I did not take this picture, nor have I ever gazed upon it without finding it riveting and interesting. I believe I would like this picture without having any background knowledge at all. However, this picture was taken on February 22, 2017 and I remember everything about this day, I was there. This was eviction day at Standing Rock.

There are four people in the picture, all of them walking away from the camera unaware of its presence. Of these four people I have just met Tammy, 2nd from back and Tim Scott at the very back of the line. The person at the front of the line, heading into the fray first, is my youngest child Taylor, she is 22 years old and if she has ever feared anything, she hasn’t told anyone. Right behind Taylor is Joshua Scott, Tim Scott’s nephew and the young man who is destined to become a serious boyfriend to my daughter and a good friend to me. Taylor, Joshua and I have driven out from Seattle together. We are all here to document the actions of the protestors and the government and to freely offer humanitarian aid.

The icy blue, smoky haze of the image is so predominant that it makes you think of Instagram filters. But there are no filters in play, this was the smoke of fires, set by the soon to be displaced (protestors, not natives) mixed with bone chillingly cold air. I cannot help but draw correlations between the starkness of the picture and the history of our Nation’s First Peoples.

It is more accurate to say that the land is covered in ice than in snow. The ground is hard. The trees are spaced like graying hairs on the landscape and even the clumps of lone weeds are isolated from each other.

In this picture one of the medic teams is descending from a gravel road, down into Oceti, they descend between a fire burning on their left and one of the few remaining tipis on their right.

This event was one of the precursors of “fake news” allegations under our present administration and of course both sides contended that honesty was theirs. For the most part, the water protectors and Natives told the truth. The fire in the picture was undoubtedly set by a protestor, our government was not setting fires. Our government was actively trying to invalidate the concern for the land, shared by both the water protectors and Natives by spreading rumors of environmental damage caused by the camps.

In truth, there was a massive conservation effort which was being led by highly trained Veterans volunteering their time so that the environment would not be hurt. In a camp of 300 to 500 people which sprung up overnight with no water or facilities, sanitation was critical. Composting toilets, recycling and two clean kitchens were put together. This kept everything maintained for day to day living. Everything changed as the eviction approached and people had to move.

There was rain and a bit of a thaw the previous week so in addition to hard frozen ground there were now quicksand style mudholes preventing many vehicles from being able to leave. When you think of cars on the reservation, think about a lot of 70s and 80s. They were stuck, people just lost their cars. They walked out of camp on eviction day with what they could wear.

There were 20 to 30 army Veterans with trucks there every day to dismantle, recycle and haul off trash. They were doing this on their own dime, no cost to the government at all. Day after day, government contractors and officials blocked them from cleaning up. Once everyone was gone, they put it all into a big pile, got the photo shoot of the mess left by the “environmentalists”, set it on fire with no thoughts about contamination at all and they did that for TWO BILLION tax payer dollars. Back to the fire in the picture, everyone on the ground knew what was going to happen and that taking care of it well was not going to be allowed, some people burned their own piles.

Tipis like the one on the right side of the photograph had covered the open space there but now everyone who could get out was pretty much gone. None of the Natives ever had any intention of disobeying the law, they had tried to make the law work for them. With that having failed they were planning to hold prayers up to the end as a peaceful statement of disagreement. The deadline was 12 noon and at that time they would begin to walk out of the camp. We knew that they would be walking in the cold for almost a mile before they could reach help and we could give humanitarian aid. Tribal leaders met with Governor Burgum in North Dakota to address these concerns; there were very young children, elderly disabled people and the mile they had to traverse, all uphill, all of it. We knew that frostbite was a real danger. The Governor and other officials agreed. They set up a neutral zone, just above the camp, on the road, and gave the medic teams permission to drive in with vehicles, load people up and take them to the Medic’s tent.

It was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, they didn’t do it after all. As the evictions started proceeding, Jacqui, another medic and I started to drive down to the neutral zone to get people that needed help. Someone on the government side had forbidden it after all and told us we could walk down there. We explained the need again, of course, and pointed out that it would really slow down our ability to get people out of the cold if we were walking with them. The guards shrugged their shoulders. I don’t know who was responsible for breaking the promise made to the Tribal leaders, but once again, our government lied to them, made promises to them and broke them. Again. The government officials who weren’t actually breaking the promises themselves, they knew who was and they didn’t have the moral fortitude to speak up.

At the back of the clearing, to the left of the tipi there is a little wood and stick building. It is the juxtaposition of White culture and Native culture. The tipi borrows the land, the wood and stick building claims the land. The tipi will be moved hundreds of times with each piece being used for other things when it just isn’t a tipi anymore. The wood and stick structure will stay in one place and become obsolete, and unwanted, it becomes someone’s trash to deal with. I was listening to a water protector on the eve of the eviction talking about how this was the beginning of a new community center, school and library. I sat there not saying a word. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard phrased it humorously and accurately when she said, “It’s like they are little colonizers, they can’t help themselves, it’s like it’s in their DNA.”