Serving as headquarters for the indigenous led movement against
the Dakota Access Pipeline, Oceti Sakowin was the main resistance
camp and home to, at one point, thousands of Water Protectors.
Fulfilling a Lakota prophecy of a black snake that would rise from
the earth's depths delivering great sorrow and destruction, the
Dakota Access Pipeline’s 1,172-mile route passes through treaty
lands of historical and spiritual significance. The $3.78 billion
project is expected to transport crude oil from the Bakken region
in North Dakota to an oil tank farm in Patoka, Illinois, running
underneath the Missouri River. A rupture in the pipeline would
contaminate the primary water supply to the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation.
Although the physical encampment has been forcibly removed and
the Sacred Fire extinguished, a spiritual fire has been lit among
many. As the resistance grows, the fight continues for indigenous,
environmental, and humanitarian against the expansion of
corporate greed.
