The Mindful Activist – Episode 10 – Standing Rock Protectors Anami and Malory
Matt Ready: Hello out there, this is Matt Ready, host of The Mindful Activist Podcast and founder of The Global Consensus Project, developer of the hive1.net platform and thank you for joining us today. [Matt arranges the camera] Let’s get this all…let’s see how we’re doing here. Facebook Live’s got us all okay, and you got us — so we’re broadcasting today live over Facebook, we’re on YouNow, and we also have a Zoom videoconference room set up, so if any of you are daring and you join in, you will appear magically on the screen back here, and you can participate in full audio/video with today’s very exciting episode. It’s very exciting for two reasons; it’s the first time I had a return guest, because technically Anami —
Anami: Have I been on the show before?
Matt Ready: Well, technically I did interview Anami. I haven’t released that interview yet, so you’re the first returning guest. It’s also the first time I’ve actually had two live guests. Today with me, Anami, local activist, and Malory, also local activist, returning from Standing Rock where a lot of stuff is happening right now. So we’re just going to jump right into it. Is there anything more you’d like to say to just introduce who you are before we get into your story?
Anami: For me I think that’s all that’s important right now.
Matt Ready: Okay. Malory?
Malory: Yeah, local activist and photographer as well, and that was the big reason as to why, I mean not a big reason but it helped going there knowing that I can photograph a lot of the stuff that was happening because these was just so much to be seen, and then people relate a lot with the pictures. It was kind of a push towards us going.
Matt Ready: To begin with, when did you go?
Malory: We went last week and got back Thursday night?
Anami: So we were only there for a couple of days because of work schedules. We really only had this tiny little bit of time to go, and so it was like, should you go if you can only go for a little while? And the fact is, they need bodies, so yes. Even if you can only go for a little bit of time you should, because that helps, but also a lot of people are wanting to go, a lot of people — and it’s really hard to get information from there, accurate information, how do I arrive? How do you know what’s going? Which roads to take in and which ones you can’t take in?
Malory: Which camp to go to?
Anami: What camp do you go to? Because they say you can camp at any of the camps, but I mean you can, but it’s a very different thing going on at each camp. Very different thing I would say at each of the camps. What we wanted to do is do some fact-finding for people who wanted to go and find out like, here’s how you can make your journey easier. When we got there—because Malory wanted to do her photos, she needed a media pass—we ended up both getting media passes, and we wanted to bring supplies, and we wanted to help do water runs. We had these plans of how we were going to help. We were quickly humbled and reminded that the best way to help is to listen to the people that you’re trying to help. Don’t think, I’m sure they need this so I’m going to go to do this. It’s better to take a little more time to assess what is needed instead of just jumping in and helping, because sometimes things that you’re doing to help actually become a hindrance if it’s not something that’s needed, and so since we had these media passes we were able to talk to a lot of coordinators, and organizers, and Elders, and find out what do they want, you guys ought to know, if you’re coming, if you’re not able to come, like how can you help? What’s actually needed and what’s not needed actually becomes somewhat of a problem. That’s the information we brought back to share with you guys today, and every chance we get.
Matt Ready: Great. Before we get into that, it very much reminds me of when I went to Hong Kong during the Umbrella Revolution there and went there with all these ideas of what I was going to do, and you get there and you’re like, okay, first I need to figure out actually what’s happening here, what the people are really doing, but it also taught me, go there. Don’t try to think about what you’re going to do. Go there, bring your body there, and opportunities will arise.
Anami: You don’t have to justify your presence by bringing, you know, I need to bring this truckload of food, or else I’m not really helping when I get there, I won’t be welcome or whatever. It’s with things like this, being there is really important, especially when you’re standing up for something trying to say something, the sheer numbers of people saying it, so the most important thing right now is being bodies there, actual physical people there, it’s really the biggest gift that they need right now.
Malory: We were told that so many different times by Elders, by media, anybody there that was — that was their land, that was where they were from. It was a constant like, just come, bodies, bodies, bodies is the biggest thing, and you could tell it was especially when it came down to that time when you had to go to the front line and stand there, and you felt the energy of that sheer amount of people coming together as one, and you’re singing, and you’re dancing, and you’re hugging, and laughing, knowing even though there’s a potential threat coming your way, where you might be arrested, where you might get pepper-sprayed, where violence might be enacted on your body, they’re still this — there’s something about that mass amount of people coming together for one cause, peacefully together. It’s beautiful thing and so the more that they have, the more sheer amount of people, the more that will grow and the more it helps, it literally helps so much. We saw the number grow just in the small amount of time we were there, we saw the numbers growing and growing, and even on the last day we were there, there was way more people even than the first day. It was powerful.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I can imagine.
Anami: I think as people are finding out what’s going on and how atrociously people are being treated by the authorities, it makes people want to go and want to stand up. It was just this waves of people coming, and that’s great because support people are needed as well, you know, people to work in the kitchens, and people to help organize all the donations that are coming in. All this stuff, so if you have kids or if you’re an Elder and you don’t — a lot of Elders choose to be on the front line right in the very front because if they’re going to pepper spray somebody, hopefully that brings them shame to people that they would pepper spray an Elder, it doesn’t seem to but you would think that it should. So they need those support people, but the people who can actually go up to the front line and be there, and in the videos it looks really scary, and in places it is, when stuff is going on, but you kind of can choose the level of danger that you feel like you can put yourself in. If you feel like you need to be safe, or you feel like you need to bring your kids, or if you feel like that there’s something about your body that makes it hard for you to be right there on the front line, just something that kind of holds you back from full mobility or something, you can stay at the support camp, and do support, and support the people that are there at the front line. If you go to the front line, you can be right there — well, most mostly it’s Elders, there’s a lot of women protectors, I mean if you really want to be right there on the front I don’t think anybody would deny you, but there’s several lines of people. If you’re going to be on the front line you have to have non-violent action training.
Matt Ready: Are they providing that or —
Anami: Yes. If you have non-violent training that’s great and because we were media, I think we got kind of skipped around that a little bit, but I believe they have it at the camps, I think everybody’s supposed to take their non-violent training, just to make sure [crosstalk] —
Malory: [Crosstalk] meeting that they were having for that, ’cause they have multiple kind of meetings for a lot of different things, and that was one of them actually, they had two people, I think it was a group possibly, that we met in one of our circles, and they came to help teach the non-violence actions.
Anami: Yeah. The education is definitely available. There’s that distancing from the front. You can be right there where you’re probably going to get pepper-sprayed if something happens, you’re probably going to get arrested, people have been beaten by the authorities, people who are completely non-violent, they have done nothing wrong, they have no weapons, and they’re being hands up, and they’re being beaten by the police. So you can choose to be there, if that’s where you need to be. You can be a little bit further back, where you might get some overdraft of the pepper spray, they might come arrest you they, you know, there’s a lesser chance. Then there’s places you can be there where you’re right there at the front line, you’re a body, you’re showing that support, you’re the numbers which help, you know, the more people the safer people are, but you have a much less chance of being arrested. The thing is, the numbers help so much. When we were there, the cops everyday they were threatening this raid, and the raid ended up happening Thursday. They were sitting there watching, and from this side it’s kind of hard to get a lot of information, it’s an interesting thing when you’re in there. They kept threatening, and what we know now is that they didn’t have the numbers to be able to do the raid. Sheer numbers, they collected cops from all over the place in other states, and they had enough and so Thursday — we left Wednesday evening because of work commitments and some other things that we had to come back for. If we would have known that it was going to be the next day and not like the next week, we would have stayed I think, but then we wouldn’t be on this side with information for you guys, because everything went on lock-down and we might not be able to [crosstalk].
Malory: They really blocked anybody on all roads coming in or out.
Anami: The cops blocked people. When the protectors are doing roadblocks, it’s only to keep people safe, it’s only because police are coming in with AK-47, they’re coming in with teargas, they’re coming with pepper spray, they’re coming into to tear down the stand that’s being made on this native land, and so those roadblocks are only there to protect people from getting hurt. There not — if you’re trying to drive down Equinox and there is a road block from the protectors, and you say, “I’m trying to drive down,” and they make sure that you don’t have weapons, and that you’re not trying to hurt them, they open it up and let you through. They’re not actually shutting down roadways, they’re just trying to keep people safe of really aggressive force coming in.
Malory: Yeah.
Matt Ready: Tell me if people are thinking, I want to go there. You said there’s a number of different camps. Do you want to talk about that?
Malory: Well, there was three camps. There’s two now.
Matt Ready: ‘Cause one was raided.
Malory: So originally there was two camps, originally as well, and then around last week they decided to move up right where the pipeline is supposed to be laid, and they called that Winter Camp. It was kind of to make a stand on that land, on that piece of property, to say, ‘No, you cannot. This is our property, you cannot come and destroy our sacred land and put a pipe line in.” Then they had down the road they had an actual blockade where they were — it was for security as she was saying. That’s the one on Thursday that got raided, where they tore TVs down, people had yurts, trailers, tents, kitchens, there was a lot of food supply… It’s a camp, it was a home, it’s a literal home for these people. Especially with winter coming there. It’s cold and they’re making something so that you could live during the winter and the snow. That’s what they came and raided and took a part and tore apart. So now it’s just the other two camps that are left, which I think a lot of people are at the main camp now.
Anami: I understood it a little differently, because everything, you know, as you are experiencing it, everybody kind of sees things differently. In my mind, when we arrived, there were four camps. There was the original camp, the Sacred Stone Camp, which is on private property on the reservation. It’s the farthest from the frontline, and I think it’s the one a lot of people seemed to go to because it’s the oldest one, and it has a very — when we got there we were kind of like, this is not how we were expecting it, it had a very — the intensity definitely increases the closer the camps are to the front line, and this one it seemed almost very relaxed, and people seemed almost like, people had like hula hoops and they had like — it was just kind of like, I don’t know, people seemed to be — I mean it’s great to be there in solidarity and it’s a prayer camp, so I’m sure people were putting a lot of energy towards it, and they’re kind of taking most of the donations in, and trying to organize them, which has become really difficult ’cause there’s kind of a lot of the wrong things. So that’s kind of what’s going on there, it’s that support camp, there’s events, and they talk about — people perform, and speak. Coming up closer there’s Rosebud Camp. This was that little one and that one I think by now, she’s right that this one might be [indecipherable 00:14:52].
Malory: It’s supposed to be. They’re condensing ’cause the winter is what one of the Elders, I guess you’d call him Johnny, he was asking for people to come closer to the main camp because it could snow.
Anami: Yeah, because the information chain is so fast, within 10 minutes, within half an hour, and we’d been gone for a couple days now, everything could be different. We’ve been trying to keep up on what’s going on, but it’s really hard to keep up-to-date information. The goal I think was to condense camps for winter, and the original plan was Winter Camp was going to be the main camp because it is right there on the front line, it’s right there where the pipeline is supposed to go in, is right there, so that was the one they were trying to condense people to. Then Oceti Sakowin is the big camp or North Camp, there’s couple different names for it, and that’s the really big one that you often see in pictures. Sacred Stone Camp there’s no pictures of that one, they ask that to be that way, so you mostly see the larger camp. I don’t think I have seen pictures of the Rosebud Camp, which is kind on in between. They were going to break it down to, I think, two camps and they hadn’t decided, the Elders were still talking in Council, about whether that would be Sacred Stone Camp and Winter Camp or Oceti Sakowin Camp and Winter Camp, but now that Winter Camp is disbanded, well, we’ll get to that part, is no longer there, we don’t have a way to know what was decided camp wise, but just if you want to go there and mostly be a support person, you want to be really safe, you want to head right for probably Sacred Stone Camp which is the farthest South. If you are in Oceti Sakowin and there is a front line action, somebody will be on that microphone saying, “You need to get to the front line right now, you need to be there now.” I heard them say, “You! You guys up there on the hill, now!” [Laughs] If you have kids or there’s a reason why you can’t go to the frontline, no body’s going to make you try to make you feel bad for that, but there’s definitely, it’s more intense and there’s more pressure to get there, like the relatives are in danger now, like they’re the soldiers are coming in now, you have to get up there and support it, and then that’s where it’s really needed, it’s people who can actually go up and stand and provide that safety in numbers.
Matt Ready: For one, just to know that there are these set camps, I’m thinking about possibly going out there, so there are camps, there are — where was I going with that?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: It’s definitely camping, right? Now you need to prepare it for winter camping.
Malory: It’s snow, it’s Alaska [laughs].
Matt Ready: Alaska, so serious tents or bring your RV?
Anami: An RV in the camp? Summer camps are no good. If you’ve got a four season tent and all weather tent that’ll work. They’re trying to get these Arctic tents that smaller tents can go inside. They’re like 50 yards by 80 yards, they can put the kitchens in them, they can heat them with wood stoves, and you can put your — even then you could have a summer tent, but they don’t have these Arctic tents yet, so if you only have a summer tent, that’s not going to do it. The winds go up to 70 miles/hour, the temperatures will drop to 20 below, there is going to be lots of snow, and so what they’re asking, for those of you who want to go, when you get there you can camp anywhere, pretty much if you see a spot and it’s obviously not a thoroughfare for people to drive, you can camp there, but they’re asking that you find people to bond in with. Don’t be like, well, I kind of like my space, so I’m going to camp over here. The guy said repeatedly, one of the Elders at the meeting was like, “If you go off by yourself, you will die.” It’s funny the way I’m saying it I guess, but it’s not. If you go off and nobody knows you’re over there and it snows, and you can’t get back to the camp, you can freeze to death. I’m not trying to discourage anyone from going, I just want people to go prepared, prepared for it can be really cold, prepared for there to be snow, and really with that knowledge that you have to be part of the community. You can’t go there and be separate. Everyone there is welcome, like their family. Sixth generation grandson of Sitting Bull sat there in the meeting, and was saying, “Everyone here is native, everyone here is part of this family.”When you go there, you’ll be welcome to eat food, you’re welcome to sit and pray at the Sacred Fire, you’re welcome to go and be part of it. They’re not going to make you feel like you want to be exclusionary, so you want to find — there’s the two spirit camp for LGBT people, if you want a place to dive in, you don’t have to be LGBT to camp there. If you’re just like, “These are people who will welcome, I’ll camp there,” or, I don’t know how you’d pick, but find a fire and be like, “I would like to camp here, with you guys, can I camp here with you guys?” and make friends with those people and find some place to fit in. Don’t go and be a satellite.
[00:20:15]Matt Ready: Okay. So I have to like down on a little tangent just from what you just said, so there was a specific part of a camp, or a camp that was more LGBT-friendly than another, or I mean [crosstalk] —
Anami: Campfire.
Matt Ready: A campfire, within a camp you mean?
Anami: Yes. The camp is a — how big would you say that it?
Malory: Big [laughs].
Anami: Maybe [crosstalk] —
Malory: You don’t really realize how big it is until you’re coming down.
Anami: A hundred yards, three hundred yards across? And it’s kind of circular. So within that, everybody’s got their RVs, there’s [indecipherable 00:20:51], there’s meeting tents, there’s obviously areas within that big camp. If they’re trying to get everybody really condensed it’s for safety, it’s for warmth, it’s so that they know how many people are there. That’s another thing, there’s no way right now to — because everyone is so spread out you can’t track who’s there, so if someone goes missing and nobody knows to track in with them, how do you know they’re missing? And people are getting taken by unmarked people in military garb in little buggy things, and for a while when we were there, there was an incident where two people were taken by somebody in military garb on a little buggy, and only one of them was showing up as arrested, and for most of the days we were there, people were panicking, they were like, “We know there was this other person,” in fact all the way up until the day we left, a lot of people hadn’t found out what had happened, and so —
Malory: They thought they were kidnapped.
Anami: They thought they were kidnapped. One was arrested and one was, who knows where? So having people know who you are and that you plan to be back is really important. In that situation it was, three people were approached, two people were taken, 12 people came up and I got this from somebody who was there, that third person was who was saying this. Twelve people came up and they took that second person and they push them often, and ended up only arresting the one, so he wasn’t actually kidnapped. That’s another really important part; information is crazy to keep track of them out there, rumors, so many rumors. During this raid, there were people on horseback. There was a young boy who some people said he was 15, some people said he was 18. They were shooting live rounds at the horse riders. They hit some of the horses. This young man’s horse had to be put down because it was shot with an automatic weapon—the horse, not the person. That story changed to an 11-year-old boy on horseback and his horse were shot, and then eventually it changed when I heard something about an 11-year-old girl being shot —
Malory: And killed.
Anami: — and killed. In truth, no human died, the horse died. So here, they’ve killed the horse, so either that’s a living being or that’s property if you want to go there. Either way, it’s not appropriate, but beyond that, if you shoot the horse out from under somebody and they fall and break their neck — I mean these police and these soldiers, this National Guard are attempting murder, and not even just a little bit but a lot. There was this woman who they said had a 38 and was firing at cops, I don’t know if you guys have caught up —
Matt Ready: I heard something about that.
Anami: You can see it in the videos, it’s a prayer stick with a dream catcher on top that they had carried this whole way, and she was down in the front with this prayer stick, it’s an Elder, this small woman armed only with prayer and a prayer stick, and there’s pictures of them ripping the prayer stick out of her hand and hitting her in the stomach with a metal baton, and the fact that they would do this to people and then have the unconscionable action to go on to their site and say that she was shooting at them with a 38, we saw no weapons when we were there, not a single one. They said they had to pepper-spray people because they were shooting bows and arrows. There was no bows, there’s no arrows. People were like… I mean I guess it’s racist because they’re saying that because they are native people, so shooting with bows and arrows…
Matt Ready: Stereotyping.
Anami: It’s stereotyping. There are no weapons in the camps! They even asked people not to bring large knives that are for camping purposes, because they might be perceived to be weapons. Nobody preaches anything other than non-violence, and the only thing even stemming towards that sort of attitude from the natives that we heard was from warriors at the front lines, who were saying that if they had to they would lay down in front of those tanks and die if they had to. They were not talking about going out and hurting the officers, or hurting the soldiers. They’re talking about putting their lives on the line to stop them, and that’s the closest thing to violence that we’ve heard out of any of these people.
Malory: And in fact, they — in discussion of the police, there’s always a constant reminder of these are people, they’re the same as us, remember that. They have families, they have lives, they’re doing their job. They don’t know any better, and sympathize with them, try to connect with them on a human level rather than calling them evil, or saying anything that’s negative in any way towards them. They try to be as loving and as peaceful as they possibly can, and it’s amazing even knowing what they do to them. There is a teenage girl that we got to talk to [indecipherable 00:25:58] in the north, the Winter Camp. She had her arm broken by one of the police in a riot, and on Thursday they —
Anami: In a raid.
Malory: In a raid, excuse me. They saw her, and saw that she had a cast on from it being broken, and they broke it, and even after that — a teenage girl — even after that, they’re still compassion and they’re still just love, and trying to understand them as people as well. It’s profound, it’s like it really hits you deep seeing that. Seeing the fact that they can just let it all go.
Anami: And that girl went back to the front line, and after it was re-broken, she went back to the frontline again. There is no giving up, there’s no, “Okay, never mind, let them put in the pipeline.” You guys have probably noticed that I don’t want to correct, but language is important and easy to confuse, so police keep saying, “They were rioting, they were rioting,” and so to be really clear, the police are raiding, they’re saying they’re raiding because of riots. There are NO riots. The natives have not — native people and protectors, all the protectors that came out, have not — there’s no Molotov cocktails—that’s one that we’ve heard—there’s so much misinformation being put out there, there’s so many rumors from inside. We were there when we — Obama had a meeting with the Chairman from one of the tribes, and I can’t remember which, [indecipherable 00:27:49] was it the one from the Sioux Nation?
Malory: It might have been. It was on Wednesday I believe.
Anami: It was on Wednesday, and so we’re there, and an Elder came out and said, “They have to stop the pipeline! They can’t do it anymore! Yes!” And everybody cheered, and everybody got really happy, but they also were like, “Hmm, are we sure?” And it wasn’t until — I think until we got back — that we found he did in fact ask them again to stop, he did not give them a directive that they have to stop, he asked them to stop. They’ve been asked to stop now by the President of the United States, the Department of Justice, the United Nations to my understanding, which I’m still trying to get some more verification on that, but the UN was on the phone when we were in the [indecipherable 00:28:32] tent. All across the world, people are trying to get this corporation to stop, and they are refusing to stop.
So Thursday what happened during this raid was they came in with hundreds of officers, with army tanks, with AK-47 with silencers on them, they’re attacking people, they’re beating people, they’re spraying with mace, they use concussion grenades, they came in, they took the — they stomped on all of the sacred items that were at the front line as they came in, as we were saying they ripped the prayer staff out of the Elders hands, they went to the sweat lodge which is the church, this is the church, and they pulled it open, they pulled out Elders who were in prayer, while they were in prayer, and tore it down, and then they destroyed the sacred fire, and this is like somebody just — for those of you out there that go to a church of any kind, imagine armed soldiers coming in to your church while you’re praying, ripping you out and beating you, and macing you, and then arresting you for rioting [Anami breaks down tears]. It’s just unconscionable! When it’s happening to people who are just trying to — it’s a pipeline that is being protested all the way from Canada, all the way down to where it goes, it’s going to carry 550,000 gallons, sorry, 550,000 barrels of oil a day from The Bakken oil field, wich already does not need to have any more oil taken out of it. I mean we’re unstabilizing it as it is by pulling all this stuff out.
Malory: They’re rushing to build something that already potentially could be leaked, could have leaks, and poison the water, and the fact that they’re working at night building it in a hurry, even more so.
Anami: Yeah. And it’s not even the potential for it. There was 272 leaks on these pipelines by this company in that state alone. Two hundred and seventy two in that state alone already, leaks from the pipeline. Now they’re angry, they’re having to work through people that are opposing them, and they’re not doing a good job, they’re not exactly doing a better job because of all this, they’re probably doing a worse job because of this.
Malory: And you could hear them at night when you’re trying to sleep in the camp, and you could literally hear the tractors. It literally sounds like a construction site. You hear it, and you hear it constantly throughout the night into the early morning. I don’t know how many people they have working there in the shifts that go, but you know those people are probably tired and they’re not doing a good job on top of that.
Anami: In the day, and at night. They came in and they took — so that Winter Camp that was up there maybe I would say 100 yards from the place where the try and stop people from coming in, and down is the Winter Camp, which is — I think most people know about the company bringing the dogs, and the day that happened, so across the street from where the camp was is sacred ground, there’s artifacts there, there’s burial grounds there, this is sacred native land with every reason not to dig it up, and then they were coming down and the protectors were there, stopping them, and that’s when they brought the dogs and attacked people, and this pushed people back and that’s when they just — even though there was a stop report, even though there was an injunction, a Federal injunction, they continued construction all the way up to the road, so I should have brought pictures of that. So you can see the dirt all pushed up to that fence, then there’s 1806 and on the other side was the camp, so where they want to come right through next and dig, that’s where the camp was.
So they came in with this military action and — it like they’re waging war on people to put this pipeline in, and they came in and they arrested everyone, they beat people, they sprayed people, they pushed them all back, and they kept being like, “We’d like you to go to the South Camp, you’ll be safe if you go south to the other camp,” you know, and they sound like they’re being all like making it possible to avoid arrest, which first of all then you’d have to give up for that, but also they’re like, “If you go to your car and drive away, we won’t stop you,” and then people were saying, “But they were stopping us. They’re saying that out loud.” And then they were getting pepper-sprayed, and their keys were being taken, even though they were actively trying to leave and actively trying to follow the orders of the police, those particular people, they were still stopped from doing so, even though the police were saying they would be safe and would be allowed to go. They were not. Everybody got pushed back, and they were bringing their trucks down the road, and their trucks had some wiring difficulties and they were stuck there in the road, which stopped them from coming further down, and so that was in between the Oceti Sakowin Camp and that Winter Camp place.
So once they cleared all that, they cleared all the TVs, and the yurts, and the trailers, and the tents, and all the stuff that people had built there to stop this from happening, and on the live feed it’s night and you can hear the construction working. So I was trying to find out before I came here, what does that look like now, what does that place, that Winter Camp look like now, is it all dug up? Is it like across the street where — you can’t go backwards on this stuff, you can’t. You can’t un-dig up a grave, you know, but I wasn’t able to find out for you guys, I’m sorry. I wanted to find out if anybody knows, but there [gasps] — I mean they’re coming at people with live rounds of ammunition, so people are kind of stuck lower and really the only thing at this point that can — that’s not true, I have no idea. One thing I think that could probably stop this more than other things is if 10,000 people show up, you know, and walk up there and get in the way again. The pipeline is laid as of Wednesday, 4:30 Wednesday, 1.88 miles from — is it from the river or from the camp? I want to say it’s from the river, so where they’re trying to go under. They don’t have an Army Corps of engineer permit to go under the river at this time. This company — well, we can go into that next, I guess, how exactly illegal the company is.
Malory: Yeah, I was going to say that you should probably clarify, because there’s a lot of questions out there about whether or not, who’s in the right, who’s in the wrong.
Anami: Who’s land it is.
Malory: Who’s land it actually is, and she actually has that information. We got that actually from… legal?
Anami: So this is verified through several sources. We got this information from media, we got this information from Elders, we got this information from the legal contingent there, called Red, I have it written down somewhere, Red something, Red Wing Legal? Anyway, it’s in my notes somewhere [crosstalk] handling everybody’s arrest,, and also how to fight this in other ways, so in 1851, I’ve seen on the news they say 1861, but that’s a different Tribe’s Treaty that’s similar but different. So in 1851, the Port Laramie Treaty gave a certain set of land as the reservation to the Sioux Nation. Let me show you. I have pulled this up for you guys.
[Anami shows picture of map on PC]Matt Ready: Let’s see, at least for Facebook live, we’ll give them…
Anami: Yeah, alright, I can hold it up there for those of us who don’t know North Dakota really well. This is the Black Hills which that we’ve had this sort of problem before, with the Black Hills Gold in the 80s, but this was what is set aside by the Treaty. It goes all the way up here to the Heart River, and so I’ve got another map with the modern towns on it, so you can see where that is. There it is.
Matt Ready: While I’m here I’ll fix that camera.
[Laughs]Anami: This one’s kind of small, sorry, but you can see where Bismarck is right here, so the Heart River is up here by Bismarck, and we’re talking about this area way down here, so they’re not trying to say that they want to reclaim all the land up to Bismarck, but they’re saying that as far as putting pipelines in the ground and destroying the water supply, that is Treaty land, that is their land.
Matt Ready: Is that alternate pipeline route, is that like what the tribe would prefer them to do?
Anami: No, that’s the other option that they didn’t do. It was possible — this pipeline is horrible wherever it goes, but they could’ve put it in a place where it would go under less water, and it would go around the reservation, and they chose not to do that route, for whatever reason. I don’t know.
Matt Ready: Money, probably, but it’s interesting that they had an option, I mean — can we pause just for a — give you like a little reflection from what I’m seeing. It’s a conflict of two forces, the forces that want to do the pipeline and the forces that don’t, and you hope if you want the protectors, the people that want to protect the water to win, at some point you can start a negotiation, an actual negotiation, that both sides will appease, a new treaty.
Anami: Well, ideally, but in order for that to happen the Energy Partners, the corporation, would have to act civilized. Somebody from that company would have to act like a human being, and none of them are.
Matt Ready: Or they’d have to be forced to by a third party of force, like the US Government could potentially —
Anami: But the US Government has, the Department of Justice has told them to stop. They don’t have an Army Corps of Engineer permit for this area, even if they did have legal right to come through here they haven’t got the permit.
Matt Ready: But if the US Government actually wanted them to stop, I mean it’s like, then you send in the National Guard to enforce the law. That’s what we did during the Civil Rights Movement when we wanted to integrate the schools, the government has to use its might to enforce whatever a treaty of peace is.
Anami: Right, but that’s —
Matt Ready: That’s not happening.
Anami: No! It is! The National Guard is there! They’re just fighting on the wrong side —
Matt Ready: Yes [crosstalk].
Anami: They’re there, they’re just not — it totally blows my mind ’cause it gets more complex than that. It’s not even just, well, you know, in 1851 this way I was treated, because in 1873 a lot of this land, the line was moved back, all the way back to where Oceti Sakowin Camp is, and that’s why they’re claiming that they have this land, so what happened was in 1873, as this happened with a lot of treaties, they were like, “You can have this much land… oh! No, wait. Actually we want you to have less than that. We’re going to take more,” and they just took it.
Matt Ready: I think that’s how most treaties have gone forever.
Anami: Yes. In fact I believe all of them have been backed on. At that time, this land was tracted [as heard] as farmland and it’s been through a series of ownerships. Most recently there was a farmer that owned this land and he sold the land to the Dakota access pipeline to go through, and this is why people say, “Well let’s private property that belongs to DAPL.” So here’s the other side of that, is that in North Dakota, according to [laughs] hold on, I’ll give you the statute, I’ll have to find it for you. There is a statute in the North Dakota law that states that corporations — I have so many resources to show you guys, that I can’t find it. Here it is. Okay, in chapter 10-06.1 of the North Dakota State Law, it states that corporations cannot own and cannot lease—it was a little longer than I thought so I won’t read it to you, but you can look it up—they cannot own or lease land. So at the point that they tried to make this sale, that contract was null and void because it’s illegal. You can’t make a contract that is not legal and have it be legally binding. So at that point, the land reverted back to ownership of that farmer who had sold it to the DAPL because the sale cannot legally go through. Now that farmer has since decided that the Sioux Nation is in the right, that it is their land, and he would like to —
Malory: Give the land back [laughs].
Anami: I mean it’s not his to give back, but he agrees that it is theirs and that — yeah, for lack of a better word, he is giving the land back. He also turned back over 30 buffalo as well, because those buffalo live on the land, and they belong —
Malory: Which, are they the same buffalo that we saw?
Anami: Some of the buffalo that we saw, so some of you know that in the middle of the raid that the police were doing, hundreds of buffalo, “tatanka”, came down the hill and rushed down on the police who they ran out them and kind of made them run the other way, but you know, a lot of people considered this a sign from the great spirit, because the buffalo represents their sacred representation of the power of the Creator, whatever you want to, you know, we’ll talk about this in the other podcast.
[Laughter]Anami: Whatever you want to call that thing that’s bigger than yourself. They came through it, so this farmer had 30 or those buffalo that really belong to the land and to the stewardship of the Sioux Tribe, and he also returned those. So according to Treaty Law, which is the supreme law of the land and cannot be superseded, according to modern day state law, the DAPL has no right or access or ownership of this land, and so a lot of people are like, “Well, I don’t know what they expect, of course they’re going to get maced and arrested if they’re on private property trying to stop a legitimate business thing,” This is not a legitimate —
Malory: In fact, they’re the ones that are trespassing, and are on property that’s not theirs.
Anami: Yeah. It’s clear these two really defined easy to see and under — I mean you can read the Fort Laramie Treaty and see it for yourself, that it’s theirs. You can read this law for yourself and see that it’s not possible for it to be — every time I try and talk about it I forget, it’s something Energy Partners, this corporation that’s putting in the pipeline, they have absolutely no legal right to be there doing this, and the fact that we’re in a supposedly a free country and we’re supposedly citizens of this place, and the government supposedly represents us, and works for us, but the fact that it’s going to come in, allow this pipeline — this river, this is the Missouri River, this is the North Dakota part of the Missouri River, so every part of the Missouri River below will be taken by this oil if the pipeline goes in. On top of that, 62% or 67%—again I’d have to refer to my notes for the right number—more than 60% of South Dakota’s potable water comes from this River, comes from this water source, and so this isn’t just the water for the people that live there on the reservation. This is almost all of South Dakota’s water as well. Okay, over half, I’m sorry if I’m exaggerating a little bit, It is over half of South Dakota’s water as well.
Matt Ready: I know there’s a lot of people that will question the legal question, and for what it’s worth, if I was sitting in the jury box, my perspective is that corporations have been rewriting the laws for their benefit for as long as they’ve existed and it’s a problem across the country. Corporation doing fracking, and doing other things that are mining water or whatever, they are doing things all over the country that are threatening water supplies threatening the health of communities.
Anami: They’ve destroyed it! They’re not even threatening it. There’s places in Colorado they’ve done fracking that people have had to be trucking in water since the 90s. They used to have their well and get their water in, and now they have to drive with big tanks and go fill up water because these oil and gas companies have come and shocked the ground full of toxic chemicals that get in the ground waters. That’s one of the reasons why it’s a much bigger fight than just “this is Treaty land that belongs to these Native American people and it’s being taken back by the government for this corporation,” it goes beyond that too because this is Martial Law being enacted on citizens for trying to have water to drink, and if we, anywhere in the United States, want to have water to drink, which in case anybody’s no aware, you need that to survive, this affects us all and if they get away with this, it’s another set precedent that they can get away with this, and so everybody who can possibly go stop this thing, you’re standing up for the right to have clean water everywhere in the United States. Not just for South Dakota and the North Dakota Sioux Nation.
Matt Ready: I’d put it even, you’re standing up for the right for people who live in an area to have the right to say what is healthy and safe in their community, versus just corporate money. This is corporations just doing what they want to do because it helps them make money. We have this strange history of saying corporations are people, you know, that they somehow have like equal rights to human beings, but they are—and I actually got in trouble during my campaign for writing on my blog that I thought corporations were evil monsters, it got like this huge article in the paper about it—they are sociopathic entities. They have one priority: money. So they’re threaten anything to milk it for money. They will use force, they will use the law, they will use whatever level of force they can to just to make more money. It’s completely neurotic, and so this is the front line point of the edge of the fight of Human Rights versus Corporate rights, and I agree with you [crosstalk].
Malory: The right to do this.
[Malory drinks water]Matt Ready: Yeah! Simple, clean, healthy water. So I want to say I completely support and honor you guys for going there and I totally agree with them. I posted on my Facebook the other day that they need about another 10,000 people in Standing Rock. You need to flood Standing Rock like they flooded Tahrir Square, like every non violent revolution, a nonviolent protest only works with mass numbers, because they will use force, but once the force is overwhelmed with numbers, it becomes incredibly awkward and shameful for them to continue to use the force.
Anami: And they physically can’t. Like when we were there, they didn’t have enough people. They were maybe I’m going to guess about 500 people up there at the front line Camp, the Winter Camp, about 2,000 people probably total in all the camps. This is a really wild guess, don’t take that number as a fact. They didn’t have enough people to handle that, so let’s double that, let’s triple that. This company also is in Dallas, Texas, this corporation, and they don’t care about the Missouri River, they’re not giving them drinking water there, there’s no one that works for this company that gives any thought or care —
Matt Ready: Well, they actually would say, the administrative of the company would say, their job is to make money for their shareholders. So they’d actually say it’s their job to have no moral interest in the health of that community. It’s a neurosis in our country! We have to figure out how to take these corporations and put them in a little safety box where they can behave under our human guidelines, and not allow corporations to direct our military and police to beat up our own citizens for protecting their homes. This is completely backwards.
Anami: And if you want to go, here’s the name, if you want to go to Energy Transfer Partners at 8111 Winchester Drive in Dallas, Texas, that would be great too. If you’re in Texas and you have a problem with this, go there, 8111 Winchester Drive, Dallas, Texas, and tell them in person. This is one of those things that you can’t ignore, what do they say? If you go and die on someone’s doorstep they can’t ignore you ’cause you’re going to rot there? Go to their doorstep, go sit there! If you can’t stand in North Dakota and you’re in the Texas area, go to their offices and sit there and make a stand there. Make a stand anywhere. If you can’t come here, you can make a stand from where you are. You can also call the North Dakota Governor, Jack Dalrymple, who has sent in the National Guard and is authorizing Morgan County Sheriffs to do this action. I have all these, I’d really like to share —
Matt Ready: Go for it!
Anami: — these phone numbers. I can either show them to you guys or tell you? Get a pen and paper everybody [laughs].
Matt Ready: Do you want me to bring the camera or do you want to read some —
Anami: Whatever we think is —
Matt Ready: We should do both.
Anami: Yes, let’s do both.
Matt Ready: We’re going to do both.
Anami: Let’s show — I actually have two pages of numbers because [indecipherable 00:52:11] be called and others should be called. Call them all! Call them every day. So North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, 701-328-2200. You can call the White House and log a complaint: 202-456-1111, the Department of Justice is 202-514-2000. Morton County Sheriff, or as they’re listed on Google now, Martin County criminals.
[Laughter]Anami: 701-667-3330. North Dakota National Guard is 701-333-2000. And Energy Transfer Partners is 214-981-0700. You can also reach — I think that first number is their media person, the second number is their… another person I thought was reasonable to contact and I can’t remember who it is right now, 214-599-8785 —
Matt Ready: That’s the corporation.
Anami: That’s the corporation that’s putting in the pipeline. Some people have asked, what do we say when we call? Just tell them, “What you are doing is illegal and I’m asking for you to not do it. What you’re doing to the Sioux Nation is illegal. This is their land and you need to stop trying to put a pipeline through it,” just tell them that. Hold on, ’cause there’s more numbers [laughs].
Matt Ready: Do you want me to bring the camera over and we’ll show them again?
Anami: I can bring the computer there.
Matt Ready: I don’t think that’s easier [laughs].
Anami: Sorry, let me pull up the file here.
Matt Ready: A couple people have said thank you for being here and doing this.
Anami: I’m just hoping that we can help however we can. Right now, the Army Corps of Engineers is fairly supporting the Sioux Nation. They have given a permit for Oceti Sakowin — if it’s not Tribal Land it’s Army Corps of Engineer land, that particular part, and they’ve given a permit for that camp to be there, so they’re showing support in that way. They also have not authorized the permit for the pipeline to go under the Missouri River, so calling them and telling them you don’t think it should go under the Missouri River is a really good idea. This is all about trying to get an environmental impact statement from the Army Corps of Engineers that says it’s okay to do this. So they’re not going to find a bunch of artifacts, they’re not going to find a burial ground, that they are not unique—what was one of the reports I read from the Army Corps of Engineer—that there is potentially unique rock formations in the area that would be destroyed and could never exist again. There’s a lot of reasons, plus the environmental impact of it going under the river and the potential for all that drinking water. So call the Army Corps of Engineers and ask them to resend the permits that they have issued and to not issue anymore, and that is 202-761-5903.
If you want to donate money, there’s a lot of — let me cross that off — for these “do not donate to the any GoFundMe, do not donate to fundraisers, do not donate to — a lot of people are abusing this and setting up GoFundMe and that money maybe gets to the Camps, maybe it doesn’t. You can go to sacredstonecamp.org, from there you can donate directly to Sacred Stone Camp, which in theory they’re distributing that money out beyond that one camp, but at least that way it’s going actually to Standing Rock. The legal [indecipherable 00:56:06] that page, you can go to indigenousrising.org, those donations also right to it. Maybe these other GoFundMe or maybe when you buy a No DAPL T-shirt, maybe that money goes there, but it might not. Just send it right to them, that way there’s not a chance that somebody is making money off of this atrocity.
So these are the Vice President, the Executive Vice President and the Lead Analyst at Energy Transfer Partners, Lee Hanse, the Executive Vice President 210-403-6455; Glenn Emery is the Vice President, 210-403-6762; and the Lead Analyst, his name is Michael Walters, 713-989-2404. Make it part of your daily routine, you know, get up, put some thoughts, if you pray, if you meditate, if you’re an atheist and you just wish good thoughts, however you send that energy to them, wake up, send that energy and then call these people. Just go down the list and say your bit to each one, and then the next day when you wake up, call them back again. You’ll probably get busy signals and that’s great, that means so many people are calling. If you have time, keep calling, keep those lines jammed up so they can’t —
Malory: You can even write letters as well [crosstalk] —
Anami: You can write letter, send emails.
Malory: — writing letters to the White House, to the Governor as well of North Dakota, and that’s been raining in.
Matt Ready: And I would say, in a case like this, probably actual letters, paper letters that takes up space, it clogs up their mailbox so they have to carry it. What I often tell people in terms of activism is literally you can just like measure how much effort did it take. An email takes 2 seconds, that’s about the level of impact you’ll have, a few seconds, but if you write a letter, it has to be carried there, there’s energy, [crosstalk] —
Anami: That’s a very good point.
Matt Ready: So it’s the same thing with money, you know. Money is one thing, but do something, go to organize a group, or a protest, go to a protest, march in solidarity in whatever city you’re in, but the ultimate one [crosstalk] —
Anami: Tell people. I met somebody yesterday that has no idea that this is going on. They don’t know that Standing Rock is a place, they don’t know that there’s a pipeline going in, they don’t know that there’s people opposing it. Mainstream media is just barely starting to pick this up a little bit right now. People don’t know still, so tell people, tell people, tell people. Put it on your Facebook those that are also mutual friends of mine, you’ve seen my Facebook is been pretty kind of bombarding you guys lately, because I want to make sure that everyone knows this is happening, so that you can do something about it, whatever it is you’re able to do, if you can go there, if you can go to something in your hometown to stand up about it, if you can make these calls. On that note, tonight at 7:00 p.m. there’s an International Vigil for Standing Rock, there are locations all over the world at the same time.
Matt Ready: At 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time?
Anami: For us here in Pacific Time, here in Port Townsend it’ll be at 7:00 p.m. and it’s going to be at the Point Hudson Beach, so down there around that Point Hudson Marina, kind of near docks and Shanghai and that Campground there, right on the beach there. Look for people with candles.
Malory: And it’s worth it. I mean, even whether or not this is something that you relate with water, or seeing how people are being abused. It’s a huge thing being there and connecting, and actually like you know before you go the mindset and what’s happening, but until you actually are there, you don’t. It changes you completely. The people that you get to know that are such loving human beings, and just full of laughter and love. There was one point where we’re at a blockade waiting for the police to come up, and we’re waiting and waiting, and a bunch of teenage boys got out a hacky sack and just started playing the hacky sack in the road, and there’s still laughter going on, and you get to know these people and it changes you, and then you see them once you’ve left, and see them being abused and hurt violently, it really gets you inside. Think about if it was a friend of yours there, or a daughter, or a son, or a mom, or a dad, or aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, anybody that you can connect to that relates to you, and you would see that happening to them. It’s that much more reason to help and to do anything that you can because it’s heartbreaking.
Matt Ready: Yeah. The way I relate to this is just reminding me of when I went to Hong Kong. You don’t know what it’s like until you’re with the people that are on the front line struggling for their rights. It’s one thing to see something on TV, to see someone get hurt standing up and fight for their rights, and it’s another thing to be standing there, even if you’re just being a witness to it, you are affected by the energy of it in ways you’ll never know until you’ve been there. You’ll realize you have such power. You have the power to, when you stand there and someone is getting assaulted or having force used against them while they are peacefully just trying to stand for what’s right, you realize you could actually just move your body and potentially help the effort just by possibly being in the way. It’s our ultimate power and it’s almost like as a society we need to learn this power of our bodies is incredibly important. It’s not just for the alpha males of our society to use force, we have to realize everyone has the power —
Anami: We are a force. Each one of us. Your light is —
Matt Ready: No, that’s… Wow, I didn’t even plug in the power for this.
Malory: I was actually watching a video today that somebody made about Standing Rock, about them going there to give hugs to everybody. You see it and it just gets you, and the woman speaking in it and everything that she’s saying. Even seeing people that you recognize too, that we met while we were there, and there was one point where they’re showing in the video, and this is about the power of your body and being there just to stand in for somebody, the police were pepper-spraying a man and you could just tell that he was just like, he couldn’t see, he was lost, he didn’t know what to do ’cause he was so confused, and you see this other man come in and just take him and swoop him in and get it in his face just to save this other guy. Literally, I was just in tears, because he knew he was going to get pepper-sprayed, but he went in to help another person, and it was just… It’s huge, that energy there.
Anami: Yeah, the woman who we’ve talked about earlier who, you know, they claimed she had a gun, but she had a prayer staff that was taken and she was beaten. For them to get to her, she was in the center of a whole bunch of people, crowded around her, protecting her, and the police in order to get to her, had to pull each one of these people off and arrest her, and they were all willing to be in the way, because having that [indecipherable 01:04:32] up there is a part of their prayer that they’re putting their, that’s part of trying to stop it in that way, with that energy, and they were all there defending that part of it. Everybody coming in together to defend each other, to defend the idea, and to defend the sacred objects, which the whole place is a sacred object that is trying to be defended, it’s just — yeah, watching people put themselves in danger to help somebody else.
Malory: You even hear it too. We talked to one Elder, her name was Joy [crosstalk]. We talked to her a lot, and she was always, everyday, at the front line, right there ready, and she would tell us, “I’m going to stand here all day through the night, and if I have to be the first taken, I’ll be the first taken, but I’m standing here not only for our rights and for our land, but for my people and for the future generations, for my grandkids, and the kids who are going to learn from this and see this,” and it was such a powerful thing just hearing her say that, and she was just a force. You could tell that everybody there respected her because of that, and her being at the front line, they took care of her, they’d come up and you could see and just holding her and her holding them, and just this emotional bond and connection. It was amazing. If she needed anything, here comes a seat, a chair so she could still be at the front line! Take a break and sit there, but still physically be there. If she needed a sweater or a blanket — it is amazing that bond and the connection and the support. It’s massive.
Matt Ready: I guess one more thing to frame when out there wondering about going to a protest area like this, in my experience, it is extra powerful when elders, women and children, young people, it changes the dynamic with the alpha male force that’s coming down when they see —
Anami: Well, it should. In this instance, it has not. They’re not being more gentle because there’s no Elders there, they’re not being more gentle because it’s a line of grandmama’s right there. They’re beating them and spraying them in the face with mace. There like — little old ladies, people, they’re spraying little old ladies with mace! It’s unconscionable, sound weapons, they’ve got — it’s just… [takes a deep breath] Sorry. On that note, if you are going, don’t forget goggles, a respirator-these will help keep the mace out of your face.
Matt Ready: If you going to the front lines.
Anami: I would say, whether or not you go. We were going to go and get information for everybody. We didn’t really have any intention of going to the front line. It’s really hard not to go up there —
[Laughter]Malory: Specially when they’re calling on the [indecipherable 01:07:53] phone. It’s like, “Get up there now! Get up!”
[Laughter]Anami: And then once you’re there, it’s really hard to leave, and it’s really hard to want to be — you want to be right up front standing with everybody else ’cause they’re standing up there, standing with each other and you just want to help. Anyway, because it’s good to have, and if you don’t need it, you can send it — like if you’re like, “I’m going back to the support camp and I’m not going to be right here right now, take this equipment.” So you need earplugs for the LRAD, you need goggles and a respirator for the mace, and that is probably really helpful. This was something that totally slipped my mind when I was packing. As you’re sitting there waiting for the cops, I was like, everybody was putting in their ear plugs, and I’m like, “This is something we probably should not have forgotten.”
Malory: Also a pen. Many people have it, but just in case, because they do yell out the number for the legal lawyer there, and you write it on your body while you’re waiting there. This woman yells it, repeats it, yells it. Normally there’s people handing pens around, but just in case it’s always nice ’cause you don’t know.
Matt Ready: A Sharpie for writing on your arm.
Anami: Yes, exactly, ’cause if you do get arrested, there legal defense come, the defense group will come to your defense. There is not always money to pay all bails, so you might have to pay your own bail, so again, if you want to help — and like right now 117 people just got arrested and a lot of those people probably don’t have that $500 that gets them out of jail, so if you have that and you can bail somebody out, or you can donate to the legal defense funds so they can bail people out, please do that. That’s the thing, like the protectors have each other’s back, and if you go there, you’re a protector, and they have your back. There’s things to help mitigate that risk.
Matt Ready: Well, we are 15 minutes past the time we said we would stop, so is there anything, a last thing you want to say before —
Anami: I just want to run through our bullet points to make sure we covered everything like, we got back and we said, “What’s the most important things we need to make sure everybody knows?” and so I just want to run through and make sure that we’ve covered all those with you.
Matt Ready: [Indecipherable 01:10:15]
Malory: [Laughs] I actually drove myself, but yeah.
Anami: If you have to go, do you want to say anything before I cover this stuff?
Malory: Yeah. If you go and be a body, please do. If not, support in any way you can and spread it like wildfire, like really put out there; Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, any social media that you’re on. Put it out there, and also make sure it’s the right information, that you’re sharing the right accurate information. That’s the biggest thing, ’cause there’s a lot of media that’s putting out fabricated lies [laughs] and so we really want to succeed. If you could help in any way, that would be fantastic.
Matt Ready: Awesome.
Malory: We come together as one!
[Laughter]Matt Ready: You’re going to take off?
Malory: I am, yes.
Matt Ready: Thank you so much.
Anami: Thank you so much for coming.
Matt Ready: Thank you so much.
Malory: I appreciate it.
Anami: So the things that we wanted to make sure we cover every time we talk about this, what we’re saying, don’t fear monger, like we were on a thread where people were talking and a woman was like, well, I met somebody who’s a Fed and once I heard this was going on I called him to see it and he was saying people should leave for their own safety. Don’t spread propaganda. If it came from the police, if it came from the Feds, if it came from — they’re trying to get people to leave, so don’t say, “Hey, it’s scary, it’s going to be really scary, you should leave for your own safety.” People know where they’re going if they’re going there. Don’t tell them not to go, don’t try and make them afraid to be there, because the police and the authorities would really like people to go away, and would like there to be people to be scared. So don’t scared. Like I said, there’s Elders right there on the line, you have no reason to be scared.
Matt Ready: Also, if someone is deciding to go to a place like this, it is a big deal on their life. I would say, if you’re a friend of someone that’s going there, honor that and tell them thank you, encourage them, say you’re going to pray for them, or wish them well, and say what can you do to help support them? Financial support, often people could use that to help them on a trip like that.
Anami: Yeah, but don’t naysay them. If you hear things on the Martin County Sheriff Facebook, they’ve been putting out totally unconscionable lies, a DAPL person was arrested by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after he came and tried to pose as a protector with an AK AR-15, I think, not an AK, an AR-15, so he tried to drive in with his truck with this gun so that he could, with his bandana, go pretend to be a protector, so that they looked like they were armed, so then they can use force, right? This is, again, attempted murder, because he’s trying to get the police to shoot these people, and he worked for DAPL. His name is [laughs] Kyle Thompson, he came on and they saw the gun, they diverted his vehicle from the road, he got out and he ran, the people followed him, and some people you hear in the live feed, people are yelling at him, and other people just shush them because they’re using non-violent techniques, so you don’t want to yell, you don’t want to have a brush, and they actually talked him down to convince him to give over his gun and he was arrested by Indian Affairs. Martin County Sheriff said a man on the reservation with a gun was arrested. They don’t say it was a DAPL person, they don’t say it was the Bureau of Indian Affairs that arrested him, they make it sound the opposite.
They’re trying to spread that misinformation, and also, again the rumors, if you’re talking to somebody who says, “I saw this with my eyes,” or you see it on like a live feed and you physically see it happening, and not just that you see it, but that you understand what you’re looking at without assumptions, like “I think this must be this camp,” if you don’t know which camp it is, don’t go around and tell people what camp it was. If you don’t know, because you saw, or it hadn’t come directly from the horse’s mouth, somebody who was there, somebody who saw it, “Well, I heard from somebody that heard from somebody that heard from somebody…” that might not be the real story, so the gossip is crazy, you know, “I heard this, and I heard this!” Try not to spread that stuff unless it’s first hand stuff that you’re talking about, and then I like to try and illustrate, you know, like “This is what I heard from this person, or this source,” or, you know, when I was talking earlier about the person who was taken and everybody was wondering and then I said, “Well, the third person who was there said…” and so I’m being really clear with you guys. I didn’t see this, but I talked to the person who was that third person, and that’s where that information comes from. Really try and know where the information is coming from so we’re not spreading rumors.
Another thing that is really important right now, is everybody wants to help and so they’re sending lots of stuff, people are like, “I’m renting a U-Haul, and I’m going to fill it with everybody’s donations and take it.” One of the first things — ’cause we brought stuff too, they need food, they need clothes, they need tents, we collected all this stuff from all over and we brought it there and we get directed to the supply tents, and the first thing we realized is, as we open it we’re like, “Oh, we have these donations,” and the people actually groaned, they’re like, “Uggh,” Their food supply tent is so full, there is no more room right now. There will be a point where they will need more food donations, but right now there’s not enough places to store it, it’s going into winter, the stuff is going to get wrecked, and it’s really hard to manage the stuff you need when you have a bunch of extra stuff to deal with. Even more so with the stuff.
There were eight canopies, big car port canopies full of stuff, like here’s the men’s canopy, the coat canopy, the women’s canopy, the children’s canopy, all these canopies of stuff and then in front of each canopy there’s one or two small tents with that stuff in it, and then in front of those tents, there’s piles of stuff kind of covered by tarps but they don’t even really have enough tarps to cover that extra stuff. So stop sending stuff. We brought a Sub-Zero sleeping bag, and without knowing what we were doing, and you know, we’re trying to help, we don’t know what we’re doing, so we dropped it off there and realized later that was not a very helpful thing to do. We should have found someone who needed a Sub-Zero sleeping bag and given it to them. So if you are bringing useful stuff like Sub-Zero sleeping bags, 4-season tents, if you have that really nice wool coat or really good gloves, or hats, again that’s in really nice condition and is able to handle below 20 weather, yeah! Then bring that stuff, but find a person that needs it, ’cause once it goes into those piles of stuff, you can’t find the good stuff ’cause there’s so much useless stuff, summer tents, and shorts, and t-shirts, and it’s like people are sending the Goodwill bag.
One of the Elders there at the meeting, Johnny, he said, “We don’t need 600 left boots,” and at this point a lot of stuff is a left boot, so what they do need, which you can also get the most up-to-date needs list on indigenousrising.org, also sacredstonecamp.org I believe also has a superb updated list, and you’ll notice none of those say clothes, or they’re not asking for food right now, like these things without a place to store it, it becomes a liability, especially now they’re kind of condense camps, where does all this stuff go? And who’s going to move it there? How are they going to manage that? Right now, everyone’s doing more functional things, they’re cooking food for people, or they’re standing at the front line, there’s nobody who has the time to sit there and sort through piles and piles of clothes and sleeping bag to determine what is flimsy nylon and what is actually going to be warm. So stop sending that stuff.
What they do need is solar power equipment, generators, wood stoves, wood stove parts, but again it’s got to fit the wood stove, so if you send a bunch of random wood stove parts that might not fit the wood stoves they have, it’s way better to give them money, because then they can go to Bismarck and buy the exact sizes and types and things they need. Rocket mass heaters, these would be really great there and nobody has any of them, I don’t know if a lot of you know what these are? It’s a super efficient wood-burning heat element, that makes a large amount of heat with just little twigs and sticks, so those of you out there that know what a rocket mass heater is and you know how to make them out of propane tanks, they need those.
Also if you have the skills, you can also make rocket mass heaters out of cinder blocks and mud and stuff, so if you have those skills and you can go there right now, I didn’t meet anybody there who knows how to build those, if I could have stayed longer I would have been building them and building them and building them.
Matt Ready: You know how to build them?
Anami: In theory yes. I have got the supplies together and started to make one, but then my heating needs change and I didn’t end up having to make it, but I did a lot of research and I feel like I could make one, but especially for those of you who have actually made them before and know how to make them, you can make them out of 55 [indecipherable 01:19:55], you can make them out of propane tanks, but basically it’s a way to superheat charge burn very small amounts of wood, so it’s like better than a wood stove with less exhaust and it takes less wood, so that would be super useful out there right now.
They need radios, like two-way FRS radios, they need batteries, double A triple A mostly for the radios and for other stuff. If you have access to giant arctic tents, those ones that are made for being in Antarctica, they’re huge, they’re like football-field size, so that people can put their tents and their kitchens inside, and again that community where the camp then is in that tent and is warm, and is all together. They really need, and this is a big ask, but if there’s somebody out there that has access to shipping containers or semi-truck trailers, right now they really need two to four semi-truck trailers or shipping containers, so that they can put shower and bathroom blocks in them for the winter. The porta potties that they use, which have been working great so far and they’re very clean and well maintained, but they’re going to freeze and the Elders are saying they don’t really want to keep using them in the winter ’cause you have to put anti- freeze in them and then that gets dumped and it just makes them more toxic. They’re already kind of a little bit toxic, that makes them more toxic. With the semi-truck trailers or the shipping containers they can build showers, they can have holding tanks, have toilets, so that’s really, really useful right now if anybody out there has that ability to bring those, that would be great.
Yeah, call the numbers, post bail if you can, donate money if you can, but more than that, do something, do an action locally, go there and stand with them, make the calls, spread the word, tell people, not rumors but actual information that you’ve verified. We’re going to be, Malory and I are going to be doing some talks here locally, we’re going to try and set something up with the Heritage Center in Port Angeles to do something there, we’re going to get a sponsorship from Ichikawa that is going to let us use some of their space to do a presentation this Thursday at the Boiler Room Open Mic at 7:00, it’s a show that I host and this week it’s going to be all Standing Rock. Not entirely, if people want to play music there, that will be there too, but that’s on my mind and that’s what I’m going to talk about, and we don’t always have a lot of people signing up for that open mic, so there’s a lot of time for questions, if anybody wants to come ask questions, if anybody wants to come here about our experiences, but most importantly if they want to hear about information about how to help functionally.
The information that we are sharing came from Joye Braun, who is the Lead Frontline organized from Indigenous Environmental Network. We also spoke to people at the media tent. I’m trying to remember who told me and I can share their name, and who said not to. They guy from Legal who only wants to be known as Legal Noah, he doesn’t want his actual name out there. Hay [as heard] for Media, just the first name, warriors on the front line did not want to share their names but they had a lot of good information for us. And Johnny and a few other Elders and 6th generation grandson of Sitting Bull and his name is very complicated, same name as Sitting Bull’s father’s name and without looking it up I’m not going to tear it apart [laughs]. That’s where this information is coming from, mostly from these people and asking around in the camps, but these are where most of our definitive information is coming from. [Laughs]
Matt Ready: Thank you so much for coming here, sharing this information, thank most of all for going there and it’s absolutely awesome, inspiring, and it’s what everyone needs to do, thousands —
Anami: The action is awesome and inspiring. I don’t actually want to be thankful because I feel like I left before I was most needed [Anami breaks down in tears]. We were just a few hours outside when everything got shut down and we wanted to turn around and go back and we couldn’t, because all the roads were shut, so… Go there! Go help! That’s the thing to do. Mni Wiconi! Water is life!
Matt Ready: All right, so we’ll wrap it up there. Thank you so much, anyone that tuned in, feel free to share the video and share anything of value, of front line live feeds from Stand Rock’s front line. That share button is very powerful, it makes whatever you’ve seen in your social media feed go out to everyone of your friends. It’s a way to make things go viral.
Anami: Well, it doesn’t, because the algorithm, it doesn’t go to all of your friends, so share it, share again, share it again, and they’re pulling videos down, so the more you share it, the better chance that your friends are going to see it. Facebook is very tied in with the people that would like the oil and gas industry to have free reign and so they do like to — like things will disappear, videos that you post will disappear, so you know, maybe people will get annoyed that you keep share, share, sharing, but it’s really the only way to get that algorithm to get it to all of your friends. I hope we see you tonight at the vigil, at Point Hudson Beach at 7:00 p.m.
Matt Ready: All right. We’ll wrap there. Thank you very much and cut, but we’re still rolling so I have to turn it off.
Anami: Oh, you have to actually [crosstalk].
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Thanks everyone!
