Richard Peterson

CANNON BALL, N.D. — The serene and prayer-filled camp near the confluence of the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation has drawn thousands of Native Americans like Lois Red Elk of Wolf Point.

“It’s an overwhelming feeling of being home,” Red Elk said of the camp, which was set up to voice and raise opposition to the Dakota Access Pipe Line currently under construction just north of the reservation. “I just had to come here. It’s like an ancestral spirit was calling me.”

For the hundreds of tribal members from Montana who’ve journeyed there since April, it offers a chance to pray, meet longtime friends and relatives and join in solidarity with thousands from across Indian Country.

The camp, however, is also serious business.

Preferring to call themselves “water protectors” instead of protesters, more than a hundred people from the camp have been arrested at the pipeline construction sites north and west of the reservation.

Their mission, along with the campers, is to stop construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline that will carry Bakken crude oil 1,172 miles from North Dakota to Illinois. If completed, the pipeline will pump about a half-million barrels through it daily.

While construction continues elsewhere, federal intervention has stopped crews working on a stretch near the reservation, 20 miles on each side of the Missouri River where Standing Rock tribal members say lies the burial grounds of their ancestors and is a sacred area for their tribe and other tribes in the region.

They also fear if the pipeline breaks underneath the Missouri River, it will contaminate the water supply for the tribe’s members and for the millions of people living downstream.

In September, a federal judge rejected the tribe’s petition to stop construction, but a short time later the Obama administration stepped in and said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would not allow continuation of the project until it reviews environmental issues surrounding the portion of the pipeline adjacent to the reservation.

While the tribe awaits word on those findings, tribal members from Montana and all over Indian Country come to Standing Rock bringing food, firewood, hay and other supplies for the camp, which at times has reached 7,000 people.

Ray Yazzie of Browning, who’s been at the camp for a couple of months, said many tribal members feel what’s happening in North Dakota is a continuation of the violation of treaties and rights by the federal and state governments for the past few centuries.

“This has been happening with all Native nations, and unless we work together, it will continue,” he said.

There are four camps within the larger camp, the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires), the Sacred Stones, a camp across the river occupied by Rosebud Sioux tribal members from South Dakota and the Red Warrior Camp.

Yazzie, 28, who also has experience at several other tribal resistance camps in the country, has been staying at the Red Warrior Camp, whose members are known for being focused, very diligent and action oriented, he said.

“I want to be about it. Not talk about it,” Yazzie said of his reason for coming to the Standing Rock Reservation and joining the Red Warrior Camp. “It’s important to find people here who aren’t going to take a selfie and leave. It’s about stopping the construction and working together. That’s why I’m here.”

For the past few months, delegations from Fort Peck Tribes, the Blackfeet Tribe, including the Crazy Dog Society, Fort Belknap, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Salish Kootenai have come to North Dakota offering support and goods for the camp. Some tribes also have contributed thousands of dollars to the Standing Rock tribe’s legal defense fund.

As each tribe parades into the camp, there are prayers, songs and a welcoming ceremony. The flag of each tribe is placed onto a pole and displayed along with the hundreds of others.

Tribal historians from many reservations have noted there hasn’t been a gathering of Natives this large since the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho defeated Gen. George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June of 1876.

On Wednesday, Fort Peck tribal council members and Dakota (Sioux) and Assiniboine tribal members caravanned to Standing Rock and presented a semi-truck load of firewood, bales of hay and donated winter clothing items to the camp.

The delegation of about 50 people, led by riders on horseback, entered into camp on a dirt road dotted with the other tribal flags. Hundreds of campers and Standing Rock tribal members welcomed the group from Fort Peck and thanked them for their generosity.

“Our water is very sacred to us and my grandfather told us once that we’d be paying for water some day,” Fort Peck Tribal Councilman Dana Buckles said during the welcome ceremony at the camp Wednesday. “I laughed then, but I ain’t laughing no more. He always said to keep it sacred and take care of our makoche (land).”

Fort Peck tribal member Leland Spotted Bird said the horses that led the caravan are always needed for healing and strength.

“They are our true medicine and true warriors. They’ve carried us into battle and will carry us through this,” said Spotted Bird, who spoke in Dakota Sioux at the welcoming.

The camp, which has attracted celebrities and sports figures such as singers Neil Young and Joan Baez as well as the WNBA’s Shoni Schimmel, has shrunk some since school started and cooler weather moved into the area. Green Peace has supplied a solar charging station for campers and other environmental organizations are helping out.

Some in the camp plan on staying through the winter, and others say they’ll come back should the U.S. government allow the construction to continue in the zone that’s been temporarily halted.

Others continue to protest on the front lines by walking onto the ongoing construction areas to hold prayer ceremonies. About 30 people were arrested Wednesday near St. Anthony, N.D., about 20 miles off the reservation.

State and county police officers and armed National Guardsmen continue to have checkpoints on the main highway going to the reservation.

Yazzie said he will return to Browning once the ground freezes. That’s when construction crews might also leave the area and will have to reapply for digging permits in the coming year.

Red Elk, Fort Peck tribal elder, college instructor and author, plans on going home to Wolf Point this weekend.

“To hear the camp crier every morning singing a sunrise song is very special. I’m hearing and experiencing things I haven’t felt or heard in a long time,” she said. “It will be sad to leave here.”