They call themselves water protectors, land defenders. Their numbers are major; they are record; they are inspiring. At its peak, the population at the occupation’s North Dakota base, known as Sacred Stone camp, is said to have reached 3,500, including members of nearly 300 tribes and Native nations that have joined forces with the Standing Rock Sioux, whose tribal lands are most immediately imperiled by the pipeline, as well as environmental activists and other sympathizers.

They traveled from Duluth, Minnesota, and Spokane, Washington; from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the Navajo Nation capital in Window Rock, Arizona; and from many, many other places, for historically displaced indigenous peoples are spread across the country, many of them geographically distant from their homelands. Some came on horseback, some in cars and trucks and vans crammed full of donated blankets, sleeping bags, down jackets, batteries, canned food, cell phones: supplies for laying in a true siege.

They set up a village of teepees, tents, and trailers, a sort of protesters’ powwow. Some, like Catcher Cuts the Road, triumphant in a feathered headdress on the front page of The New York Times, wore traditional native clothing; others demonstrated in camouflage or caps embroidered with Vietnam-veteran emblems, bearing signs and banners that read Water Is Life and Defend the Sacred. There were teenagers in sundresses and tank tops, and little kids trailing after their parents in the deep dirt gullies blazed by bulldozers making way for the highly contested Dakota Access Pipeline. Together, they mobilized in solidarity against it.

The Standing Rock standoff, or #NoDAPL, as it is often hashtagged, quickly attracted media and popular attention. It has become the subject of numerous articles and radio and TV segments; it has made headlines throughout the country, the world. The Department of Justice issued a statement requesting a halt to construction, signaling not an outright victory, perhaps, but certainly a landmark. Here was a movement of the people, by the people, so successful it had actually yielded change—or, at least, as Standing Rock Sioux tribe chairman David Archambault II put it, “a crack in the door.” (Construction continues elsewhere along the nearly 2,000-mile route.)

Why, then, has an arrest warrant been issued for the acclaimed journalist Amy Goodman, host of the long-running news program Democracy Now!, for her coverage of the standoff? Why was it not issued until two days after she broadcast video footage of protesters apparently being attacked by security guards brandishing pepper spray and dogs? And what does the arrest warrant mean, not just for the future of the land, the water, the Standing Rock Sioux people, and for all indigenous Americans, but for our fundamental right to freedom of the press?