Part 1
For much of of 2016, protesters in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, have withstood tear gas, arrests, rubber bullets and severe weather while camped out in an isolated area that has become known as Oceti Sakowin Camp. While on its face, the encampments are demonstrations against an oil pipeline, some have called the battle between a Dallas-based oil company and the Standing Rock Sioux a larger civil rights movement for Native Americans — a comparison bolstered by law enforcement's use of water cannons on protesters in late November 2016.
Roughly a thousand protesters remain at the camps as of December 2016, according to Loreal Black Shawl, a U.S. Army veteran and Sioux activist who is still on site. While the Army Corps denied the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners (ETS), the easement it needed to drill under embattled Lake Oahe, the company remains committed to the current route. Demonstrators remain convinced that ETS will push the pipeline through (protestors call it "the black snake). With the media cameras and fanfare now largely gone, they are committed as ever to stopping it, now pointing to a pipeline spill 150 miles away in Belle Fourche, where workers as of 15 December 2016 are working to clean up 176,400 gallons of spilled oil.
Black Shawl told us that protesters who remain at the camp site believe that ETS continues to illegally drill despite the Corps' decision. ETS tells us they are continuing construction up to the very boundaries of Corps-controlled land, but they are not doing anything illegal. Vicki Granado, spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners, said:
[W]e will not begin to drill the crossing beneath Lake Oahe until we have the approval to do so, however, we can continue finalizing our preparations and mobilizing equipment right up to the boundary (but not crossing) of the land owned by the Corps. Any activities that are currently taking place are on private property for which we have all the proper permits and approval.
Granado told us the company has filed a lawsuit in response to the Corps' decision and remains committed to the controversial crossing, pointing to a statement ETS released on 4 December 2016:
For more than three years now, Dakota Access Pipeline has done nothing but play by the rules. The Army Corps of Engineers agrees, and has said so publicly and in federal court filings. The Corps’ review process and its decisions have been ratified by two federal courts. The Army Corps confirmed this again today when it stated its “policy decision” does “not alter the Army’s position that the Corps’ prior reviews and actions have comported with legal requirements.” ...
The White House’s directive today [4 December 2016] to the Corps for further delay is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency.
Thus the saga of the Dakota Access Pipeline is far from over, despite a dramatic climax on 4 December 2016, when thousands of veterans arrived to support the Standing Rock Sioux. Few expected to see the showdown between an oil company and a Native American tribe end in a dramatic victory for the indigenous and their allies, but that is exactly what happened — at least, for the time being. It happened the day thousands of veterans descended on the protest site to support the tribe in a three-day event called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock.
On 4 December 2016, veterans organizers learned that their efforts had an effect. Perhaps the optics of riot police using force against uniformed U.S. soldiers in defense of an oil pipeline proved too disastrous to risk. Whatever the reasoning behind the Corps' surprise decision, it was at least a major temporary win for Native Americans and environmental activists who had been putting their lives on the line since launching their demonstration in April 2016. And while Oceti Sakowin means the seven groups or "council fires" that together make up the Great Sioux Nation, the camp was inhabited by a diverse array of thousands.
The veterans' action was initiated by activists Michael A. Wood, Jr., and Wes Clark, Jr., (son of CNN commentator General Wesley Clark). On 11 November 2016, Clark launched a record-setting GoFundMe campaign which would snowball into a muster of 4,500 veterans and draw more media attention than the protest had seen.
Wood said he never expected the campaign to grow as rapidly as it did — he though he would be able to cajole perhaps a few hundred veterans into showing. But in roughly two weeks, Veterans Stand for Standing Rock had amassed more than $1.1 million in donations and had 2,000 veterans signed up to go. Heightening the drama, the Army Corps announced in late November 2016 that demonstrators had to vacate the camp by 5 December or face arrest (a statement they later walked back).
Nothing about the event went as planned. Just hours after landing at the Bismarck, North Dakota airport on 4 December 2016, Wood received some unexpected news. He was sitting in the front seat of a rented Chevy Yukon, bantering with key volunteer and fellow Marine Corps veteran Anthony Diggs, when he abruptly announced, "We won."
Wood had received a text message from the an Army Corps colonel informing him that an easement needed by the pipeline company to complete the project had been denied.
With the mission of support for the water protectors making a dramatic shift, the supplies of drones, cameras, satellite comms, gas masks, and protective gear was largely unusable.
Wood and Diggs spent most of the time that day picking up and delivering supplies to veteran rally points while trying to solve problems associated with a massive, hastily-planned event. Then they hit another snag: a surprise blizzard struck, starting the evening of 5 December 2016.
While Wood's trouble-shooting efforts were severely hampered by a lack of telecommunication, the group had anticipated the poor signal in the area of the encampment and had purchased a satellite phone to compensate. But the blizzard knocked the phone out, Wood said:
The previous storm ruined our supply chain, delaying critical deliveries. The surprise blizzard [on 5 December 2016] meant that a bunch of veterans prepared physically and mentally to protect the water protectors, had to instantly shift into an emergency response team.
With roads shut down by police and many of our vehicles still lost in snow banks, over 50% of the buses from a $200,000 contract broke down or were severely damaged.
Vacated cars that slid off icy roads punctuated the landscape as authorities closed thoroughfares. Wood, along with hundreds of others, was temporarily stranded at the nearby Prairie Nights Casino and Resort in Fort Yates after the Yukon went into a snow ditch. He was unable to reach Clark, and due to a communications break-down, some arriving veterans had headed for the camp when they weren't supposed to go there until 5 December, meaning when the blizzard hit, many were stranded outside when they shouldn't have been there in the first place. The setbacks didn't stop Wood and a host of volunteers, from medical doctors and nurses to drivers, from launching a massive rescue mission.*
*http://www.snopes.com/2016/12/21/ghost-dance-standing-rock-sioux-will-continue-dakota-access-pipeline-battle/
MANIK
Kin 107: Blue Electric Hand
I activate in order to know
Bonding healing
I seal the store of accomplishment
With the electric tone of service
I am guided by the power of magic
I am a galactic activation portal
Enter me.
Other dimensions of experience exist of which we are not currently aware.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Muladhara Chakra (Seli Plasma)
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