What Happened To The Community Affected By The Dakota Access Pipeline?

As the morning sunlight filters through the red paint on her windows, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe resident Melanie Thompson and her six-year-old grandson begin their morning prayers to the Creator, Tunkasila. The rosy color reminds them of being in the womb, of rebirth, and new beginnings to embrace the day ahead. 

They go to ceremony together, visit community members on the reservation, and upon arriving home, they smudge, which is burning various medicinal plants to cleanse themselves of the energies of the day and wrap themselves in protection. During bathtime, he splashes the water and asks her, “Grandma, why is water so important?”

“Because without water, we don't have grass or trees,” Thompson says gently. “If we don't have those things, animals and humans won’t eat, and nothing will grow. Water is life.”

Mni Wiconi

Water is Life. This was a common phrase chanted by supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation who battled the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The resistance garnered national attention from media, politicians, and celebrities who came to demand that Energy Transfer Partners halt pipeline construction. Monetary donations and equipment poured in to support the camps of thousands of people. 

Thompson was there from the start, when members of her tribe went to the site to do ceremony and offer prayers as their own form of resistance. The environment was safe enough for her to bring her newborn. But new supporters brought their own ideas of tactical resistance without input from Standing Rock members. According to Thompson, some supporters brought weapons and drugs, and security company TigerSwan sent infiltrators to stir the division.  

“In the beginning, there was a lot of prayer. We wanted to let the world know that we were here fighting it,” Thompson said. “But people came in and were like, ‘We're really going to do some damage.' People that weren't from Standing Rock wanted to be in charge of donations, camps, and other things. I believe in the effort. I just wish we went about it a little bit differently, but they didn't. People got hurt.”

No longer feeling safe, Thompson took the baby home and watched the protests escalate on the news. Water protectors locked down the site and sabotaged construction, while police and private security used rubber bullets, water cannons, attack dogs, tear gas, and felony charges on resistors. 

Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring the Army Corps of Engineers to review and approve DAPL in an expedited manner, and on February 8, 2017, ACE reversed its position on the need for a full environmental assessment and granted the final permit needed to drill under Lake Oahe. The pipeline has been operational since June 2017 and moves about 600,000 to 650,000 barrels of oil per day. 

Thompson lives 2 miles south of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the banks on the Cannonball River. If the pipeline burst, she and her grandson would be the first to be affected by the oil leaking into their daily water supply, before running downriver into the Missouri River, which provides water for millions of Americans.

“It makes no sense to put a pipeline in the ground over one of our biggest aquifers; that’s where all our well water comes from. That's why we didn't want the pipeline here,” Thompson said. “The water will be contaminated, no longer usable. For what? For a few people to be billionaires? It's not fair for the rest of the world to die. Anything that we consume to stay alive is made from water. So if we pollute our own life source, what happens to us?”

Culture Calls Her Home

Thompson has always been a fighter. She has fought for the wellbeing of her grandson, the end of the pipeline, and sobriety from a methamphetamine and fentanyl addiction, which she dealt around the reservation in her 20’s. Thompson began dealing marijuana at 12 years old, and thought she could sell harder drugs without becoming addicted. 

“I became addicted. I was a walking stick, losing money, putting my kids at danger. I became a hermit in the state of my health,” Thompson said. “I went from a size 16 to a size 0,  I was like, 'What’s size O? Because that’s the size I’m fitting.' And they said, 'Melanie, That's the size 0.' I didn't see it. I was lying to my own addiction.” 

After seeing the number, Thompson knew she needed to quit. The reservation has no recovery treatment center, so she checked into a hospital for a few weeks until she was completely off meth. Thompson has been sober since for about 10 years, and is on a mission to bring her tiospaye (family) and friends back into the folds of their culture with her. 

“I just went into practicing our culture, because that's what saved me. I went back into ceremony, Sundance, sweat, only sticking close to my elders, and having them as my friends and my guidance, the people that I could rely upon to talk to when I'm feeling most vulnerable,” Thompson said. “Within treatment programs here there's a lot of judgmental people who have no compassion because they’ve never been through it. That scares a lot of people away. They also push us away. It took the treatment program here a year to get back to my daughter about getting treatment, and I had already gotten her sober by then.”