By Tom Petersen, Former Marine and Retired Air Traffic Controller

When I joined the Marines 40 years ago, I took a vow to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That’s why I drove from the suburbs Minneapolis to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation this weekend to join other military veterans in protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

For the past few months, I have watched from afar as para-militarized police forces from nine states have targeted peaceful protestors at Standing Rock with tear gas, freezing water, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and other life-threatening crowd control weapons.

The Standing Rock Sioux understandably don’t want an oil pipeline so close to the source of their drinking water and don’t want it to cross through their sacred ancestral lands. They and their supporters have every right to protest this, and the way they were treated really bothered me. It really looked to me like the government of North Dakota felt like they could do whatever they wanted because these people are Native Americans, and I don’t approve of that.

So when I heard that military veterans were planning to go to Standing Rock to join the protesters at their camp this weekend, I went to my local thrift shop to stock up on winter gear, packed up my pick-up truck, and drove west.

At the thrift store, the cashier told me I wasn’t the only one who had come in last week in search of winter gear for Standing Rock. A customer had come in just a couple of hours earlier to do the same. And she herself was planning to go to Standing Rock for the weekend.

I left early Saturday morning and drove to Eagle Butte, South Dakota, about an hour and a half south of Standing Rock where the Cheyenne Sioux had created a rally point and provided protesters with warm places to sleep and hot food. There were about 500 vets there, from all over the country — California, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia — and from all walks of life. There were men, women, farmers, students, IT professionals, and preachers, some young, some old. There was even a 97-year-old woman who served as a nurse in World War II.

The Sioux served us buffalo stew, and the tribal elders briefed us on the weather and what to expect when we got there. There were vets from Florida and Georgia who weren’t used to the cold, and at Standing Rock, the temperature at this time of year can be below zero. They explained where we could find shelter from the cold and that there would be a medic tent and first aid station (also staffed by vets) should anyone be injured by rubber bullets, concussion grenades, or tear gas. And they reiterated the importance of keeping the protest peaceful and suggested that if we were to get agitated, we could partake of a tribal remedy and chew on a piece of bitter root, which the Sioux believe can relieve high blood pressure and other ailments.

The elders said that there were some 11,000 protesters at the camp and urged us to leave our cars at Eagle Butte and take one of the many buses to the Standing Rock encampment. As we slept on cots, buses came and went all night. I got up at 5 a.m. and headed out to Standing Rock around 7:30. I arrived just before midday. The Sioux thanked us for coming, assigned us to tents, and directed us to set up not at the main entrance to the camp but at an unguarded area from which the camp was still accessible. There were rumors that agitators had been sent into the camp to disrupt the peaceful protest, and the tribe thought we vets would be a good deterrent.

We built a fire, kept lookout along the camp perimeter, and helped the Sioux build additional shelters for protesters. And then something amazing started happening. The police started backing down. In the face of such an impressive veteran presence, law enforcement vehicles began leaving. Then, a little after 4 p.m., an announcement came over the speakers. The Department of the Army halted the project.

Celebratory whooping erupted from within the camp. Tribal members paraded through the camp on horseback, beating drums and gathering around a fire at the center of the camp. The tribe began singing — but it wasn’t like a party. It was spiritual. A Native American vet explained that the tribe was thanking the great spirit. People lined up along the main avenue — we called it Flag Avenue — and linked arms.

While my fellow vets and I were happy, we were still nervous. There are still a lot of uncertainties surrounding the Army’s decision. There were rumors that the Dakota Pipeline might attempt to drill on Monday anyway and just pay any fines that might be levied against them. Some of us wondered if maybe the Department of the Army and the Dakota Pipeline struck a deal with the incoming Trump administration. Maybe they wanted to trick us into leaving so that they could go ahead building the pipeline.   

Initially, I thought I would stay for a few more days, but it soon became clear that we weren’t needed in such massive numbers. I’m 59, and at Standing Rock I met a new generation of vets, strong young men and women who assured me that it was time to pass the torch. I decided to head home, but many of the younger vets stayed behind. I felt comfortable leaving the protest in their hands, but I will be back — and so will many others — if we are needed.

Tom Petersen is retired air traffic controller from Minneapolis. He served in the Marines from 1976 – 1980. 

Earlier this month, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department briefed the public via Facebook on the scope of law enforcement presence that was helping confront protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock. 

The help was made possible by a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton about 20 years ago, which created an interstate agreement for emergency management. The agreement helped bring law enforcement agents to North Dakota to the site of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The protests at Standing Rock, and the Black Lives Matter protests in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, represent some of the only times the compact has been invoked outside of a natural disaster.

The ACLU assembled the names of law enforcement agencies below from the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and from media accounts. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department confirmed the cities and counties in North Dakota that sent officers as well as the 10 states that contributed, and where there was a news story about a particular force, we included a hyperlink. Where there was mention of the number of officers deployed, we noted that as a minimum — though more may have been deployed later.

Louisiana:

46.  St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Department

Montana:

47.  Montana Highway Patrol (at least 10 officers)

Wisconsin:

48.  Wisconsin State Patrol (at least 17 officers)

49.  Dane County Sheriff’s Department (at least 10 officers)

50.  Dane County Special Events Team (at least 3 supervisors)

51.  St. Croix County Sheriff’s Department (at least 4 officers)

52.  Rock County Sheriff’s Department (at least 5 officers)

53.  Marathon County Sheriff’s Department (at least 4 officers)

Minnesota:

54.  Hennepin County Sheriff's Department (at least 29 personnel)

55.  Anoka County Sheriff's Department (at least 6 personnel)

56.  Washington County Sheriff's Department (at least 5 personnel)

South Dakota:

57.  South Dakota Highway Patrol

58. Pennington County Sheriff's Department (12 officers)

Wyoming:

59.  Wyoming Highway Patrol (at least 6 officers)

60.  Laramie County Sheriff's Department

Nebraska:

61.  Nebraska State Patrol (at least 11 officers)

Indiana:

62.  Lake County Sheriff’s Department

63.  Schererville Police Department

64.  Hammond Police Department

65.  Griffith Police Department

66.  Michigan City Police Department

67.  Munster Police Department

68.  Indiana Department of Natural Resources

69.  Marion County Sheriff’s Department

70.  Brookville Police Department

71.  Porter County

72.  LaPorte County

73.  Jasper County

74.  Newton County

Ohio:

75.  Ohio State Highway Patrol (at least 37 officers)

DEMILITARIZE STANDING ROCK

 

ACT NOW

 

By Jamil Dakwar, Director, ACLU Human Rights Program

In a 4-minute SoundCloud interviewwith the Indigenous Environmental Network, Angela Bibens describes the devastating effects of tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, mace, and water cannons used on 400 peaceful protestors in North Dakota by local police in the last 48 hours. The confrontation arose as protestors attempted to move two burned trucks off Backwater Bridge just north of the Oceti Sakowin "Water Protector" Camp, which had blocked the main route to the city of Bismarck and delayed emergency services.

According to Bibens, several demonstrators suffered seizures, broken ligaments, loss of bowel control, and, in some cases, loss of consciousness, including one elder who went into cardiac arrest. A reported 300 people have been injured, 26 hospitalized, and several arrested. Both the Standing Rock and Cheyenne Sioux Tribes deployed emergency services for on-the-ground resuscitation and opened a nearby community center for evacuation.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department tried to justify their use of force by calling the protestors ”very aggressive” and framing their demonstration as an “ongoing riot,” while simultaneously denying their use of certain less-lethal weapons entirely.

In a press conference, Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier told reporters, “We don’t have a water cannon. I don’t know where the term water cannon comes from. This was basically just a fire hose.”

The sheriff’s office claimed that fire trucks were used to stop fires they say were started by the activists. But a video posted to Twitter yesterday clearly shows authorities drenching protestors in areas where there were no fires, using tanks that bear no resemblance to fire trucks.        

The health risks associated with deploying these weapons cannot be understated. In a joint report by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (of which the ACLU is a founding member) and Physicians for Human Rights, water cannons are characterized as particularly dangerous and life-threatening weapons. The use of water cannons can induce facial, skull, and rib fractures; brain trauma; bruises; prolonged nausea; and even blindness. Water cannons have been attributed to deaths in Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Turkey, South Korea, and Ukraine.

In North Dakota this weekend, temperatures reached 26 Fahrenheit, or -3 Celsius, making the targets of water cannons also susceptible to hyp0thermia and frostbite. A member of the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council told reporters that she could hear the sound of clothes “crunching” as people walked in garments frozen to their bodies. For this reason, the Healer Council demanded the immediate cessation of these weapons and expressed concern for “the real risk of loss of life due to severe hypothermia under these conditions.”

Use of unjustified force and massive less-lethal weapons by law enforcement against largely peaceful protestors is all too familiar. We’ve seen it in Ferguson, Baltimore, even in Standing Rock this past month. The ACLU and other groups warned against abusive police practices at Standing Rock and called on the Justice Department to investigate possible constitutional violations and suspend police use of federally supplied military equipment.

These tactics have not occurred in a vacuum. In fact, they’ve attracted international condemnation for their apparent violation of international human rights standards on the use of force by law enforcement. Just last week, a group of UN human rights experts denounced the treatment of Standing Rock protesters stating:

“The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is an individual right, and it cannot be taken away indiscriminately or en masse due to the violent actions of a few … the use of violence by some protesters should not be used as a justification to nullify the peaceful assembly rights of everyone else.”

And construction of the pipeline has continued despite a call in September by Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, for it to be halted for posing a significant risk to the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and to their burial and sacred sites.

To make matters worse, the atrocious use of excessive and disproportionate police force is imperceptibly softened by news outlets that frame Sunday’s confrontations as a “clash.” It suggests there is an equal balance of power between the militarized police force and weaponless demonstrators.

DEMILITARIZE STANDING ROCK

ACT NOW

This is no “clash.”

It is a catastrophe with serious human rights implications. Nearing the eve of Thanksgiving, a holiday remembered by many indigenous peoples for its legacy of American colonization and genocide, Sunday’s showdown is a contemporary illustration of an age-old oppression that this country must reckon with.