Standing Rock Uprising

File:"Happi" American Horse direct action against DAPL, August 2016 (cropped).png

Led by the Indigenous Standing Rock Sioux nation of the Oceti Sakowin confederation, the Standing Rock Uprising, from April 2016 to February 2017, involved blockades, lockdowns, and even arsons against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Resisters secured a temporary halt to construction in late 2016.

Prior to the encampments, the Standing Rock Sioux sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for approving the pipeline without adequately considering environmental impacts and consulting the crime as required by treaty agreements. Dave Achambault II, the Chair of the Standing Rock Sioux, explained:

We have laws that require federal agencies to consider environmental risks and protection of Indian historic and sacred sites. But the Army Corps has ignored all those laws and fast-tracked this massive project just to meet the pipeline's aggressive construction schedule.

In particular, the Standing Rock Sioux argued the pipeline violated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty which promised "undisturbed use and occupation" of reservation lands surrounding the proposed location of the pipeline." A 2015 tribal resolution declared that "the Dakota Access Pipeline poses a serious risk to the very survival of our Tribe and ... would destroy valuable cultural resources."

In April 2016, pipeline opponents formed two encampments, first the Sacred Stone Spiritual Camp and second the Oceti Sakowin Camp. The latter contained the Red Warrior Camp which was a hub for organizing direct actions. At their peak, the encampments housed 15,000 to 20,000 people.

State and corporate authorities' response to the uprising was massive and intense, involving "dogs, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, tear gas, and sound cannons. No one was killed in any of the multiple acts of police repression only thanks to good luck and well-organized medical support. However, a Native woman lost her sight after being shot in the face with a tear grenade at close range and a solidarity protester had her arm partially blown off by a concussion grenade." Major police attacks against the pipeline opponents occurred on October 27 and November 20. State intimidation also included long court cases and imprisonment of Indigenous organizers Red Fawn and Marcus Mitchell.

In December 2016, more than two thousand veterans arrived to defend the encampments against a possible police crackdown. This tactic probably protected the encampments from disbandment and also opened up discussion about the pipeline's settler-colonial roots. Brian Ward explains:

It would have been a public relations nightmare for the pipeline and the authorities if police forces turned their weapons on veterans. These veterans did not just come to help, but also to apologize for the military’s role in the attempted ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples.

Life at the Oceti Sakowin encampment, according to Ward's first-hand account, "gave us a glimpse of what a world based on kinship and good relations with mother earth looks like." The ethic of Mitakuye Oyasin, meaning "We are all related," was "central to the activity in the camp, which included action traini9ng, food distribution, media, legal support by the National Lawyers Guild, two-spirit support, and much more." Everyday affairs were largely led by "badass Indigenous women" according to scholar Kim TallBear.

Anarchists were very involved in the uprising, and especially in the militant Red Warrior Camp. They sometimes clashed with liberal and pacifist elements. The Catholic Worker activists Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek engaged in arson against the pipeline's construction. The Sierra Club gave a characteristic response of the Standing Rock Uprising's mainstream supporters: "Certainly, we had absolutely no knowledge about what these women were doing or were going to do, and we condemn any kind of damage or anything like that."

Assessments

Anarchist and Kwakwaka'wakw Nation member Gord Hill told Crimethinc:

"I would say the NoDAPL campaign was very important for a variety of reasons. While there have been a number of anti-pipeline campaigns in Canada, and in particular in BC, it was the first real struggle against a proposed pipeline to occur as construction began. In Canada, the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was eventually abandoned after several years of Indigenous resistance. At the Unis’tot’en camp, it doesn’t appear that the proposed natural gas pipeline has attempted to build on Unis’tot’en land. So the NoDAPL campaign was the first one to actively resist construction of a pipeline.

I think especially for Natives in the US, the NoDAPL campaign was very important, and I’m sure thousands of Native youth were radicalized in some way by participating in it.

Ultimately, however, the NoDAPL campaign failed. I would suggest this occurred for a number of reasons, the primary one being that the opposition, despite some militant actions that occurred, was primarily based on “non-violent civil disobedience” and pacifist methods. Any attempts at creating a diversity of tactics were largely squashed by the NGO-type organizers that dominated the debates on tactics, combined with the lack of experience among members of the Standing Rock reservation."

The New York Times paraphrased autonomist scholar Silvia Federici's analysis: "One of Federici’s most instructive examples of commoning is the protest campaign of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in 2016 and 2017. In the course of fighting a pipeline project, the tribe and its allies built an encampment network that kept thousands of protesters housed and fed and safe, even as winter descended; they created a school for the children, recognizing that if whole families were going to participate, the children would need both care and education. In part because they made the camps a livable, long-term community, they were able sustain and amplify the effort into a movement with international support and ongoing momentum even though the camp itself was cleared by law enforcement in February 2017."

In 2017, Trump regime took power, disbanded the last of the encampments and ensured that the pipeline was finished and began operating. In 2021, a court ruled that the pipeline lacked a necessary permit and needed an environmental impact assessment. By late 2023, courts were "hearing evidence from both sides to determine whether the pipeline should be shut down while the review is conducted."