The episodes contain an absorbing and often artfully filmed account of the opponents’ occupation. The granting of a permit in July to tunnel under the Missouri spurs the growth of the protest camp (to an eventual 10,000 people, many of them nonnative), captured in Woodstock-like images of cars arriving in slow files. Early skirmishes between small groups of protesters and security guards with dogs give way to large-scale battles against uniformed police officers. Unarmed protesters fall to truncheons and rubber bullets. An eerie nighttime scene of water cannons being fired from armored vehicles looks like something out of “Apocalypse Now.”

The filmmakers’ ambitions for the Standing Rock episodes were greater than just recounting the standoff, which could have been done quite dramatically in one hourlong episode, and probably should have been. The episodes’ two and a half hours are filled out with history lessons — broken treaties, unresolved land claims and the undeniable legacy of government-sponsored genocide — and discussions of reservation life focused mainly on the effects the Dakota oil boom has had on native women. These sequences are worthy, persuasive, poignant and, in comparison with the story of the protest, familiar and not exactly vital.

Information about future installments of “Rise” is scarce. Perhaps the series was rushed on the air to capitalize on the news value of the Standing Rock segments, which were shown recently at the Sundance Film Festival. A third episode available for review takes Ms. Fox to Arizona, where Apache activists are fighting to keep Oak Flat, an area they consider sacred, from being destroyed by an open-pit copper mine. Here a small note of discord is allowed — Ms. Fox talks to a young tribe member who says that money from the mine might be worth more than pride on the destitute reservation.