Feed The Flame

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.