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Holy Ground: The Story You Aren’t Hearing About the Dakota Access Pipeline

Holy Ground: The Story You Aren’t Hearing About the Dakota Access Pipeline

Last updated on: September 7, 2016 at 7:27 am by Erin Wathen

Holy Ground: The Story You Aren’t Hearing About the Dakota Access Pipeline 2016-09-07T07:27:53-07:00 Erin Wathen

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The summer after college, I was part of a traveling crew that set up, and led, a mission trip experience for high schoolers. Youth groups and their leaders would come and camp out at a local high school; spend their days working on area homes, getting to know the residents and local culture; then come back to the school at night for activities and evening worship. After a week they’d leave, exhausted and maybe more grateful for the relative comfort of their regular lives.

That summer, I fell in love with driving a big truck (lovingly named The Shady Lady). I also fell in love with a remote place that I would never in life have thought about visiting otherwise– the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Before we talk about the Standing Rock that has been in the news this week, let me give you a brief snapshot of 6-weeks(ish) in that community:

Scene 1: Four white kids drive a big-ass truck into some swampy bog that looks cool because “Hey, 4-wheel drive! Off-roading!” But that swampy bog turned out to be something like quicksand that the locals call “gumbo.” Not to mention private property. We got stuck, and quickly. Enter, a local with an even bigger truck: who offered to go get some chains and haul us out. Which was our only option, as this was long before cell phones and we were miles from anywhere. He was annoyed–but not nearly so much as he probably should have been.

Scene 2: Four white kids get invited to a Pow-wow, and are promptly drawn into a big, festive, full-on family reunion; complete with drum circles, dancing, and authentic head-dress.

Scene 3: Four white kids get invited to a Sun Dance: a pre-dawn, deeply sacred right-of-passage ceremony for young men coming of age. We went there instead of church one Sunday morning.

Scene 4: Tribal leaders come to camp one night to spend an evening. They tell us stories and teach 200 (mostly-white) kids a tribal dance, which was the highlight of the week for all.

Scene 5: Gracious host takes four white kids out on the prairie, in the back of a pickup truck, to see bison. And this is where–in some way I will never understand–I got completely zapped by the Holy Spirit. I do not know why. But when that herd came rolling by, it was like being dropped into the midst of another world, catching a glimpse of something just a little too sacred for human consumption. It was the moment that God told me we were going to have a long talk later, and that long talk turned out to be about ministry. For more than a summer.

Which is to say, the Standing Rock community demonstrated immeasurable patience and hospitality–and even extended a few moments of pure worship–to a bunch of white kids on a mission trip. Kids who thought we were offering some great service by painting houses and talking about Jesus; when in fact, they were showing us the whole world.

Bison on the Dakota prairie, via Pixabay

Fast forward 16 years. The Lakota Sioux tribe of Standing Rock has been in the news. But it’s entirely possible that you missed the story.

In short, a pipeline project is destroying sacred sites and burial grounds, and putting the local water supply in jeopardy. In spite of organized protest–and formal pleas filed with the Federal Government–the pipeline is being pushed through.

Over the weekend, security guards unleashed tear gas and attack dogs on a crowd of protestors.

Some things worth noting: first, the formal appeals and protests have been going on since long before this recent escalation. Up until that point, there was very little coverage of the story. Now that the conflict has become violent, it has been picked up by more of the mainstream media. However, many reports are skewed, with headlines implying that it was the protestors turned violent first, and the guards’ response was justified.

Click on the link above. That police dog with blood dripping from its tongue suggests otherwise.

Tribal council has filed an emergency appeal with the Federal Courts to stop the demolition of their holy ground. A judge is hearing the case today, with a verdict expected by next week.

There are so many questions: like, how is a Texas-based corporation given the nod to dig up tribal grounds in the first place? And how are they getting around the EPA, if the water supply is in question? And why are private security officers–hired by said corporation–empowered to use such vicious animals for this purpose?

But the biggest question I have is: why is this story not blowing up our newsfeed?

My hunch is that the lack of coverage in the mainstream media comes down to a tragically simple truth: a certain version of the American narrative depends upon forgetting our Native populations. Their very existence is a condemnation of ours. It’s an uncomfortable reality that reservations exist in the first place; they arose out of greed, entitlement and blind ambition. Their boundaries have been constantly re-drawn to protect corporate and government interests, and their people have been displaced and lied to, again and again, by those same institutions. Episodes like the one unfolding in North Dakota right now have been consistently rinsed from our history books, as if forgetting about them will make it not so. Such ignorance of our own history is lethal. We repeat sins of the past because we have not entirely integrated them with our collective sense of self. That was somebody else. Some other place and time.

So we should not be at all surprised by the relative radio silence from public voices when it comes to the matter at hand. They will inundate us with the antics of Ryan Lochte for weeks on end; they cannot wait to tell us the latest gaffe from the Trump campaign; they will rush to the scene if a celebrity is arrested or checked into rehab; but a story that clearly shreds the notion of who we think we are? That’s touchy stuff. That’s bad for ratings.

* *

I do not know why an encounter with a herd of bison was such a deeply transformative 30-seconds for me. I’ve seen other wildlife, before and since, in far more beautiful places, but it’s never struck me in quite the same way. All I can guess is that I caught a glimpse of what life like for the people who have called it home forever. I felt just a single heartbeat of what it is to be so profoundly connected to a place, and to the wild things that live there. And it took my breath away.

So it’s especially sickening to see that sacred earth plowed under, for the boundless gains of white people, yet again, at the expense of what is holy and human and good. And that’s also why the irony of the dogs seems particularly cruel. This place, and these people, have known the holiness of animals since long before hipster vegans made it cool. They have honored the spirit of every living thing, and every thing in its place, even as we have torn down the earth around them. Now we do it again. And we can’t even tell the story well.

*Update, 9-7-16. A Federal Judge has granted a “partial” stop of construction on the pipeline. Read more here.

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Dakota Access Pipeline

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