Cambria couple bonded with North Dakota pipeline resistance

The furthest thing from Jane and Doug Hay’s minds as they eased their motor home out of Cambria in August — launching their four-month trek across America — was that they would spend Thanksgiving Day shivering in the stinging cold of a North Dakota winter.

The likelihood of them joining 8,000 protestors — including representatives of an estimated 300 native tribes — at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation was about the same as Donald Trump bringing in Michelle Obama as his personal adviser on good manners and grace.

The Hays were driving through 84-degree temperatures in Texas when their daughter Janda contacted them by cellphone and suggested they turn north and join the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which posed a serious threat to the Native Americans’ source of drinking water.

“ ‘You better go there,’ she said, so we decided to go there. We had been following Standing Rock on Facebook, so we were very interested. But we were planning to stay in the warm part of the country,” Doug said.

“We were going to go through New Mexico and Arizona. We didn’t plan on going north,” he said during an interview last week in their home on Happy Hill. “We didn’t have winter clothes.”

Before arriving at the Standing Rock gathering, the Hays purchased winter clothing along with items the Native American leaders listed on Facebook as critical needs. Milk of magnesia was prominent on that list. The Sunday before Doug and Jane joined the protest, police assaulted the Standing Rock group with water cannons and pepper spray.

Milk of magnesia was known as an effective antidote for pepper spray injuries. So the Hays stopped at a Walgreens in Pierre, South Dakota.

“They didn’t have that much milk of magnesia, but they gave us the price for a case, and we bought all they had,” Doug said.

They also bought a half cord of wood, wool socks (“they asked for wool, not synthetic”) and emergency blankets. “We literally bought out Wal-Mart’s supply of the blankets,” Jane said.

Police Intimidation

On a frigid Thanksgiving Day at the Standing Rock encampment, Jane and Doug watched as a line of 200 law enforcement officers approached. The officers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, dressed in all-black clothing with their faces covered. No badges were visible, Doug remembered.

Officers had batons and assault rifles, and weapons were pointed at the demonstrators.

“It was just a show of force; all the women and children were asked to move back in case the police came into the camp,” Jane said. But it was apparently just intimidation, because the contingent of officers did not cross into the camp.

Other forms of intimidation included the use of powerful floodlights to annoy camp participants throughout the night. A noisy helicopter harassed the encampment constantly during the day, and a single-engine plane circled the camp, especially at night. Doug said the night plane used no lights. “It just buzzed around, all the time we were there.”

Prayers and Cordiality

Doug and Jane participated in the daily prayers Native American leaders practiced.

“The prayers were powerful,” Doug said.

“The prayers start before sunrise at the sacred fires,” Jane added. “Before every meeting, there were prayers in English and in tribal language.

“Everyone would greet you with a smile. It was humbling,” Jane remarked. “It was incredible how well the natives spoke in order to define the situation,” Doug explained. “They would pray for the police. And I can’t tell you how many times we were thanked for being there. I was honored to be there.”

Before being welcomed into the encampment, Doug and Jane, who moved to Cambria in 1988, had to sign their names on documents agreeing to a long list of particulars; here are a few:

When you’re with indigenous people:

▪  “Listen more than you speak.”

▪  “Know whose land you are on.”

▪  “Remember you are a guest.”

▪  “Respect silence. … People may be praying.”

▪  “Never attend a ceremony without being expressly invited.”

▪  “You must ask permission to take photos or video of anyone at the camp.”

▪  “Listen, observe, and offer to help with projects. Don’t wait to be asked.”

Natives’ cultural consequence

Summing up their three-day visit to this remarkable clash of cultures, pitting Native Americans against corporate America — whose oil pipeline threatened the Sioux way of life — Doug alluded to the significance vis-a-vis the native peoples.

“This is the first time all seven Indian councils have met since Custer’s Last Stand; the first time in over 100 years that 300 tribes — from all over the world — have come together in a unified front,” Doug said. “They feel that this is a major break for the future.

“This is a turning point,” Doug recounted as he paraphrased the tribes’ moral position. “We’re going to push back and get our treaties back. This whole protest was started by the native children, as was prophesized by Sitting Bull.”

On Dec. 5, the day the Army Corps of Engineers announced it had denied the Dakota Access Pipeline’s plan to burrow under the Lake Oahe Reservoir — which is fed by the Missouri River and is the main source of the Sioux drinking water — another pipeline 2 ½ hours away from the Standing Rock Reservation ruptured.

That leak dumped 176,000 gallons (4,200 barrels) of crude oil into the Little Missouri River. An additional 46,200 gallons of crude leaked onto a hillside. About 5 miles of the river environment was despoiled.

Reportedly, the electronic monitoring equipment designed to alert officials of any leak had failed.

That brings to mind a cogent quote from Sitting Bull: “The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.”

This story was originally published December 21, 2016 at 10:07 AM with the headline "Cambria couple bonded with North Dakota pipeline resistance."