Rise

There is a standoff in the Great Plains.

Two hundred Native American tribes

are fighting construction of an oil pipeline.

Workers are digging trenches in Emmons County

for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The North Dakota section would cross under several rivers,

which prompted protest on the Standing Rock

and Fort Berthel reservations about the threat to drinking water supplies.

The encampment near

the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation

is now one of North Dakota's newest and biggest communities.

Two, at times 3,000 people, are joining tribal members

in their fight against the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline.

You're on our land.

You're on Sioux Nation land.

Move back!

Please continue to the south.

Now the standoff is intensifying.

In the last few weeks,

police have used water cannon, stun grenades,

and other non-lethal weapons against protesters.

Hundreds have been arrested and injured.

The police are protecting and serving a pipeline.

They're protecting pr... fossil fuel profits over human beings.

They're macing people.

They're fucking tasing them in the face.

This is a war story,

and we need to continue to tell our war stories as Indigenous people

in the spirit of Crazy Horse and Geronimo and Tecumseh,

and all the great leaders and warrior women

that have faced off with this state.

You're on our land.

You're on Sioux Nation land.

Hello, all you folks out there in Standing Rock.

It's almost 90 degrees.

The earth is about 90 degrees since noon.

Dinner is being put together...

and that would be the music going up.

87.9 broadcasting live from Standing Rock,

Spirit Resistance Radio.

Nahko Bear and a couple other really popular musicians

will be in the house.

Yeah, there's some soup down there.

It's called Cannonball Stew and... Heather Little Balls.

Heather Little Balls!

Yeah, this has been a journey,

but the journey ain't over, you know, for many of us.

A lot of them, they're gonna come and they're gonna go, but me...

I've always chose to stay.

You can't give up.

Daydreaming, walking the dogs.

- Hey. - Hey, hey, whoo!

Families, kids, jobs, you name it, they got it.

To be here... I've seen people give up their jobs

just to be here, to stand strong.

That's how much it means to them themselves

to stand for something that's for the kids,

like this little guy right here wearing a bandana.

This is like a new beginning

for each and every one that comes here.

Even the babies, even these little kids, they can feel it.

You know, they sense it.

It ain't about the colour or what shade your skin or your hair is,

it's what you feel inside.

Ho!

Gotta rear up a little bit.

Grab that mane and hold on.

Say, "Come on, horsie. Let's go, horsie".

It don't get no gooder than this, or better than this.

Each one of these tents is probably about 3,000.

Three thousand teepees, too.

Shows the world that

we don't want this big black snake coming through.

They didn't want it in Bismarck.

Why in the hell did they say, "Well, let's put it down here

on the reservation where the Indians won't, you know...

they won't say nothing wrong"?

No, that ain't gonna happen,

and you can see it's not gonna happen.

And they say that there used to be, all along this river,

a thousand teepees at a time, in different areas.

In 1803, the United States, the fledgling United States,

purchased a stretch of land between the Mississippi River

and the Rocky Mountains.

As we know it today, that would be considered

the Missouri River Basin.

What was at the time the largest

real estate transaction in world history,

and I think to date that actually still is true.

Out of the Louisiana Purchase will be formed

the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa,

Minnesota, North and South Dakota,

Nebraska, and Oklahoma in their entirety,

and most of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

Over a million square miles,

for the price of only $15 million, about four cents an acre.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was sent to map out

this area and claim it for the United States.

And with that, you know, they brought their flag

to stick it in the ground.

And they were conscious of the fact that they were violating

the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples at that time,

that they had no right to traverse that part of the river.

It was the Sioux, right? That was the Sioux Indians,

that's where they lived.

We offered them food, we gave them a place to stay,

we offered them shelter, and they rebuffed that.

They rebuffed the kinship we tried to make with them,

and that sort of began

this failed settler kinship with this river.

It's not that we were just outright hostile to them

in the beginning. We tried

to make kinship with them in the beginning,

and they... the United States rebuffed that kinship.

They took hostage to headmen,

and used them as protection

to guarantee their passage through our territory.

And later on, they wrote in their journals that

the Sioux people were the "vilest miscreants of the savage race".

And that began one of the longest,

most intense conflicts in the history of the world.

As the stars and stripes go up

and the tri-colour comes down, the size of America is doubled.

America is on its way to becoming

the greatest nation in the world.

Good morning, my relatives, good morning.

We invite all youth to come at 6:00pm

to meet at the main cook shack.

We're all going to march in together

and welcome youth who are just showing up to camp.

Then starting tomorrow we're having a youth concert.

We invite everybody to come to the youth concert tomorrow.

Good morning, my relatives, good morning.

I hope this isn't too early of a wakeup call.

Good morning, good morning.

There has never been so many nations standing all together.

There is many different cultures that I really don't

have a background on, but they don't eat certain things,

and so we're trying to provide a menu

that kind of fits a little bit of everything so everybody gets food,

and then how to distribute the food.

It's almost a 24/7 job.

Hey, good morning.

Thank you, have a good day.

Where is that big frying pan?

- That one I just took? - The huge one.

It's over there.

Oh, that one I got from the donation last night,

- I put it over there. - Is that good enough?

A lot of donations, and we're thankful.

Every... It seems like every time I need something,

that's... ah, we don't have enough, and then...

boom, someone's right there. Like this morning

I looked at the bacon, and we just had like four packs.

And these guys came and they brought us a bunch of bacon.

And I said, "Do you know what, I was just needing this, you know.

It's happened every time."

I look out for drugs, I look out for booze.

I look out for the militia, look out for Feds, undercover.

People might try to bring guns in here.

This is no place for guns right now, you know.

If someone was gonna bring them here,

it would be to discredit us, you know,

discredit us and saying they lying.

You know, there's always something to do.

There's wood, there's the dock down there

where we get our groceries.

If you're out here and you can't find something to do,

then you know what, I probably would say,

"Well, go home and see if there's anything there to do."

Has there been politics out here?

Yeah, I seen it when I first come.

But they got together, bring a circle together,

and talk these things out.

We're talking about a treaty, 1851 treaty,

talking about the tribes of all tribes,

come together and be one and be united,

and make that sovereignty.

1851 was the largest gathering

of Native people in North America, in history.

There was over 30,000 Native people

who were brought in to sign this treaty.

It was a comprehensive treaty.

It involved at least several dozen different tribes

and different nations.

It wasn't just the Oceti Sakowin,

there was all these other river tribes that signed the treaty.

It was a treaty of peace because the US understood itself

as militarily and politically in a weaker position,

and it was mainly to secure the safety

and the passage of their citizens and their people through our lands.

Their offer was peace amongst us

and the various tribes in the region.

It also spelled out the territory

that is now known as the Great Sioux Reservation,

which is land between the Missouri River and the Big Horn Mountains.

This land...

is amazing land.

It is where the sun dances happened.

It is where the trade happened.