Native American women are leading the movement against the Dakota Access pipeline, but say they face cruel and inhumane treatment from police

Prairie McLaughlin said she has daily flashbacks – “daymares” – about the police.



Dakota Access pipeline: the who, what and why of the Standing Rock protests Read more

Sitting inside a small tipi where she is camped out while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, she took a drag of her cigarette and recounted how officers took her to a North Dakota jail last month where, she says, a group of male and female guards forcibly removed her clothes when she refused to strip in front of them.

“I’m beyond traumatized,” the 33-year-old Native American woman said through tears.

But, when asked if she was prepared to keep defending the Standing Rock tribe’s water, McLaughlin’s face hardened. “Everyone needs to stand up,” she said.

McLaughlin, the daughter of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Standing Rock Sioux tribe member and founder of the Sacred Stone camp, is one of hundreds of women who have led the growing movement to stop the $3.7bn project threatening their land and culture. Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhumane treatment.

Many say that female “water protectors”, in some cases drawing on matriarchal tribal structures, are the core spiritual leaders strategizing how to block the “black snake” pipeline and planning actions to stand up to a police force that has gone to great lengths to defend an oil corporation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prairie McLaughlin, who says she was forced to strip in front of male and female guards. Photograph: Sara Lafleur-Vetter/The Guardian

“Women are the backbone of every tribe and every indigenous community,” said Caro Gonzales, a 26-year-old member of the Chemehuevi tribe.

Gonzales, who also goes by the name Guarding Red Tarantula Woman, identifies as “two spirit”, a term for indigenous queer people.

“Whether feeding people or being on the frontlines … it’s all indigenous women and two spirits.”

Native women say they are protecting the basic human right to clean water. But for some indigenous activists, the internationally recognized movement has become a larger fight against a history of misogyny, racism and abuse by law enforcement.

‘Native lives matter’

Indigenous women have long had a fraught relationship with American police – whether in the form of questionable fatal shootings or law enforcement inaction in the face of human trafficking crises and sexual assault epidemics.

“It’s always been happening,” McLaughlin said, but “people in the world see it now.”

Although indigenous rights are often ignored in the discussion of police brutality, studies have shown that Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by law enforcement, prompting some to adopt the rallying cry, “Native lives matter”, a reference to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Native tribal leaders have also repeatedly argued that oil booms in states like North Dakota have had dire consequences for indigenous women due to the influx of highly paid oil workers living in so-called “man camps”. Law enforcement officials have found that the temporary camps can lead to upticks in human trafficking, assault, rape and drug crimes.

When speaking out against the Keystone XL pipeline, native leaders argued that indigenous women were sexually assaulted by non-native men at alarmingly high rates and that police have failed to prevent and prosecute these crimes when they accelerate amid an oil boom.

For native women leading at Standing Rock, police disrespect of indigenous culture and women is unsurprising.

“North Dakota law enforcement have no qualms about grabbing people and throwing them to the ground,” said Cheryl Angel, a Sicangu Lakota tribe member.

“I just felt kind of violated all because of being Native American,” said Johanna Holy Elk Face, a 63-year-old woman who was recently arrested.

It’s unclear how many many women have been apprehended in the more than 400 arrests police have made of Dakota Access pipeline activists. But some women said they felt targeted.

“They picked out people who they thought were leaders,” said Xhopakelxhit, a Native American woman who was recently arrested during a protest. “It was outright brutal force.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, founder of the Sacred Stone camp. Photograph: Sara Lafleur-Vetter/The Guardian

‘Brutalized and dehumanized’

Angel, 56, recounted the birth of the Sacred Stone camp when “the pipeline was just a drawing in a piece of paper”.

She and a few others were chatting in a group message and knew they had to find a way to stop the project on the ground. In April, members of the Standing Rock Lakota and other indigenous nations rode on horseback and established the first spiritual camp.

“It was women on the frontlines praying,” she said. “One of our traits that is very strong is to protect. There was no fear.”

You know what it’s like to watch a little girl pushed down and shot in the face while we’re trying to save her? Prairie McLaughlin

Elder women, under threat of arrest, have led prayer circles directly on land where construction is planned. Young women leading the Standing Rock youth council have faced Mace, teargas and rubber bullets during increasingly tense standoffs with police.

Several women who were arrested said they were crowded into vans and cells. Behind bars they encountered mostly native women, many who were incarcerated for what appeared to be low-level offenses.

Gonzales said the jail was packed with native women incarcerated for reasons other than the pipeline actions, including one who was pregnant and feared she was having a miscarriage and another who appeared to be severely ill.

“They were brutalized and dehumanized the same way I was,” said Gonzales, adding that it seemed clear many were locked up for nonviolent offenses or because they were too poor to immediately pay bail. “Brown and black people and native people get put away for really doing nothing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Caro Gonzales, a member of the Chemehuevi tribe: ‘Women are the backbone of every tribe.’ Photograph: Sara Lafleur-Vetter/The Guardian

McLaughlin, who was charged with resisting arrest, became most distraught recounting police violence against young women at the center of demonstrations where law enforcement have repeatedly fired rubber bullets.

“You know what it’s like to watch a little girl get pushed down and shot point blank in the face while we’re trying to save her?”

Asked about McLaughlin’s arrest, a spokeswoman for the Morton County sheriff’s office said she “refused to cooperate during the intake and assessment” and was escorted into an “isolation cell” where she was instructed to lay on a jail mattress and change. McLaughlin was eventually “undressed by female jail staff”, the spokeswoman said.

Lauren Howland, a 21-year-old youth council leader and member of the San Carlos and Jicarilla Apache tribes and Navajo Nation, said she felt that police were discriminating against indigenous people.

“I think they want to say you’re under arrest for being not white and praying not to Jesus or not to God,” said Howland, who said an officer broke her wrist during one incident.

The experience has shaken her faith in law enforcement, she added.

“Are they really there to protect and serve me? Or if someone gives them a few hundred bucks are they going to come over here and beat me again?”