of abducted humans. 

“Human trafficking is a serious problem worldwide, and unfortunately North Dakota is no exception,” Heitkamp announced on her U.S. Senate website. “North Dakota is no stranger to this horrible crime. Places like Minot, where we rescued a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old when their mothers discovered them on Backpages,” Heitkamp stated in her podcast. “How in the world can we allow that to happen in our country?” 

She highlighted a website called Backpage, reportedly a major facilitator of human trafficking. A report released to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in early January cited Backpage on its role in trafficking, particularly with minors. 

Although Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer refused to comment during the hearing, the website shut down its adult section of its website, according to the U.S. Senate.

Yellow Bird-Chase said statistics don’t reflect reality. “For North Dakota, as big of denial as they’re in, it’s not so much that it has increased, for population, it’s probably the same. We have a new culture of sex workers here, and they’re not afraid or are inhibited by letting people know what they’re up to. It’s always been here.” 

Picture taken during a search – photo provided by Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase

Because of Yellow Bird-Chase’s past, she can’t become a private detective, she said. She loves her job as a welder, but her true calling always beckons. She is searching for a grant writer, and volunteers help with raising funds. 

“I would like to do this full time, but I’m not going to have an agency telling me what is a priority case.” 

Dozens of missing persons are listed on the Sahnish Scouts of North Dakota Facebook page. Most are young, female; some are children. 

“When you don’t have any closure it’s hard to know how to grieve,” Yellow Bird-Chase said. “Some people just write it off and don’t talk about it ever again. And there’s some people who talk about it nonstop night and day, and they die of a broken heart because they never find out what happened to their loved one.” 

All missing people should be reported immediately, and family or friends should obtain a report number, she said. 

“If that person is missing for five seconds, you can call it in and they have to take a report. Get that officer’s name and thee report number. Once you get that report number, call me.” 

To support Yellow Bird-Chase and the Sahnish Scouts of North Dakota donations can be made to: https://www.youcaring.com/sahnishscoutsofnorthdakota-769883 

Into the Bakken sunset – photo by C.S. Hagen

Sophie Linda Landin - "Tolerance by Oppression" - wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

US Senator Calls on BIA to Clear Anti-DAPL Camps

January 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Standing Rock supporters living with record snowfalls and freezing temperatures remain undaunted

By C.S. Hagen
BISMARCK – North Dakota National Guard units, 1,300 law enforcement officers,  585 arrests, and 22 million dollars apparently isn’t enough for the Peace Garden State to stop Standing Rock’s fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, politicians report. 

State politicians are now calling on the Bureau of Indian Affairs to help remove activists from camps along the Cannonball River.

“We want more BIA law enforcement officers working with our state and local law enforcement to move protestors off the Corps land in an orderly way,” Senator John Hoeven R-N.D., said. 

All of Hoeven’s guns are blazing as in the same breath he admitted to “working forward” with President-elect Donald Trump’s Administration on the pipeline project, with the US Department of Interior nominee Ryan Zinke R-Mont., and with the BIA’s new director Bruce Loudermilk to discuss the quick dispersal of activists against the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is a federal agency established in 1824 under the jurisdiction of the US Department of the Interior. 

Hoeven’s petition to add more officers to the standoff between law enforcement and anti-DAPL activists is in preparation for potential spring floods, which according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Michael Mathews is still months away. Snowfalls have reached record depths of 55.3 inches this winter for the Bismarck area, Mathews said, and old man winter shows no signs of slowing down.

The State Water Commission reported a growing potential for spring floods of the main Dakota Access Pipeline camp location, putting the activists camped there at risk, State Engineer Garland Erbele said.  

Mathews could make no predictions about spring flooding. “It’s too early to tell,” Mathews said. “We don’t have much in the way of snowfall for the next couple of days. February stays pretty cold, and usually that goes through March or April, sometimes even May. It’s just too early to tell.” 

“It would be a pretty big hardship to take that on right now,” Winona Laduke said of Hoeven’s petition to clear the camps. Laduke is a longtime environmentalist, economist, and two-time vice presidential candidate for Ralph Nader’s Green Party. She is also the executive director for Honor the Earth, a non-profit advocate for indigenous environmental support.“Most of the native people have a long understanding of weather patterns, and wise decisions will be made by people who have lived there for thousands of years.”

“I think this is just a total inappropriate overreaction of our US government and military, it continues the mismanagement that started with Governor Dalrymple in calling out the National Guard,” Barry Nelson said. He is an organizer for the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition. “The tradition continues.” 

Although Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II has asked for activists to return home, hundreds remain at the camps along the Cannonball River in below freezing temperatures.

“It appears that the new management at the camp have it under control, why not trust them?” Nelson said. “They’re demonstrating some realistic and reasonable approaches to this, we should trust their instincts. Why not going down and show some concern? No, let’s just lob something from Washington DC. 

“A threat.”

Like a much anticipated prize fight, heavyweight North Dakota, pitted against welterweight Standing Rock, has delivered blow after crushing blow, and yet the tribe refuses to go down. 

From the beginning of the controversy, former Governor Jack Dalrymple has lied to HPR Magazine about meeting with Archambault on a regular basis. The former governor also declared a state of emergency in August 2016, utilizing approximately 1,300 officers from 25 North Dakota counties, 20 cities, and nine states have been used to keep anti-DAPL activists in check. Half truths, falsehoods, and some truths have been reported on both sides of the front lines. An unarmed activist was placed on Morton County’s Most Wanted List and later arrested for disarming a fully-armed infiltrator in November. 

Sophie Linda Landin – “Tolerance by Oppression” – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

Activists have been torn from prayer circles, maced, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, bean bags, beaten with clubs, on lands the Standing Rock Sioux still claim as their own. Men and women have been arrested, “branded” with numbers using magic markers like cattle, or Nazi inmates during World War II, and then thrown into dog cages. Hundreds have been injured. Many more lack proper legal counsel. 

The list continues. Another uppercut was delivered to Standing Rock on January 5 when Hoeven was elected chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, according to a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs press release. After attempting to thwart Native American voices from the DAPL controversy’s beginning, the blow was called a cheap shot by many. 

Hoeven, a former North Dakota governor, an active supporter of the Keystone Pipeline and the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, said he was honored to serve on the committee, but added two of his top priorities were to address job creation and natural resource management issues on native lands. 

“One would assume with Indian affairs you would have someone who would have genuine concern of Indian people,” Laduke said. 

Despite Standing Rock’s win on December 4 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access Pipeline, the easement needed to drill across the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, the tribe has had few legal victories to celebrate.

As Trump prepares to take office on January 20, threatening to dismantle President Obama’s work, and reactivating pipelines across the nation, few activists appear worried. 

“It’s happening fam,” attorney and long term activist Chase Iron Eyes said. “We’re going to defeat an empire. We have nothing to lose but the poverty imposed on us. We have nothing to gain but our dignity.” 

As Trump promises a better tomorrow by nominating white supremacists and oil tycoons, Senator Heidi Heitkamp R-N.D., issued a statement asking for North Dakotans input. 

“Any president should be able to nominate those who he feels will best serve in his administration,” Heitkamp said. “It’s critical for me to hear from North Dakotans and I encourage folks to visit my website to share their comments and offer questions they have to help make sure the nominees are prepared to lead our country.” 

“Cavalry of Peace” is Coming

November 26, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Thousands of US veterans plan to converge on Standing Rock, elected officials praise Army Corps deadline, and Morton County Sheriff’s Department uses Craigslist as vetted intelligence

By C.S. Hagen
CANNONBALL – A flurry of activity followed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers threat to Standing Rock that the tribe has 9 days left to evacuate camps situated against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“The letter means nothing to us,” Nick Tilsen, co-founder of the Indigenous People’s Power Project, said. “Indigenous people are here to stay, and we’re not going to move unless it’s on our own terms, because this is our treaty land, this is our ancestral land, and this is where our people have been for thousands of years.”

No one at the camp is fearful, Tilsen said. Months of ceremony and training have eradicated all fear, leaving only a deep love for their people and their land. “Our purpose here is to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

“Any person found to be on the Corps lands north of the Cannonball River after December 5, 2016, will be considered trespassing and may be subject to prosecution under federal, state, and local laws… any person who chooses to stay on these Corps’ lands… does so at their own risk,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Omaha District Commander John W. Henderson stated in Friday’s letter.

Despite the deadline, Standing Rock spokesperson Sue Evans said the tribe is determined as ever to protect its land and water.

“The timing of this latest action by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is demoralizing and disrespectful for Native Americans and the millions of peaceful water protectors and supporters in America and across the globe who are standing with Standing Rock to protect the water and 17 million Americans downstream on the river,” Evans said.

The chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Harold Frazier, condemned the deadline, saying the Army Corps “dangerously and profoundly misunderstands the basic function and status of a tribal government and its elected leaders.”

Veterans from around the nation are signing up to travel to Standing Rock on December 5, the final day Oceti Sakowin, or the Seven Council Fires camp is allowed to stand on Army Corps lands.

Governor Jack Dalrymple praised the Army Corps decision, but insisted federal agencies must be responsible for clearing the camps.

“Our state and local law enforcement agencies continue to do all they can to keep private property and public infrastructure free from unpermitted protest activities, and its past time that the federal government provides the law enforcement resources needed to support public safety and to enforce their own order to vacate,” Dalrymple said. “For more than 100 days now, the federal government has allowed protesters to illegally entrench themselves on Corps land and it is the federal government’s responsibility to lead the camp’s peaceful closure.”

The land Dalrymple described is Army Corps land, where Oceti Sakowin was setup. It was originally included in the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty as the tribal land, and taken from the Standing Rock Sioux without consent when it was condemned after devastation from the Pick-Sloan legislation.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp R-N.D., said the Army Corps decision is a relief after more than four months of violence. “The decision by the Army Corps is a needed step to support the safety of residents, workers, protesters, and law enforcement,” Heitkamp said in a press release. “For too long, we have waited in limbo as the decision is put off. This issue needs to be put to rest once and for all for the sake of the safety of our communities.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map of the area surrounding Oceti Sakowin

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map of the area surrounding Oceti Sakowin

Eryn Wise, of the Indigenous Youth Council and niece of Ladonna Allard, the woman who began the movement on Sacred Stone Camp, said sanctioned harm against Mother Earth will not be allowed. “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers need to realize that these are children we are protecting… and we will continue to make our stand,” Wise said during a press conference.

She questioned the Army Corps creation of a free speech zone. “I just wanted to clarify for everyone, and you guys correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the United States was a free speech zone.”

Dallas Goldtooth, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said the Army Corps letter was a “disgusting continuation” of 500 years of colonization.

“It’s absurd for us to see such a declaration the day after Thanksgiving, but that’s the state of affairs we are in,” Goldtooth said. “This is the land where our ancestors come from, this is the land where our ancestors dreamed of our existence, of our songs, and of our future lives. In defense of our dreams and in defense of our ancestors we stand strong. We stand strong to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth. We stand strong to defend our rights as indigenous peoples, we stand strong to defend our territorial treaty rights.

“We got this,” Goldtooth said. “This is nothing new to us as native people. We’ve been here before and we’ve gotten through this. These are just intimidation statements, things to put us into a reactionary space, and we refuse to be put into a reactionary space.”

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II said the foremost action the Army Corps can take to ensure peace is to permanently deny the easement needed for Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River at Lake Oahe. Additionally, the Army Corps sent its letter to all tribes involved at Standing Rock, and is trying to pressure the tribe, Archambault said.

“We have an escalating situation where safety is a concern for everybody,” Archambault said. “They’ve given us notice, because they want to reduce their liability when something serious happens.”

The main camp, Oceti Sakowin, is on a floodplain, Archambault said, and leadership is currently planning its next steps. “We’re trying to be proactive for when a situation comes. I don’t think the Army Corps of Engineers will come on the fifth. I don’t think anybody is going to come. The Morton County police would have jurisdiction over these lands if ever there are any crimes taking place. We’re not committing any crimes. If Morton County wanted to, they would be able to come in and move us. I don’t think that will happen.

“What they gave us is a notice that these public lands are no long available for hunting, for fishing, and for recreation, recreation can include camping, but what we’re doing here is exercising our First Amendment right, and we’re not breaking any laws.”

The Army Corps does not have an armed force, so they would have to call in other agencies to forcibly evict. “If it was to happen, we need to be given notice, so we can ensure a lot of the property is not damaged. I don’t think it will be an eviction where forces will come and push people off.”

Tribal leaders reported a total of 748 tribal nations are currently at Standing Rock.

No DAPL sign along Highway 1806 - photo by C.S. Hagen

No DAPL sign along Highway 1806 – photo by C.S. Hagen

Paid Protesters

Citing Craigslist as a vetted source for information, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier called the activists at Standing Rock, “paid protesters.”

“The energy these paid agitators and protesters exerted to try and draw our law enforcement into confrontations did not work,” Kirchmeier said. “We will respond in kind to any advances protesters make on our line. It’s their decision and they can bring an end to this.”

His department added they know the protesters are paid from information on Craigslist in New York and Fargo.

“This is from intel that has come into us from people saying they were paid to Craigslist ads in NY and Fargo asking for people to give up their job and get paid to come to Standing Rock,” Morton County Sheriff’s Department reported.

Many activists, journalists, photographers, and even the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have asked for donations to assist actions and basic survival against the Dakota Access Pipeline, but such solicitations do not fit the definition of hiring for protest.

Fargo Police Department reported no actions taken at West Acres Shopping Center on November 18, the day an ad in Craigslist appeared calling for people to quit their jobs, be paid USD 1,000, and converge at the shopping mall. Valley News Live Chris Berg reported on the anonymous advertisement on November 16.

“Someone is soliciting to pay #NoDAPL protesters in Fargo via Craigslist,” Berg wrote. “He is inviting people to show up at West Acres Mall…”

The advertisement gave no indication if a male or female posted the advertisement on Craigslist.

Additionally on November 25, a pro DAPL protest advertisement hit Craigslist. “Let’s support DAPL by shutting down the Main Avenue McDonalds on Friday,” the advertisement read. “I will pay $50 to any adults who show up. Come on oil protectors. This is not a hoax this is real.”

The Fargo Police Department had no records of any responses for a pro DAPL protest at McDonalds on Friday.

Morton County has spent more than 10 million tax dollars in its actions against Standing Rock and Supporters, soliciting assistance from nearly 1,300 officers from 25 North Dakota counties, 20 cities, and nine states.

 

Veterans for Standing Rock

Michael James, an Absentee Shawnee, the warrior clan of the Shawnee tribe, is a veteran with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard. He’s planning to travel to Oceti Sakowin with Veterans for Standing Rock on December 5.

“Mother Earth is calling her children to help,” James said.

One of the group’s organizers, Michael A Wood Jr., is a retired Baltimore police officer and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. On his Twitter account, Wood posted, “We with #VeteranStandingRock are deploying to prevent this state sanctioned violence on peaceful protectors… We look to be 2,000 strong and need to transition into a continuous operation.

“The Cavalry of Peace is coming.”

Veterans for Standing Rock include the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Coast Guard, and are planning to assemble as a “peaceful, unarmed militia” at Standing Rock from December 4 through December 7, according to the group’s Facebook page.

They have a roster of 2,100 people, and told its members to prepare for mace, sound cannons, sniper guns, rubber bullets, attack dogs, concussion grenades, and the effects of hyperthermia. “Bring body armor, gas masks, earplugs, and shooting mufflers (we may be facing a sound cannon) but no drugs, alcohol or weapons.

“Let’s stop this savage injustice being committed right here at home,” the group’s introduction states. “If not us, who? If not now, when? Are you a hero? Are you honorable? Not if you allow this to be the United States.”

Tribal leadership reported at least 1,500 veterans are scheduled to arrive on December 4.

Gray Eminence: Power Behind Dakota Access

September 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

The fourth story in the continuing fight spearheaded by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against Big Oil to save water and sacred indigenous lands in North Dakota

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO, ND – The true power behind the Dakota Access Pipeline extends beyond the private sector and into state leadership. This gray eminence – or power behind the proverbial throne – rivals the story books both ancient and modern, truth and fiction.

Such as China’s Empress Dowager Cixi who was the iron will behind Qing Dynasty’s last emperor, Puyi, or Dick Cheney, dubbed the “intellectual godfather” of President George W. Bush’s administration. In North Dakota, politicians have been bought, unilaterally across the state by big oil and gas lobbyists, according to statesmen and analysts. Some have invested heavily into Bakken oil interests declaring profits for the good of North Dakota’s infrastructure.

“We are where we are… and having difficulties today because only one side has been able to really participate in the decision making in North Dakota that’s totally dominated by the oil industry,” Don Morrison, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, said. “So what’s happened is our elected officials – every single one of them – is supported by the oil industry.”

The USD 3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline project has drawn thousands of activists together to an encampment outside of Cannon Ball, ND, in what is known as the largest gathering of Native Americans in 140 years, since the Battle of the Greasy Grass, where Colonel George Armstrong Custer made his infamous “last stand.”

It isn’t the first time North Dakota has leapt into the oil race, with the best intentions, but the state is now blindly following big oil’s agenda and supporting it with every law possible, Chase Iron Eyes, a lawyer and the Democratic challenger for the US House or Representatives for North Dakota, said. Iron Eyes has no support from the oil and gas sector in his 2016 race against Congressman Kevin Cramer R-N.D.

“It is a conflict of interest,” Iron Eyes said. “As a lawyer, I would get in trouble for that. In this case the client is the people of North Dakota, and it is obvious what has happened in the last 10 years. Our politicians do not do what is best for the people.”

Ten years ago, most people in North Dakota supported responsible growth in the Bakken Formation. Today, however, an unhealthy environment of either you are either for oil, or against oil, with no room in-between, has emerged, Morrison said.

“The power of the oil industry in so many ways sets the agenda of North Dakota. It’s what they do,” Morrison said. “They dominate. They’ don’t listen to anyone else’s opinion. Why? Because North Dakota elected officials have decided that’s the future of North Dakota, and that they don’t want to fight the oil industry.

“Every time questions are raised about this, people are accused that they want the oil industry to go away. And it’s been designed by the politicians to do the bidding of the oil industry.”

Iron Eyes wants responsible growth in the state, but on North Dakota’s terms. As a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, founder of the Last Real Indians website, and an activist who challenged white supremacists’ attempt to take over the town of Leith, North Dakota in 2013, Iron Eyes said today’s oil conundrum is the fallout from politically-motivated personal interests and big oil pressure from behind the scenes.

chase-iron-eyes-marching-with-activists-at-ndsu

Chase Iron Eyes marching with activists at NDSU – photo by C.S. Hagen

On Friday, Iron Eyes arrived in Fargo to march with advocates of Standing Rock at North Dakota State University. Approximately 40 students and supporters attended the march. Prayers were said. Every participant was smudged with sweetgrass. Before marching, Iron Eyes recalled the day in 2010 when he saw – for the first time – big oil lobbyists in Bismarck’s YMCA.

“I thought, oh no, big oil is moving in,” Iron Eyes said. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but now I know it was the conglomerate that began pulling our state in this direction. I’m running for Congress out of necessity. I take a look around and I see that our government is broken, and I feel responsible to do my part to try and fix this on behalf of North Dakota.”

The Dakota Access Pipeline will also have a negative effect on the railway and trucking industries, Iron Eyes said. Iron Eyes has received numerous emails from labor unions and shipping industries asking him questions. “I don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes, but it’s all about who gets the money, who gets the authority to transport.”

Not everyone believes big oil’s agenda is pulling North Dakota’s strings, rather that state and big oil interests are aligned. Bismarck Mayor Mike Seminary said that although the possibility of conflicts of interests exists, he doesn’t believe it to be true among North Dakota’s current politicians.

“I think it is par for the course across the board,” Seminary said. “I don’t think that’s a conflict of interest. It always bothers me when people go there. I would never ever, ever question whatever motive they have for making investments. They’re trying to get a return. For the better part of eight years that was one of the best places to get money if you wanted a return.”

Recently, the “Commission,” or North Dakota Industrial Commission, Oil and Gas Division, a government agency established in 1919 to manage certain utilities, currently comprised of Governor Jack Dalrymple, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, and Agricultural Commissioner Doug Goehring, pushed big oil agenda by attempting to ban the public sector from testifying, or having any input at Commission meetings. Only “interested parties,” which would have included project owners and landowners would have been allowed to testify, if the suggestion had been ratified.

Open processes are difficult, Senator Erin Oban said at the April 11, 2016 hearing about new rules for state oil regulation, but they are necessary.

“It would have been easier, I suppose, to limit that process and to only allow a select few to testify,” Oban said. “But my job as a public servant is not to make things easier for me, it’s to make it open and accessible to the public.”

President of the labor advocacy group North Dakota AFL-CIO, Waylon Hedegaard, attended the same meeting, and said big oil has cozied up to North Dakota politicians, effecting legislation, and twisting policy to their collective wills.

“I believe everything we do has to be done to the best of our abilities,” Hedegaard said. “Our government has to regulate to the highest degree, achieve the highest quality, we have to hire the most skilled craftsmen, the most skilled people, and our government has not regulated the oil field nearly to the extent it should have.”

The lack or regulation concerning oil drilling, fracking, waste disposal, and crude transportation has created the perception that all construction in the Bakken region is about bad players putting poor pipes into the ground, Hedegaard said. Hedegaard also asked the Commission to strike the amendment from the proposed rules.

“The essence of democracy is that everyone who thinks they are a stakeholder in something comes together vocally, or gets their opinion out there, and then argues over it and we come to a compromise,” Hedegaard said. “It is not democracy when there’s another group of people limiting who has interest in a certain thing. Democracy is a messy thing.”

Activists on the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, ND - photo by C.S. Hagen

Activists on the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, ND – photo by C.S. Hagen

Rocks, according to retired correctional officer Eric Thompson, are the only disinterested party to big oil interests.

“If a party drinks water, oil and gas developers could take a minute to make them an interested party,” Thompson said at the hearing. “If a party breathes air, oil and gas developers could take a minute because air is a requirement for life.”

During recent legislative processes, oil companies have frequently opposed changes, and continue to do so stating the “crackdown” is too expensive and that the timing is bad – oil price decline has caused steep inactivity in drilling in North Dakota. No oil companies stepped forward to oppose the “interested party” amendment, according to Commission records.

North Dakota, the second-biggest oil producing state in the USA, and among the ten largest oil patches in the world, has historically been lackadaisical about instating stricter regulations. A spirit of leniency toward oil companies has been fostered in North Dakota, analysts said. Criticism over lowering fines for oil and saltwater spills has mounted. In January 2016 the Commission agreed to scrutinize the issues, but behind close doors.

Some of the state’s top politicians are chairmen or members of regulating agencies governing big oil and Native American interests. Additionally, big oil supports the political campaigns for Dalrymple, Senator John Hoeven, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, and Cramer, making their voice, according to some, tainted.

Kevin Cramer

Kevin Cramer

Congressman Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where some of the largest legislative battles regarding oil regulation are started. Cramer is also a member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (Energy and Commerce), and a member of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, and has served on the North Dakota Indian Affairs Committee. Cramer’s largest campaign contributor is the oil and gas sector with a total of USD 138,500, Xcel Energy contributed USD 12,000, and Tesoro Corp. contributed USD 11,000.

John Hoeven

John Hoeven

Senator John Hoeven, R-N.D., is on the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and also a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Hoeven is a member of the Subcommittee on Energy, the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining, and the Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy. Hoeven’s largest campaign contributor is the oil and gas sector with a total of USD 327,963, including Continental Resources, Inc. and its CEO, Harold Hamm, who collectively donated USD 18,200. ExxonMobil contributed USD 10,000, and Whiting Petroleum Corporation contributed USD 2,750. Energy Transfer Partners donated USD 5,000 to Hoeven’s 2016 campaign. Hoeven has invested in 68 different oil-producing wells in North Dakota listed under the 2012-company Mainstream Investors, LLC, according to the United States Senate financial disclosure form.

Jack Dalrymple

Jack Dalrymple

Governor Jack Dalrymple, R-N.D., a long-time advocate of oil interests, chairman of the Commission, and is also the chairman of the Commission and the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission. The top supporter for Dalrymple’s most recent campaign is the oil and gas sector with USD 467,290 in donations, and Hamm personally donated USD 20,000, while Hess Corporation’s CEO John Hess gave USD 25,000. Dalrymple has stated he will not run for a second term.

Heidi Heitkamp

Heidi Heitkamp

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy, and a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The tenth-ranking supporter for Heitkamp’s campaign is the energy and natural resource sector, according to Vote Smart, and the oil and gas sector is the third largest contributor to Heitkamp’s 2016 campaign with a total of USD 258,379, according to Open Secrets. Hess Corp donated USD 19,600, BP contributed USD 17,750, Continental Resources, Inc. donated USD 17,500, American Petroleum Institute donated USD 13,250, and Xcel Energy donated USD 13,000.

Chase Iron Eyes

Chase Iron Eyes

Chase Iron Eyes, D-N.D. has raised USD 82,127 in 2016, running as the challenger for District 1 as a Democrat. Iron Eyes has no support from oil and gas or energy and natural resources sectors, and his largest contributing sector is casinos and gambling. Ho-Chunk Nation is top supporter with a donation of USD 5,400.

Kelley Warren

Kelcy Warren

Kelcy Warren, the main force behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, founder of Energy Transfer Partners, is worth USD 7.3 billion, according to Bloomberg, Dakota Access Pipeline quietly purchased 6,000 acres last week of private ranch land near to Camp of the Sacred Stone – the historic Cannon Ball Ranch, which begs questions on how the purchase was made possible. Energy Transfer Partners donated USD 304,200 in 2016 and USD 581,300 in 2014 to political campaigns.

Harold Hamm

Harold Hamm

Harold Hamm, Bakken fracking mogul, and Continental Resources, Inc. CEO, long time financial supporter of North Dakota’s politicians, and worth approximately USD 13.8 billion, according to Forbes. Hamm is currently the campaign energy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and is a candidate for energy secretary of the United States if Trump is elected in 2016.

  • Top national recipients of support from Continental Resources, Inc. 2016
    • 3rd Place: Heidi Heitkamp – USD 11,300
    • 4th Place: Donald Trump – USD 10,928
    • 5th Place: John Hoeven – USD 10,200
    • 14th Place: Kevin Cramer – USD 5,000
    • In 2014, Continental Resources donated USD 6,200 to Heidi Heitkamp, and USD 3,500 to Kevin Cramer
  • Top national recipients of support from Hess Corp. 2016
    • 2nd Place: John Hoeven – USD 20,800
    • 8th Place: Kevin Cramer – USD 10,000
    • 19th Place: Heidi Heitkamp – USD 3,500
    • In 2014, Hess Corp donated USD 15,600 to Heidi Heitkamp and USD 2,600 to Kevin Cramer
  • Top national recipients of support from BP 2016
    • 5th Place: Heidi Heitkamp – USD 15,700
    • 100th Place: John Hoeven – USD 1,000
    • In 2014, BP donated USD 2,000 to both Heidi Heitkamp and John Hoeven
  • Top national recipients of support from Energy Transfer Partners 2016
    • 6th Place: John Hoeven – USD 5,000
    • In 2014, Energy Transfer Partners donated USD 1,500 to both Kevin Cramer and Heidi Heitkamp

– financial statements made available by Vote Smart and OpenSecrets Center for Responsive Politics – statistics do not reflect Dark Money groups, or educational or membership building donations.

Every day, 1,027,131 barrels of oil are produced in North Dakota, and a total of 1,662,917 thousand cubic feet of natural gasses are produced from 13,248 wells, according to the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Mineral Resources.

Since January 2016, more than 100,900 gallons of crude oil, waste oil, bio solids, natural gas, and brine were spilled in North Dakota and surrounding areas, according to the North Dakota Department of Health records. Approximately 50,000 gallons of slaked lime solids slid into the Missouri River in June causing unknown impacts, according to the North Dakota Department of Health.

Few companies involved in the spills have been fined. In January, the Commission reviewed six outstanding spill cases with fines totaling USD 600,000, according to the Bismarck Tribune. Additionally, past spills are still being cleaned up around the state, such as the Tesoro Corp. spill of 2013, the XTO Energy, and the Oasis Petroleum Inc. spills of 2014 and 2015, according to Bill Suess, Spill Investigation Program manager of North Dakota Department of Health.

Spills occur on a daily basis, Suess said, the cleanup is costly, and companies are rarely fined.

“Not every one gets fined,” Suess said. “Usually we hold off as long as we can on the fines because it is a motivator to get them cleaning it up.”

The North Dakota Industrial Commission’s policy on levying fines for damaging spills is unclear, and is usually negotiated then settled for a fraction of the initial fine. In 2015 and 2016 the Commission proposed a total of USD 4,525,000 in penalties, collecting USD 125,976, and suspending for one year a total of USD 461,250. No violations were reportedly committed, according to the Commission.

“Although generally reported otherwise, fines are never forgiven,” the Commission’s Public Information Officer Alison Ritter said. Every fine is a legal process, and if a company contests a fine the case will be taken to court. “Fines are suspended for a period of time, usually a year, to encourage changed behavior from a company.”

Wild West: Cowboys vs. Indians

Racism against Native Americans in North Dakota, is prevalent across the state. Nearly every activist who stands to speak in Big Camp’s Sacred Circle mentions racism, oppression, and genocide, in one form or another.

North Dakota Highway Patrol logo

North Dakota State Highway Patrol logo

From the logo emblazoned on State Highway Patrol vehicles – Sitting Bull’s killer Marcellus Red Tomahawk – who was from Cannon Ball area, to whistleblowers in 2012 condemning federal and state authorities of allowing native children to be placed in homes with sexual predators, to the recent use of attack dogs against activists, to blatant disregard and ignorance for native cultures, to big companies armed with eminent domain laws whose only concern is profit, to North Dakota politicians, namely Cramer during a 2013 meeting with Abused Women Services, who verbally attacked and threatened Native Americans.

The list goes on. The State Highway Patrol’s emblem is a constant reminder of oppression, many activists said. From the beginning of the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not include Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in meaningful discussions, the lawsuit filed by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stated. Native archeologists have been ignored, activists said. Petitions for consultation as a sovereign nation went unanswered, according to court documents. Morton County law enforcement is working under standard operating procedures, without regard to native practices or culture, officials said. And now, Dakota Access Pipeline quietly purchased 6,000 acres of private ranch land near to Camp of the Sacred Stone – the historic Cannon Ball Ranch. A blow to Standing Rock Sioux some say is below the belt.

Buffalo drinking from pond near the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline - by C.S. Hagen

Buffalo drinking from pond near Cannon Ball Ranch – photo by C.S. Hagen

Twenty parcels of the Cannon Ball Ranch, established 1883 and inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1999, was sold to Dakota Access Pipeline by David and Kathy Meyer on September 22, for an undisclosed sum. The area lies west of Highway 1806 where the Standing Rock Sioux claim burial grounds and other sacred sites were disturbed on September 3, the day of the attack dogs and pepper spray that injured at least eight people, according to camp attorney Angela Bibens.

“The signs are there, as far as the fear politics,” Iron Eyes said. “Just being unwilling to back down from that posture. It revives the old prejudices that exist, that we’re trying to evolve from. We’ve been living side by side for 120 years, and now it gives the Indian the reason they need to demonize white people. The white people are at our door again, and trying to make us beg again. They’re trying to turn us into beggars.”

One other questionable fact raised Seminary’s eyebrows when he first heard news the pipeline’s route was moved from north of Bismarck’s water wells to its current location, a spear’s throw from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation land. He knew trouble was coming.

“And here is the first thing I said to myself, ‘Really. Really? You were concerned about Bismarck’s water source? You just made your job a lot harder.’ That was my first impression, and that probably didn’t win me any supporters on the deal.”

“It feels a lot like racism,” Iron Eyes said. “We’re all evolving from some form of say, I don’t want to use this word, oppression, but that is what it is.”

Seminary agreed with Iron Eyes that systemic racism is a contributing factor to today’s controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline. This racism, dating back hundreds of years, emboldens the “wasi’chu,” or the white man to exclude natives in important talks with a historically ‘take what we want’ mentality. Ignorance on how to approach tribes like the Standing Rock Sioux as sovereign nations under binding treaties with the United States government, has been in play since the planning stages of Dakota Access Pipeline, activists and legal documents stated.

“But nobody talks about that stuff in North Dakota,” Iron Eyes said. “The governor created the emergency, he declared it, and he called in the National Guard, and now he is crawling to Obama, asking him to foot the bill for this emergency.

“There is no emergency to speak of that merits his kind of response.”

“We have some racial tension in this,” Seminary said. “We have some racial tension in the country. For whatever reason it is worse now than it has been for some time. I don’t care what someone looks like, I don’t care about ethnicity, we are all on God’s planet and we’re supposed to do as much as we can for each other while we are here.”

Looking back, Iron Eyes wondered if the entire Dakota Access Pipeline situation couldn’t have gone much differently if only all parties involved sat down to discuss with mutual respect. In the words of Sioux chief and holy man Sitting Bull, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.”

Seminary wants to help open dialogue between all parties, and traveled to Cannon Ball area to discuss racism problems last weekend.

“It just seems like we have let the civility escape the discussion. If in fact, we’re dealing with a sovereign nation, which we are, I don’t know that this standard operating procedure for how the state or its agency conducts business, is necessarily what you want to hang your hat on.

“It is a sovereign nation. Maybe, just maybe another step should have been added to the process,” Seminary said.

Activists singing alongside the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, ND - photo by C.S. Hagen

Activists singing alongside the Missouri River near Cannon Ball, ND – photo by C.S. Hagen

No Light at Pipeline’s End

On the day Dalrymple declared a state of emergency, Iron Eyes approached the governor, petitioning for an opportunity to gather all interested parties to talk about rerouting the pipeline.

“They’re not interested in anything other than what they announced as their plan, and they’re unwilling to back down from that posture,” Iron Eyes said. “Everyone is doubling down.”

From the governor, to Morton County law enforcement, to Dakota Access LLC, no one appears willing to consult with the Standing Rock Sioux and come to a compromise.

“As non partisan leaders, we are not against progress,” Iron Eyes said. The smear campaign coming from North Dakota’s extreme right, coupled with Dakota Access LLC’s refusal to discuss the issues, threatens any kind of peace.

Energy Transfer Partners’ response came in the form of an in-house memo from its CEO, Warren, who vowed to his employees to complete the 1,172-mile pipeline on time. The pipeline, if built, will “safely move American oil to American markets,” Warren stated. “It will reduce our dependence on oil from unstable regions of the world and drive down the cost of petroleum products for American industry and consumers.”

“How long can we continue with this economic reality?” Iron Eyes said. “We can continue it a lot longer if we are smart about this. We have a shelf life, we are at a tipping point as a global consumer and we have to figure out how to survive this. We can’t treat the earth as if fresh water will always be available. As if deforestation and climate change aren’t real issues. Right now it doesn’t seem to be happening, but this thing changes every day. There are going to be pipelines built here, we’re slow to evolve, so let’s do it in a way that’s smart for our state, and our people. We can do that if we avoid the Missouri River.”

If a reroute is not on the table, then there will be no “lawful resolution,” Iron Eyes said. Civil disobedience will continue.

Around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday 200 activists marched on to a Dakota Access Pipeline construction site off of Highway 6, according to Morton County Sheriff’s Department. Thirty private security personnel at the scene, most left by the time protesters arrived. Three remained behind, and one security personnel was assaulted, according to Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

“When law enforcement arrived, they witnessed protesters carrying the security guard for approximately 100 yards,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said. “The guard was treated for minor injuries.”

Activists departed once law enforcement arrived, according to Morton County Sheriff’s Department, but officers reported seeing knives and one activist with a pistol. On Tuesday, five more activists were arrested near St. Anthony along Highway 6, according to sheriff’s department spokesmen, and on Wednesday, 21 more protesters were arrested by officers assigned to the Dakota Access Pipeline, raising the total amount of people arrested to 95. Law enforcement brandished automatic weapons, shotguns, and drove up in an armored riot-control vehicle with sound cannons, amidst activists chanting “We have no weapons.”  More arrests are pending after deputies review video and photographs taken at the scene.

“Our officers are trained to respond to the threats they perceive and to take appropriate action,” Kirchmeier said. “A charging horse combined with totality of the situation presented an imminent threat to the officer.”

“It’s a real pickle,” Seminary said. “I’m not qualified to give anything other than my opinion. Whatever the decision is I pray it is a peaceful result. I think there are some real significant decisions ahead. It’s just such a mess right now. I don’t know how, but we’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”

Activists take over Dakota Access Pipeline work area - photo provided by Morton County Sheriff's Department

Activists take over Dakota Access Pipeline work area – photo provided by Morton County Sheriff’s Department

 

 

Battle of Two Chiefs

September 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Morton County Sheriff’s Department Kyle Kirchmeier vs. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II

By C.S. Hagen
MANDAN, ND – Two North Dakotan chiefs are pitted, one against the other.

One chief, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, has laws, politicians, the North Dakota National Guard, taxpayers’ money, and a third chief from the private sector, Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, with all the powers money can buy, on his side.

The other, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II, uses prayer, donations, federal treaties, and thousands of volunteers from native tribes and concerned citizens across the world to fight the pipeline’s continuation.

One chief uses the law’s full force: police in riot gear, automatic weapons, handcuffs, and calls the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrations, which have continued in earnest and unabated since early August, dangerous. The other chief calls for prayer, civil disobedience, smokes a ceremonial peace pipe, and calls his people, including those from nearly 300 different tribes, water protectors.

One chief lives in Mandan, making USD 78,000 a year; the other sometimes resides in a canvas tipi on land that once belonged to the Great Sioux Nation.

One chief arrested the other. In fact, Archambault was among the first activists to be arrested on August 12, 2016, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. But to Archambault, the fight against Dakota Access Pipeline is just.

“Our tribe has opposed the Dakota Access pipeline since we first learned about it in 2014,” Archambault said in a press conference. “I believe this movement is organic, and has a life on its own. It is not about race, not about hate. It’s about unity.”

For 500 years, Archambault said, Native Americans have suffered from defeat, prejudice, and broken treaties. One day, the pipeline will not only poison the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but the millions who depend on the Missouri River for water – human, fauna, and flora.

“And yet we’re the ones who continue to pay the costs,” Archambault said.

Buffalo drinking from pond near the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline - by C.S. Hagen

Buffalo drinking from pond near the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline – photo by C.S. Hagen

The costs including but not limited to the pipeline tearing up native burial sites, poisoning land and waters on its journey south toward Nederland, Texas, in the same state where the third chief resides in 23,000-square-foot-home on 10 acres of land. The real costs to the personal freedoms of at least 69 activists arrested, some of whom are banned from returning to protest areas. Misdemeanor offenses of trespassing are now becoming felony charges of criminal mischief, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. Some of those arrested, activists said, are being stalled, and temporarily denied their rights to counsel.

“The biggest concern that we had about those situations, was holding someone on a no-bond hold for three days on a misdemeanor, that seems irrational,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe camp attorney Angela Bibens said. “The situation is that people are being targeted, people’s relatives are being targeted. Are people’s rights being violated? There is definitely a case for that.”

Sara Long, a citizen journalist, was arrested for trespassing on Sunday. She had her phone confiscated, was abused verbally, and law enforcement threatened to have her phone unlocked with software, Bibens said.

“You have to have a warrant to get into someone’s phone,” Bibens said. “That is a clear case of someone’s rights being violated. All charges against Long were eventually dropped, and Long did receive her cellular phone back, Bibens said.

“People are being arrested indiscriminately. They are trying to target leadership, trying to determine who is in charge. There is a certain amount of panic that is detectable within law enforcement. They’re not accustomed to what they’re seeing, a large, peaceful group of Native Americans – everybody’s here in Standing Rock.”

Bibens was denied one-on-one access to activists in the county jail, she said, and has to speak to them through glass and by telephones, which may be recorded, she said. Licensed to practice in Colorado, and currently with the National Lawyers Guild, it is legal for out-of-state attorneys to be denied the right to practice in another state, but the current situation with 69 arrests is overwhelming, not only for her, but for Morton County.

Some are being appointed court attorneys, and she is attempting to recruit local lawyers to step in.

Additionally, activists have reported seeing military research and surveillance drones, claiming the drones have blocked reception to the Standing Rock camp areas, and that Facebook is blocking some activists’ videos and statements. Bibens is monitoring the claims, she said.

Not long after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s petition for an injunction against Dakota Access failed, President Obama’s Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a statement recommending Dakota Access LLC was no longer authorized to work on the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ lands. On Friday, the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals officially backed the President’s recommendation, halting all work on the Dakota Access Pipeline within 20 miles on either side of Lake Oahe along the Missouri River. The news was joyous to some, considered an annoyance to others. With a legal score of one-to-one for both chiefs, some expected the tension – like a ticking time bomb – would be defused.

Instead, tensions grew.

Law enforcement began arresting activists, native spokespeople, and media personnel, by the busloads. Misdemeanor criminal trespass charges have been filed against Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Red Warrior spokesman Cody Hall, at least two other journalists, and third-party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, as well as her running mate, Ajamu Baraka.

American horse while chained to a Dakota Access excavator - online sources

Dale “Happi” Americanhorse Jr. while chained to a Dakota Access excavator – online sources

“The Morton County State’s Attorney’s office will pursue felony charges against the protestors who attached themselves to equipment due to the seriousness of the crime,” Kirchmeier said. “The Dakota Access Pipeline has shown good faith in the legal process by removing their equipment from their worksites… But rather than respect this, a small element of the protest group has decided to go and find DAPL equipment and sites wherever they are and interrupt their work that the pipeline has legal right to conduct.”

“This is an unacceptable violation of freedom of the press,” Goodman said in a statement. “I was doing my job by covering pipeline guards unleashing dogs and pepper spray on Native American protestors.”

Long, who is a resident of Cannon Ball, said on her Facebook page that she was incarcerated for 28 hours and charged with criminal trespass.

“They are trying to silence us, again and again, by violating our rights,” Long said on her Facebook page.

“It was not known at the time that Ms. Goodman was a media representative,” Kirchmeier said. “Part of the investigation process is to review all evidence. This included video taken from the protest site. Persons identified on the video were arrested.”

All activists arrested, excluding one female prisoner who had an outstanding warrant from Nebraska, have been released on bail, Kirchmeier reported. Olowan Sara Martinez was charged with criminal trespass on a Dakota Access Pipeline worksite, and has outstanding warrants of terroristic threats, a class-4 felony, among other misdemeanor charges from Nebraska. Nebraska officials have 10 days to take custody of Martinez, according to Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

Kirchmeier denied any accusations that the department was targeting media personnel, spokespeople, or medics.

“There are numerous outside groups, some invited and some not,” Kirchmeier said. “They are participating and are suspected to be causing issues. While they may have come in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, they are also pushing their own agenda.”

North Dakota National Guard blockading Highway 1806 - photo by Annie Gao

North Dakota National Guard blockading Highway 1806 – photo by Annie Gao

Many activists feel local and state law enforcement, and now the North Dakota National Guard, are acting as the protectors of big oil interests. While native interests rarely make national or international headlines, and their opinions on matters are rarely heard, these ingredients add to the distrust shared by nearly all Native Americans toward the federal and local governments, activists said. Throw in a pinch of big oil campaign funding for North Dakota politicians, a little private investing, and the final result resembles an agenda the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its supporters are not comfortable with.

The third chief, Warren, vowed to his employees to complete the 1,172-mile pipeline on time. The pipeline, if built, will “safely move American oil to American markets,” Warren stated in an internal memo to Energy Transfer employees. “It will reduce our dependence on oil from unstable regions of the world and drive down the cost of petroleum products for American industry and consumers.”

DAPL excavation equipment and "scar" or trench made for the pipeline - photo by C.S. Hagen

DAPL excavation equipment and “scar” or trench made for the pipeline – photo by C.S. Hagen

An interesting and profitable venture, analysts say, especially in light of the fact that Congress agreed to lift the nation’s 40-year-old ban on oil exports in 2015. Fourth quarter 2015 the United States exported 4.8 million barrels per day to 136 countries, including Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“It’s entirely fair to highlight Energy Transfer Partner’s ambitions when it comes to exporting hydrocarbons from North America to the highest bidder, and to tie that to a recent lifting of embargo,” Hugh MacMillan, a senior research for the Food & Water Watch said.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp D-N.D., helped lead the efforts on behalf of oil companies for increased exports of liquefied gas and crude oil, according to Heitkamp’s website. Heitkamp, along with Senator Lisa Murkowski R-AK, wrote the Heitkamp-Murkowski Bipartisan Bill to lift the ban on oil exports in 2015.

Enbridge Inc., an investor of the Dakota Access Pipeline, stated in its 2015 annual report that “We see continued opportunities to expand and extend our pipeline systems to help meet North America’s energy needs and contribute to energy security, as well as build connectivity to coastal markets than enable exports.”

No matter what country Dakota crude from the Bakken region might end up, Warren petitioned employees to contact “elected representatives – all of them – to tell them how important this project is to your livelihood.”

Work on the pipeline is approximately 60 percent complete, Warren stated.

“Our corporate mindset has long been to keep our head down and do our work,” Warren’s memo stated. “We respect the constitutional right of all assembled in North Dakota to voice their opinions for or against projects like ours. However, threats and attacks on our employees, their families and our contractors as well as the destruction of equipment and encroachment on private property must not be tolerated.”

The day of the attack dogs photograph, activists defending themselves - photo provided by Morton County Sheriff's Department

The day of the attack dogs – photo provided by Morton County Sheriff’s Department

Frost Kennels

According to Archambault, activists did not instigate the violence on September 3.

“They provoked everything that happened,” Archambault said in a press conference.

Bob Frost, owner and president of Ohio-based Frost Kennels, said his employees were at the Dakota Access Pipeline site on September 3.

“We went out there to do a job and we did it,” Frost said. Personally, Frost supports the continuation of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and said when activists held a protest in Louisville, Ohio last weekend, he received death threats. Activists also attempted to break into an employee’s home, Frost said. Police arrived and the activists scattered; no one was arrested. Frost also reported that activists were burning Dakota Access Pipeline bridges in the Cannon Ball area, but Morton County Sheriff’s Department stated they received no such reports.

sidebarFrost’s company didn’t have time to prepare properly on September 3, and they “were ambushed,” he said. The plan was to use pronged collars and 20-foot leashes, but he decided to go early to the construction site after he received a call from the company who employed Frost Kennels, a company he refused to name.

Upon arrival, Frost found activists tearing down fences, throwing themselves under excavation machinery, and threatening his dogs and employees, Frost said.

“So we just said f*ck it, and got our dogs, and tried to make a bridge between them and the workers. We did not go out to attack people, but they knocked down a fence and entered private property. I tell you what, if someone came on to my own yard, I’d have the right to shoot them, that’s the law.”

As to the angry online reactions to pictures of Frost Kennels dogs with bloodied jaws, Frost said the blood could not have come from human beings.

“Dogs aren’t trained to be social around 20 people, especially with that riot mentality,” Frost said. “But if a dog bites you, the blood is gone within 30 seconds, because they lick their lips and it’s gone.” The blood, Frost said, came from his dogs being struck by activists.

Despite the threats Frost has received, he said he offered activists food last weekend during their protest against his company. “I offered to give them all food, but they didn’t want it,” he said. “And hey, I’m not racist. My wife is 50 percent Native American, my kids are card carrying tribal members, and my best friend is a black guy sitting right here beside me.”

At least eight activists, including a young woman were injured, some with dog bites, and one child suffered a rash after being hit in the face with mace, according to Bibens.

“As far as that picture of that child being bit, I feel bad for whoever it was,” Frost said. “First because any child who is bit I feel for, but also I feel bad for the parents who brought their children there in the first place.”

Morton County Sheriff’s Department has not filed charges against Frost or his employees yet, but initiated a joint task force on Tuesday comprised of the Morton and Mercer County Sheriff’s departments, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to investigate all sides involved. The North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board is also investigating whether Frost Kennels was properly licensed or registered to work in the state.

“It is important we give this incident a thorough examination,” Kirchmeier said. “DAPL private security officers with dogs were at the worksite. Protesters broke through a fence and entered the site… Seven individuals have been identified and charged with criminal trespass for their involvement in the protest that day.

“The investigation could lead to charges on both sides.”

Deputies did not know about the use of dogs until receiving a 911 call from security personnel, Kirchmeier said.

Rumors that G4S, one of the world’s leading security companies headquartered in Great Britain, has been hired to provide security staff to Dakota Access Pipeline, are false, according to the company’s communication director Monica Garcia. Garcia said that no G4S personnel were on site on September 3, and that the company has no K9 units in North Dakota yet, and that G4S has had no engagements with activists involved with the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“The incident that occurred near Cannon Ball, North Dakota on Saturday, September 3rd involved other security providers, not G4S,” Garcia said. “We are not providing services to that entity [Dakota Access Pipeline or Energy Transfer Partners].”

The security company goes by many nicknames such as the “Chaos Company” in an April 2014 article for Vanity Fair, and as “spy for hire” in Tim Shorrock’s 2009 book Spies for Hire. Historically, G4S is hired by companies and governments to enter dangerous situations such as Nigeria, Israel, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, according to media outlets around the world, into western North Dakota.

The company and its subsidiaries are allegedly involved in controversies including immigrant-detainee labor in prisons, crimes against humanity in Israel, misconduct in child custodial institutions, police telephone data manipulation, and its employment of terrorist Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in an Orlando gay nightclub in June 2016, according to Reuters.

horse-in-corral-at-big-camp

A Native American horse inside corral at Big Camp – photo by C.S. Hagen

Winter is Coming

Inside the three camps set up outside Cannon Ball, some activists are winterizing. Solar panels are being used to produce electricity. Sturdier, wooden structures are replacing tents. Woodstoves are being prepared for larger tents that will surround Big Camp’s Sacred Circle. Ceremonies last long into the night, and modern bands have also been performing on the weekends.

Direct Action classes at Big Camp - by C.S. Hagen

Direct Action classes at Big Camp – photo by C.S. Hagen

Although the tension on both sides of the Dakota Access Pipeline may be nearing a breaking point, meetings between the two chiefs, Kirchmeier and Archambault, have “been numerous,” according to Kirchmeier. Morale, for both chiefs, and on both sides of the issue, are high. Big Camp, nestled into a gentle curve of the Missouri River, has expanded. Medic tents have doubled. Classes for children, for activist awareness, for wilderness survival are now being taught to anyone wanting to attend. Jewelers are displaying their wares. Long lines orderly wait for free t-shirts with protect water slogans printed on site. Donations in the forms of clothing, meats, eggs, water, are pouring in. Porta potties are kept clean as possible.

Rock star Neil Young produced a new song and video entitled Indian Givers for the Dakota Access Pipeline protest, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

There’s a battle raging on the sacred land, our brothers and sisters have to take a stand, the song starts off.

Young makes reference to “big money” being the “Indian givers” for plowing an oil pipeline through land rightfully belonging to Native Americans, and sings about Dale “Happi” American Horse Jr., the 26-year-old Sicangu-Oglala Lakota activist who was featured in HPR story entitled “Can’t Drink Oil,” on September 15.

Saw Happy locked to the big machine

They had to cut him loose and you know what that means

That’s when Happy went to jail

Behind big money justice always fails

– part of the lyrics for Neil Young’s song Indian Givers

Kirchmeier realizes the issues will not be resolved anytime soon.

“The morale of our law enforcement personnel is good,” Kirchmeier said. “We have tremendous support from law enforcement agencies across North Dakota.”

A total of 595 people from 51 departments and agencies have assisted, Kirchmeier said. Thirteen counties in North Dakota have provided 144 officers, 11 cities in North Dakota have provided 130 officers, and another 127 officers have been recruited locally.

Medic tent outside of Red Warriors Camp - photo by C.S. Hagen

Medic tent outside of Red Warriors Camp – photo by C.S. Hagen

“Tribal leaders have indicated to law enforcement they want a peaceful protest,” Kirchmeier said. “However, not all protesters have been peaceful. Aggression and actions to incite fear or intimidation are not peaceful activities. Protesters do not have the right to disrupt traffic, close the road, trespass on private property or disrupt other legal activities. They do not have the right to incite fear in the traveling public, local land owners, workers, first responders, or law enforcement.”

Additionally, camps south of the Cannon Ball River will soon be granted a temporary Special Use Permit, which requires a USD 100,000 performance bond, and USD 5,000,000 in insurance, Kirchmeier said. If the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe signs the permit, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will countersign and the permit will be valid for 30 days.

Winter is coming, and all chiefs are preparing. One is doubling down on arrests and following the law. The other chief is also using legal maneuvers, and an indomitable spirit Native Americans have not seen since the Battle of the Greasy Grass, 140 years ago. The third chief, perhaps, is grinding his teeth in frustration at the setbacks.

“We have a connection to Mother Earth,” Archambault said. “And it goes to the center of the earth and goes up to into the universe. We are still here, and the reason why we are here is because of our prayers.

“It is all good.”

Activists from South America posing at Big Camp, near Cannon Ball, ND - photo by C.S. Hagen

Activists from South America posing at Big Camp, near Cannon Ball, ND – photo by C.S. Hagen

Water and Oil Do Not Mix

August 23, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe begins its fight against Dakota Access Pipeline, activists arrested, governor declares emergency state

By C.S. Hagen
CANNON BALL, ND – The Bakken Pipeline began quietly, leaving few footprints along its legal trail straight into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ lap. Shortly after the 1,172-mile project was green-lighted, protests erupted in western North Dakota. Arrests and lawsuits, calls for peace and threats of violence, followed.

On Friday, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple issued an emergency situation due to civil unrest, according to Morton County Sheriff’s Department, and Morton County Commissioners extended the declaration on Monday.

The protest along the pipeline’s route less than one mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation of North Dakota and South Dakota, started on August 10 when tribesmen blocked an access point for Dakota Access, LLC construction crews, effectively forcing workers to leave the area. A total of thirteen arrests were made, but the activists’ war cry did not change – water and oil do not mix.

Within a week the activists’ numbers grew from 200 to more than 2,000 people coming from across the United States and Canada, activists said.

Dakota Access Pipeline - Spirit of Cherry Valley Horses 8-15-2016 1971

Dakota Access Pipeline activists on horseback, Spirit of Cherry Valley – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

On August 15, Dakota Access LLC moved equipment and employees back to the construction route. A hole was cut into a fence, allowing access to more than 50 activists, leading to accounts of broken machinery windows and an assault on a private security worker, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

Activists on horseback charged police, forcing them to retreat from their line, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. More arrests were made. As of Monday, a total of 29 activists, including Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, or the Hunkpapa Oyate, had been arrested, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. Of those arrested, 26 were charged for disorderly conduct, and three were charged with criminal trespass. All have since been released.

A standoff between activists and law enforcement ensued.

Police and Highway Patrol guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline Police - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

Law enforcement guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

Divergent movie series heroine Shailene Woodley during a protest in Bismarck, ND - courtesy of online sources

Divergent movie series heroine Shailene Woodley during a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Bismarck, ND – courtesy of online sources

The outcry against big oil attracted Hollywood movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio’s attention, and on August 11 brought Divergent movie series heroine Shailene Woodley to join the protesters.

“The spirits are there, the people are there,” activist Margaret Landin said. “They are empowering each other.”

Tensions are brewing. While Archambault calls demonstrators to peace, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier fears for safety.

Black Land Rovers with tinted windows are parked nearby, watching, activists report. Authorities began investigating two incidents of laser strikes against aircraft conducting surveillance on the protesting encampment, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. The strikes allegedly occurred on August 17 and Sunday, temporarily blinding one pilot, and is considered a federal crime leading to a fine or imprisonment for up to five years or both if convicted.

Six miles south of Mandan, State Highway Patrol troopers closed Highway 1806 to traffic. Cellular phone services have been terminated to the area, activists report. Local parks, campgrounds, boat ramps, and fishing areas have been shut down. Work on the pipeline has been halted. Rumors that construction workers had discovered old Native American burial grounds were not verified.

“We’re trying to provide a line, a safe line for the pipeline people to enter and to go and do their legal work,” Kirchmeier said. “And they were preparing to throw pipe bombs at our line, M-80s, fireworks, things of that nature to disrupt us.

“That, in itself, makes it an unlawful protest. In that area people are compromising the private land down there, and they’re compromising the equipment that is down there.”

Online threats have also been made on social media against the lives of law enforcement officials in the area, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. “We take these comments very seriously,” Kirchmeier said. “We have to take these comments very seriously to protect not only officers’ safety, but residents who live in the area along with those participating in the protest activities. The threats are very concerning.”

Dalrymple’s declaration of an emergency situation was also instituted by fear.

“The State of North Dakota remains committed to protecting citizens’ rights to lawfully assemble and protest, but the unfortunate fact remains that unlawful acts associated with the protest near Cannon Ball have led to serious public safety concerns and property damage,” Dalrymple said in a press release on Friday . “This emergency declaration simply allows us to bring greater resources to bear if needed to help local officials address any further public safety concerns.”

Declaring an emergency situation also allows for the coordinated and effective effort of “appropriate government departments” to minimize the impact of the emergency, according to the executive order issued by Dalrymple. Rumors the National Guard had been called in for support were not verified at press time.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., stressed the importance of protecting the rights of all parties involved, and that she would continue to meet with anyone wanting to discuss the issues.

“As North Dakota continues to reduce its reliance on moving crude by rail, producers will keep looking to pipelines as an important part of our energy infrastructure – both for our state and the nation,” Heitkamp said.

“Just as with any infrastructure project, we need to make sure the Dakota Access Pipeline is thoroughly vetted, reviewed, and if approved has the proper safeguards in place. It’s critical that as federal agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers review energy infrastructure projects, they follow all applicable environmental requirements, and respect treaty rights and as well as the need for proper consultation with tribal nations.”

Activists and law enforcement - photos by Shane Balkowitsch

Cherry Creek singers with drum and law enforcement – Corey Carson of Elevate Studios, Bismarck

Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle was among the first people arrested at the encampment. She was released on bail. Jumping Eagle is a mother of three, and a pediatrician at a hospital in Standing Rock.

Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle

Dr. Sarah Jumping Eagle

“It’s very frustrating seeing the actions by the state, they’re the ones escalating this and spreading misinformation,” Jumping Eagle said. “They’re using falsehoods to find ways to escalate their own agenda.

“Historically, they would hype up in the newspaper, hype up the local people, hype up the police forces, so that basically the Army could come in. That’s the history of the United States. There is no incentive for them to take it down a notch, there’s a financial incentive to make it appear our camp is potentially violent or threatening.

“Yes, we are protesting and protecting the land,” Jumping Eagle said. “But people are doing that in the manner that is consistent with our beliefs.”

On Monday, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the International Indian Treaty Council appealed to the United Nations for assistance, according to media outlet Indian Country.

“We specifically request that the United States Government impose an immediate moratorium on all pipeline construction until the Treaty Rights and Human Rights of the Standing Rock Tribe can be ensured and their free, prior and informed consent is obtained,” Archambault and the Treaty Council said in their petition to the United Nations.

 

The Seventh Generation

Landin joins the protest traveling from her home in Bismarck every other day. Families with infants, the young and the elderly, Native Americans, and people from all races and cultures have gathered in the Dakota prairie. Citizens are donating food, sleeping bags, outdoor chairs, drinking and washing water, Landin said, and she has not seen or heard of pipe bombs or weapons, in fact, protest organizers do not allow weapons, drugs, or alcohol on to the encampment grounds, she said.

“It is an amazing thing to see,” Landin said. “I literally tear-ed up, there are so many people there to support, and it doesn’t even matter your race.”

No firearms, no alcohol, no cameras allowed, photographer and ambrotypist Shane Balkowitsch said. He traveled from Bismarck to photograph the encampment using the wet plate photography technique, a painstaking process where exposures must be quickly developed in a dark room on scene. Balkowitsch was one of the first to photographers on the scene, he said, and he joined the protest to support the friends he met during his recent work on a photography project for for the Historical Society of North Dakota called “Northern Plains Native Americans: A Modern Wet Plate Perspective.”

“I saw no weapons, no pushing,” Balkowitsch said. “It was a civil and peaceful protest. They are very adamant, very dedicated to this obviously, but being dedicated to something is not a bad thing.

“I was treated with hugs.”

Longtime activist Winona Laduke may ride horseback at Stanley Rock, where the thousands camped at Camp of the Sacred Stone are attracting more support every day. Since nearby highways have been blocked, activists are leading supporters into the area on foot. “They’re trying to put the squeeze on this tribe by blocking the highway to their casino and to the protest. And it has backfired on themselves,” Laduke said.

The ‘squeeze’ is not working.

As the executive director of the Native American environmental group Honor the Earth, and twice Ralph Nader’s Green Party vice presidential candidate, Laduke traveled from her home at White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and stayed two days at the encampment. Friday night during a rainstorm, more than 800 people ate dinner at the tribe’s Prairie Knights Casino, Laduke said. “It’s having a booming business. And this talk about pipe bombs is just not true. They’re using [smoking] pipes. I even brought my pipe down there. There are no bombs, no weapons.”

Activists at the Dakota Access Pipeline - by Police guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline Police - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

Speaker giving talk to activists, or protectors, at the Dakota Access Pipeline – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

Laduke spent her birthday at the encampment, among the rolling prairie hills where she could imagine the buffalo that once roamed freely. Nestled against the Missouri River – the mother river – Laduke said it was the best birthday present she could have hoped for.

Winona Laduke

Winona Laduke

“I picked sage, sat in my tipi, and joined in with about 40 people younger than me,” Laduke said. “That is a pretty good birthday present to myself.”

Landin noticed a difference in the protesters, a difference that invokes an ancient prophecy.

“It is the youth,” Landin said. “The youth are really standing up and speaking out. They are a different generation. They are the Seventh Generation.”

The Seventh Generation, descendants of those forced into reservations approximately 140 years ago, are supposed to set rights to wrongs, Landin said. The principle is more than legend or prophecy; it is recorded in the Iroquois Great Law of Peace.

Besides being involved in the protest, young activists, or protectors as activists call themselves, participated in a relay footrace from western North Dakota to Washington DC called “Run for Our Water” earlier in 2016, and then joined protests before the US Supreme Court and at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

 

The Pipeline

Despite Standing Rock Sioux objections, the Bakken Pipeline, officially known as the Dakota Access Pipeline, began in May 2016, and if finished will snake through the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, where it will join up with a second 774-mile pipeline to Nederland, Texas. More than 570,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil will pass through the pipeline per day after it is finished third quarter 2016, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Oil Pipeline - Grand Forks Herald

Oil Pipeline – Grand Forks Herald

The Dakota Access LLC pipeline, which is a joint venture between Enbridge Energy Partners LP and Marathon Petroleum Corporation, would also span 200 water crossings, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission, and in North Dakota alone would pass through 33 historical and archeological sites. Initially, the pipeline was to run north of Bismarck, but because it proved to be a potential threat to Bismarck’s wellhead source water protection areas, the route was cancelled and relocated to its current course, less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

According to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employee, who for the sake of his job wished to remain anonymous, a safe oil pipeline does not exist. Erosion by time, plate tectonics, natural disasters, shoddy workmanship or faulty parts, and cutting corners to fill big oil coffers are part of any pipeline recipe.

Since 2010, more than 3,300 incidents of crude oil and liquefied natural gas leaks or ruptures have occurred in pipelines within the United States, according to the Center for Effective Government. The incidents have killed 80 people, injured 389, and have created $2.8 billion in damages, not to mention the lingering effect on humans, and the release of toxic chemicals into soil, waterways, and air. Nearly one third of the spills since 2010 came from pipelines carrying crude oil, as the Dakota Access Pipeline plans to carry.

In 2010, the first year after the Keystone pipeline was completed, 35 leaks were discovered, according to Earthjustice, an environmental law organization.

Dave Archambault II

Dave Archambault II

In a statement from Archambault on August 16, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said the issue is not only a Lakota or Dakota issue, but it is a human issue.

“I am here to advise anyone that will listen that the Dakota Access Pipeline project is harmful,” Archambault said. “It will not be just harmful to my people but its intent and construction will harm the water in the Missouri River, which is one of the cleanest and safest river tributaries left in the Unit States. To poison the water is to poison the substance of life. Everything that moves must have water.

“How can we talk about and knowingly poison water?”

 

Legal Warriors

On July 27, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe represented by Earthjustice filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claiming that the project violated the “National Historic Preservation Act” by endangering river waters and by authorizing the construction of the pipeline underneath Lake Oahe, a dammed section of the Missouri River, approximately half a mile upstream from the tribe’s reservation. In the lawsuit, the tribe sought an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in addition to a full inspection of compliance, and a declaration that the corps’ authorizations for the pipeline were in violation of the reservation’s rights according to the two Treaties of Fort Laramie in 1851 and 1868.

Activists at the Dakota Access Pipeline - Police guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline Police - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

Gathering crowd at the Dakota Access Pipeline  – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

“The current proposed route across Lake Oahe a half of a mile upstream of the tribe’s reservation boundary, where any leak or spill from the pipeline would flow into the reservation,” the lawsuit said. “The tribe and its members have been deeply concerned about the potential impacts of the Lake Oahe crossing since its inception.”

The tribe, according to the lawsuit, relies on the lake for drinking water for thousands of people, and for irrigation, fishing, recreation, and for cultural and religious practices. “An oil spill from the pipeline into Lake Oahe would cause an economic, public health and welfare, and cultural crisis of the greatest magnitude,” according to lawsuit documents.

Fearing bodily injury to Dakota Access LLC employees and contractors, the oil company struck back, filing restraining orders on August 15 and seeking monetary damages against members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

Meanwhile, other issues are piling up for Dakota Access LLC.

On July 20 Enbridge Energy Partners LLP was ordered by the Justice Department and the EPA to pay $177 million for its responsibility in the 2010 Michigan Tar Sands Spill. Enbridge spent six years and more than one billion dollars in cleanup efforts, but the area was not restored, according to media outlet Bold Nebraska.

After spending millions, and wasting years battling for approval of a Bakken crude oil pipeline across Minnesota, Enbridge Energy Partners LLP switched gears, joining with Marathon Petroleum Corporation to run a different pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline, through North Dakota, a state that is far less strict on environmental issues than Minnesota. The Minnesota Sandpiper pipeline has been put on the back burner until 2019, according to Enbridge, and analysts predict the project will never be resurrected.

In Iowa where work on the pipeline is underway, three fires erupted causing heavy damage to equipment and causing an estimated $1 million in damages. Investigators suspect arson, according to Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty.

In October 2015, three Iowa farmers sued Dakota Access LLC and the Iowa Utilities Board in an attempt to prevent the use of eminent domain on their properties to construct the pipeline.

Dakota Access LLC personnel did not return telephone calls by press time.

 

More Dirty Blankets

Tribal leaders claim the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not discuss the pipeline project adequately.

“The tribe has never been able to participate meaningfully in assessing the significance of sites that are potentially affected by the project,” the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lawsuit stated.

The Standing Rock Tribal Historic Preservation Office received a generic letter from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seeking consultation on February 12, 2015 pertaining to bore hole testing, according to the lawsuit documents.

Tribal leaders objected, but received no response until September 16, 2015, when a second letter stated the consultation process ended on January 18, 2015, according to lawsuit documents. Again, tribal leaders objected, demanding joint consultation and a class III survey in conjunction with tribal archeologists.

Camp of the Sacred Stone at Cannon Ball, ND - Police guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline Police - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

Camp of the Sacred Stone at Cannon Ball, ND – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

Instead of addressing concerns, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ next step was to publish a draft environmental assessment that did not include a single mention of the potential impacts of the pipeline project to the tribe, according to lawsuit documents.

Not until February 2016 did the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Colonel John Henderson begin discussions with Standing Rock Sioux tribal leaders. Several visits were made, at which point tribal archeologists showed military personnel shards of bone and pottery that had been pushed from the ground by burrowing moles.

On April 22, 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ response was to make the formal finding that “no historic properties were affected,” according to lawsuit documents.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disagreed, stating that investigators followed procedure.

“The Corps conducted formal government-to-government consultation with tribal representative via meetings; site visits; distribution of pertinent information; conference calls, and emails in order to inform tribal governments and private members, and to better understand their concerns.

“All information received during the … process was considered during the Corps decision-making process. Ultimately, the District made a ‘No Historic Properties Affected’ determination.”

Historically, British and American governments have deceived Native Americans by many means, through trick, by trade, and according to some, with biological warfare.

In 1763, a British captain gave smallpox-infested blankets to Ottawa Native American warriors. The account is documented in the journal of William Trent, a local trader who had close dealings with British soldiers.

“Out of our regard for them, we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect,” Trent wrote in his journal on June 24, 1763.

Carl Waldman’s Atlas of North American Indian described the same instance, but in a different light. “… Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort – which started an epidemic among them.”

Historians estimate three-quarters of the Native American population in the Ottawa area died from smallpox outbreaks after taking the blankets, according to media outlet Indian Country. Many agree that germs annihilated Native Americans, and not the “white man with guns.”

An unsubstantiated instance allegedly occurred in June 1837 when the U.S. Army began to dispense trade blankets to Mandan tribal people at Fort Clark along the Missouri River in North Dakota, according to the History News Network. The blankets were said to have come from a military smallpox infirmary in St. Louis, and brought upriver aboard the steamboat St. Peter’s. When the Native Americans showed symptoms of the disease, fort doctors allegedly told them to scatter and seek sanctuary with healthy relatives.

No matter how disease was introduced to the Mandan tribe in 1837, more than 100,000 Mandan Native Americans died from smallpox pandemic between 1836 and 1840, according to historians.

Closer to home, the events from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota during 1890 and the 1970s have further exacerbated mistrust between the U.S. government and the Lakota people. In 1890, Sitting Bull, a holy man and leader of the Lakota, was killed during the Ghost Dance movement at Wounded Knee. Later that year the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded another band of Ghost Dancers slaughtering 150 Lakota tribesmen.

"The Grand River at Sitting Bull's Cabin" on Grand River, about 100 yards from where Sitting Bull was gunned down. The Grand River is a tributary of the Missouri River - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

“The Grand River at Sitting Bull’s Cabin” about 100 yards from where Sitting Bull was gunned down. The Grand River is a tributary of the Missouri River – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch taken on July 9, 2016 accompanied by Ernie LaPoint great grandson of Sitting Bull

In 1970, the American Indian Movement known as AIM occupied the Wounded Knee holy site, sparking a 71-day siege by federal agents. Two Native Americans were killed, and one federal officer was paralyzed during altercations. In 1975, AIM activists killed two FBI agents during the “Pine Ridge Shootout.”

Additionally, in 1944, the Pick-Sloan Plan for flood control of the Missouri River gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the authority to build 107 dams, effectively forcing the relocation of nearly 1,000 Native American families. Later in 1946, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on the Fort Randall Dam in South Dakota, which in turn flooded 22,091 acres of Yankton Sioux land and forced 136 families to move elsewhere. According to online reports when the tribes affected informed the Department of Interior, government officials told them to start looking for new homes.

Again, in 1948, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the Oahe Dam, near to the demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline today. The project destroyed 90 percent of the timberland on the Standing Rock Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux reservations, and is known by some as the most destructive public works project in US history.

In 1959, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work on the Big Bend Dam in South Dakota, on lands belonging to the Crow Creek Sioux and the Lower Brule Sioux. The project took away 21,026 acres of Sioux land, and flooded the town of Lower Brule. In 1960, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers filed a condemnation suit against the Crow Creek Sioux and the Lower Brule Sioux to obtain the land. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was allowed to take title of the land.

For more than 130 years in the Black Hills, South Dakota, gold miners, and in recent history the Homestake Mine, poisoned river waters with sulfur, mercury, aluminum, cadmium, copper, iron, selenium, lead, and arsenic through Native American, private, state, and federal lands, according to a 2005 report filed by the United States Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, United States Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Services, and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. The aftereffects of a century of gold and lead mining are toxic to flora and fauna, according to the report. Starting in 2005, efforts were being made to restore the areas affected along the Whitewood Creek, the Belle Fourche, and the Cheyenne rivers, and the Homestake Mining Company of California, Inc. ceased mining and production in 2001.

Whitewood Creek flows into the Belle Fourche River, which flows into the Cheyenne River, which flows into the Missouri River at Oahe Reservoir, according to the report.

“Whitewood Creek is an example of gross environmental degradation tacitly condoned by public apathy…” the report stated. “Once pollutants were no longer discharged, the ecosystem repaired itself, a tribute to its resilience… this story has not reached its conclusion… and the potential for future problems with heavy toxicity are real.”

The poisoning, swallowing, and destruction of Native American lands not only forced tribesmen to move, it crippled their way of life, their hunting and fishing grounds, their chance to sow crops on once fertile soil, their spiritual practices pertaining to ancient burial grounds, and further impoverished those living on reservations, government reports and activists said.

With such a historical pattern of deception and at times brute force, it is little wonder why Native Americans distrust anything government officials say, activists said.

Dakota Access Pipeline activists - Police guarding their line at the Dakota Access Pipeline Police - photo by Shane Balkowitsch

Dakota Access Pipeline activists gathering – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

“Native people including the Lakota, have no experience with the United States keeping its word, or that of corporations keeping their words,” Laduke said. “It is time for people to start keeping their words. They have a treaty right to that water.

“Corporations have more rights than people and eco-systems,” Laduke said. “These corporations need to be challenged. I am not afraid of them, and we all should not be afraid of corporations. They need to be put in their place.”

Although Jumping Eagle has charges hovering over her head, she is not daunted.

Jumping Eagle, an Oglala Sioux who married into the Standing Rock tribe, lives and works there, and she did not plan on getting arrested. A court date has been set, but she is not daunted. Instead, she plans to create hand-washing stations at the encampment.

“This is not something I take lightly, I keep it in mind, but I want to be able to protect the land and water. This is a crucial time. For too long we’ve allowed corporations to be more important than people. The company and the police are protecting the interests of an oil company directly violating the rights of people. We’ve already suffered enough. The fact that they want to place the pipe just north of our community when we are already dealing with so many other issues that could threaten our drinking water, and put us into a situation like Flint, and people will have to buy water? Is not right.

Activists on horseback and along their line - photos by Shane Balkowitsch

Activists on horseback and along their line – Corey Carson of Elevate Studios, Bismarck

“They think they can do whatever they want,” Jumping Eagle said. Not only is she active against Dakota Access Pipeline, she has also worked on other environmental issues ranging from new North Dakota Health Council regulations permitting the increased storage of oilfield waste – radioactive materials and chemicals – to fighting local uranium mines. “They think we are expendable or without a voice, without a choice. Going across Standing Rock land is against the treaty. But people don’t want to think about it. People want to trust their officials. The arguments they make are just trying to reassure themselves.”

Despite the deck being heavily stacked against her and her family, her tribe, and anyone living near or depending on the Missouri River or its tributaries for sustenance, Jumping Eagle remains hopeful that one day, things will change.

“Our concerns are never going to change.”

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