Day 10 at Standing Rock: Kings Return

About the Music: “Kings Return”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

I wanted to end the awareness campaign with something powerful. Something that will last. Like Earth. Earth will beat out all our human greed. I pray we can unite to respect this miracle we live on.

From Matt:

I ate Thanksgiving dinner today, but we called it by many different names. Forgiving Day. No Banksgiving. Native Feast Day was my favorite.

We were all invited to the community high school in the nearby town of Cannon Ball, and the community served and ate dinner with us.

A Lakota elder spoke to the crowd first. He told his people's story of the black snake and sang a prayer song.

Then he thanked his Lakota brothers and sisters for being there, and said that we were all Lakota. That we were all living out the values of peace, love, protection and unity.

I thought I was coming to Standing Rock to serve. To help. To offer up my privilege and stand up against something.

It's that, for sure, but it's also much more. It turns out the "Lakota way" is pretty simple: to be your purest, best self every moment of the day. There is no protest, because there is only one way to live.

If we heal ourselves, we can heal the sickness threatening to flow into that pipeline.

Every moment is another chance to live like a king again if you choose to love yourself. If we do that, we will all be living in resistance. We will all be standing with Standing Rock in the most profound way possible. I would be thankful if you would join us.

#NODAPL #DAPL #CeeGoodsProduction #MattHalvorson #StandingRock #Unity #Community #Earth #Preserve #Water #Life #Love #Fight #Together #Peace #WaterProtectors #Beats #HipHop #Portland

Day 9 at Standing Rock: Major Keys

About the Music: “Major Keys”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

Every move we make is major. We are all in this together, and together we can take down corporations. They need us, they need our money. We can fight and win the war. 

 "I am not god. We are God."

I love my family and my friends with intensity. It's part of what fuels me every day. And I love them actively — especially my family. We support each other, and we fit into each other's lives as part of a little web, an ecosystem almost. We hug and hold each other and help connect each other to the real beauty of deep, unshakable love.

The pain of Standing Rock has finally started to make the news. But the magic of Standing Rock is that so many people here are somehow learning to love everyone else with that same intensity and activity. In the old world, we were strangers. In the New World, we are brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents and children, and we treat each other that way. We live with the Earth, not on it.

Written behind Emma in this photo are the camp's direct action principles, led by the ideas of protection over protest, prayer and love over fear and reaction. Standing Rock can change the world because it is not simply about standing up to injustice and declaring that it's wrong. It's about saying enough is enough, and living differently come hell or high oil prices.

There's a reason "All You Need is Love" was the first satellite broadcast on planet earth. It's probably the truest thing anyone's ever said.

The best thing you can do to support Standing Rock this minute — and every minute — is to love everyone in your life as gently and intensely as you can. Then make the decision to share that love with the next person, too.

I am not god. We are God. And if we all realize that, we will change the world.

Day 7 at Standing Rock: Judgement Day

About the Music: “Judgement Day”

From the musician, Cee Goods:

The energy feels like it's coming soon. People are going to have to make conscious decisions of how they want our future to look. Are you with good? Or are you with greed?

An old Lakota prophecy says that a black snake will tear through the continent, ravaging the Earth and endangering all life on the planet if it is allowed to take hold. Similar prophecies exist across many different tribes, as do foretellings of the importance of the Seventh Generation in defeating the serpent and preserving life on Earth.

Many believe that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is the fabled black snake.

I have gotten to know a number of strong, proud, brilliant young Lakota men and women during my time here. They're a little younger than me, which makes them part of the seventh generation of their people to be born since their first contact with white European invaders. I'm not alone in sensing the power that flows through them from their ancestors. If you met them, I think you, too, would believe that we have all been called here to fight for Mother Earth as brothers and sisters.

We are the Black Snake Killers.

From Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nation:

"A "disease of the mind" has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring Peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unite spiritually as a Global Nation, or be faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives' eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the Source of Life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land, using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me on this endeavour. Our vision is for the Peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all Nations to begin a global effort, and remember to give thanks for the Sacred Food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the Great Myth of Progress and Development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You yourself are the one who must decide.

You alone - and only you - can make this crucial choice, to walk in honour or to dishonour your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you yourself are essential to this World. Believe that! Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this World. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending!"

Day 6 at Standing Rock: Life is Sweet

Life is Sweet. We value our lives. They can try and attack with any means of weaponry, but it does not match the level of commitment to stopping this pipeline. Our lives are worth too much.

About the Music: “Life is Sweet”

(co-produced by Old Gold; vocals by @frankstickemz - aka Flowzavelt)

From the musician, Cee Goods:
Life is sweet. We value our lives. They can try and attack with any means of weaponry, but it does not match the level of commitment to stopping this pipeline. Our lives are worth too much.

(The following are actual text messages I sent to Spencer (aka Cee Goods) on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016. It was too hectic to write anything coherent.)

"Please share, protest, donate - do whatever you can do. What is happening at Standing Rock is happening to all of us... whether we realize it or not."

"I fell asleep sitting up in my car from about 430 to 630. Woke up and something was going down off in the main camp in the distance. Police cars, and a call for all the protectors to come to the bridge [on Highway 1804, which has been blockaded and closed for several weeks]."

"Police are definitely here, but it's not clear if they are the perpetrators or if it's DAPL."

"Can't get through on twitter or Facebook right now. Two planes and a helicopter circling constantly right now. Lots of people shot with both gas and rubber bullets in face and chest. People have gotten tear-gassed, they're using a water cannon to soak people and things."

"Concussion grenades and rubber bullets. Shit is going down. Someone has already left in an ambulance. There are no reporters or news outlets here."

Day 5 at Standing Rock: The Stand-Off

How much can we take? Something has to give. We pursue with positivity, but has it reached a limit? Do we retaliate with the same energy that is received? Energy is shifting. Something is on the horizon.

About the Music: “The Stand-Off”

From the musician, Cee Goods:
How much can we take? Something has to give. We pursue with positivity, but has it reached a limit? Do we retaliate with the same energy that is received? Energy is shifting. Something is on the horizon.

We are here as protectors, not protesters. This young man threw himself down onto the tracks separating militarized police from peaceful demonstrators, a visible act of prayer.

As we eventually tried to leave the scene, however, police advanced. People were sprayed at point-blank range with OC gas -- a riot-caliber tear gas used in prisons. Women and Native elders were accosted and thrown to the ground. Many were arrested, many were injured.

It is said that capitalism becomes fascism when the government begins protecting the interests of corporations over people. We have long-since crossed that threshold. Please stand with Standing Rock to take back the power from the corrupt, morally bankrupt oil barons and give it to the people.

Our country was founded on a genocide of the indigenous people, and our legacy of "freedom" has been built on oppression and lies.

Will you stand by as our government attempts to quietly break another treaty? Will you stand by as our president-elect promises to abuse his power and double down on racist division and oppression?
Or will you stand with all people, with the Earth itself, by standing with Standing Rock?

Let's make America great again, just like it was when we found it.

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Gwen Frost is a student in Bellingham, Wash. She grew up in Portland, Ore. She was sprayed in the eyes at point-blank range with OC gas by police in Mandan, ND. Why? Because she is peacefully standing up for what she believes is right, and that goes against the interests of the biggest pile of money.

Day 4 at Standing Rock: DreamsVille

Uploaded by Matt Halvorson on 2016-11-18.

About the Music: “DreamsVille”

From the musician, Cee Goods:
What foundation is this country built on? What values do we hold true for the land? Is it all but a dream? Do we as Americans live in a fantasy world? The harsh reality is nothing is ever what it seems.

The American flag is supposed to be hung upside down only in times of dire distress. I took this photo in Camp Oceti Sakowin at Standing Rock the morning after Trump's election, but every American flag in the community had been signaling distress for months.

The Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL (pronounced dapple), is the source of this distress, the source of the evil that is being confronted.

DAPL is spraying the camps with chemicals from low-flying planes at night. They have donated poisoned food. They are surveilling and infiltrating the camp.

They have herded up most of the wild buffalo in the region and are keeping them in pens without food or water. Sixteen had already died as of a couple days ago. I'm sure many more have already been lost.

The protest action that makes the news is real, but it is a distraction. The police are just a pawn in this game, and the fate of Mother Earth is at stake. The real atrocities are being generated and perpetrated by DAPL, the vastly monied corporation the police are protecting at the expense of the people.

We need your help. We are under constant attack. We are in dire distress, and so is our nation. Please stand with Standing Rock today by turning your flag upside down.

Day 3 at Standing Rock: End of Trump

Uploaded by Matt Halvorson on 2016-11-18.

About the Music: “End of Trump”

From the musician, Cee Goods:
High intensity, ready for anything. Will reach what you seek by any means necessary.

I took the above photo while wearing ear protection, eye protection and a surgical mask, standing across the railroad tracks from a row of militarized police assembled in a line to face off with peaceful demonstrators. Armed with tanks, sound cannons, tear gas, tasers, batons and guns, they flex their muscle against the people they are sworn to protect, instead defending the interests of a corporation.

They stand against the people as a symbol of capitalist greed and fear, misguided stormtroopers defending a dark empire.

Even more powerful than their terrible might and aggression is the power of love and prayer being reflected back at them. We are protecting this water for those officers, too, and for their children. And we've told them so. And then they've attacked.

We pray that love will replace the fear and that our connection to the earth and each other can overcome the divisiveness that stands in our path.

Day 2 at Standing Rock: K.I.N.G.S.

Uploaded by Matt Halvorson on 2016-11-18.

About the Music: “K.I.N.G.S.”

From the musician, Cee Goods:
Because everyone standing at Standing Rock resembles true power and leadership. The commitment, the unity, the fight. All are worthy of being a king for this land. The beat shares a distant war cry in the back, but includes peaceful flutes demonstrating the protests in full.

The folks living in these teepees in the photo above were my first neighbors at Oceti Sakowin, the largest of the three main camps of people at Standing Rock.

Supporting the direct acts of prayer and protest on pipeline work sites is an entire community of people, many of whom never approach the "front lines." Oceti Sakowin had seven separate kitchens when I arrived, all of which arose organically out of a need in that particular area of the camp. Across the river to the north are two more camps, Rosebud and Sacred Stone, which sit on the southern edge of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

Throughout the combined camps, needs are met as they arise. Several medical tents provide care of all kinds for anyone who asks. It is common to find donation tents as well, filled with clothes, blankets, camping gear and other supplies to be taken as needed. Everyone gives freely and takes only what they can't do without.

These prayerful, integrated communities make possible the more "newsworthy" direct action, and they are open to all. They are open to you, as soon as you decide to come and stand with Standing Rock.

Day 1 at Standing Rock: Dark Love

About the Music: “Dark Love”

From the musician, Cee Goods: 
I wanted to find a powerful yet peaceful instrumental which sheds positive energy, but still is strong and forceful.

The photo in the video above is me at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in my home state of North Dakota.

I just drove out here from my adopted home of Seattle, because nothing is more important right now than what’s happening here.

The prayer camps springing up organically at Standing Rock are an example of fully communal, off-the-grid, back-to-the-land living, and the spiritual power here is overflowing. I am overcome and moved to tears multiple times a day, every day. I’m kind of a softy in general, but this is something else.

I know this blog is usually hyper-focused on schools and education, usually back in Washington State. But everything that is happening here at Standing Rock is happening for a cause. For every cause. This is about racial justice, social justice, environmental justice, economic justice, political justice, and about truly getting back in touch with the land, with our Mother Earth.

Standing Rock has been the front line of these battles for the better part of a year now. Trump’s election has intensified that reality nationwide (though I have been told that whichever candidate won, most expected the struggle to continue. As one Lakota man said to me, “We have never had an ally in that office.”), and the camp has grown noticeably since the election.

This place, what’s happening here, the community that’s steadily building…it is unlike anything that any of us, I promise you, have ever experienced. People are being drawn to this sacred land on the prairie for reasons they can’t fully explain, myself included.

Everyone is accepted and appreciated here. People who have been oppressed or unseen for generations are lifted up, and the privileged among us are expected to both leave our privilege at the door and to exercise it when it can benefit the community.

We are acting out the love and community and respect for the Earth that will save our country and our planet, if it is to be saved. Whatever your cause, it is calling to you now.

Please join us.

Here’s where to start:

Look over the Standing Rock Syllabus, an academic-style explanation of settler colonialism and the treaties and history specific to this region.

Take action through nodaplsolidarity.org. 

#NODAPL

10 Days, 10 Photos, 10 Songs: An Awareness Campaign for Standing Rock

For the next 10 days, I am collaborating on a Standing Rock awareness campaign with Cee Goods (who also happens to be my brother-in-law). He will be creating one instrumental track each day, each based on a photo I have taken at Standing Rock. This will end on Thanksgiving, because the way of life and respect for the land that the Native Americans have always fought for and tried to preserve still rings true today.

Day 1: "Dark Love"
Day 2: "K.I.N.G.S."
Day 3: "End of Trump"
Day 4: "DreamsVille"
Day 5: "The Stand Off"
Day 6: "Life is Sweet"
Day 7: "Judgement Day"
Day 8: "Diamond"
Day 9: "Major Keys"
Day 10: "Kings Return"

'We are not protesters. We are protectors.'

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I have been at the Oceti Sakowin camp near the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota since Monday. The Native elders are the spiritual and strategic leaders here, and they have made it very clear that this isn't a protest camp, but a prayer camp. We are not here to be protesters, but protectors — protectors of sacred land and sacred water.

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"This is kitchen wood. Please do not take."

The camp is unlike anything I've ever experienced. An estimated 4,000 people (with people coming and going constantly) are living in commune in the camps, which are all connected or easily walkable and sit both on Army Corps of Engineers land as well as on the Standing Rock Reservation. The camp offers medical and mental health services, daily orientations and trainings for newcomers, free in-depth legal support, media relations services, and seven different kitchens cooking and serving huge (astoundingly delicious) meals three times daily. And there's even coffee every morning, which makes all things possible.

I expected that there would be a constant protest or sit-in happening on the "front lines," that a continuous physical presence was necessary to prevent construction from continuing, but that isn't exactly the case. Last week, the Red Warrior Camp, which had been on the front lines, was raided by police, who used clubs, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and sound cannons to drive the men, women, children and elders from their homes at the camp.

I followed a plume of black smoke to its source this week and found people burning the tents and supplies that remained from Red Warrior Camp. DAPL (pronounced "dapple," short for Dakota Access Pipeline) security guards had urinated and defecated on whatever they could find — tents, teepees, blankets, even food.

DAPL continues to try to intimidate in a variety of ways. Privately hired helicopters circle the camp frequently — especially at night, when helicopters are also joined by a small plane flying with no lights. They leave the flood lights on at the pipeline work site all night long. They set fire to a hilltop just across from the camp, scorching the dry ground (right).

We are asked not to photograph and take video of any ceremony, and much of what happens here is considered ceremony. On top of that, the camp operates under "security culture," as police and DAPL security contractors are monitoring cell phone communications in the camp and interrupting cell phone service. Everyone at the camp is operating under the safe assumption that DAPL and law enforcement also have "secret agents" in the camp. (Seriously. It's real. I watched camp security chase a DAPL agent away in his car just last night. And look at this screenshot from my phone, which has given me this warning many times already.)

The weather has been beautiful, but it is already getting very cold out here at night. The last two nights I have heated large rocks over a fire, wrapped them in towels, and put one at my feet in my sleeping bag while cuddling the other. It helps. It got down to 12 degrees a couple nights ago. I fall asleep listening to the sounds of people and coyotes howling from all directions (while wearing two pairs of socks, long johns, pants, and four shirts and sweatshirts plus a hood). So, you know, it's pretty much like home.

This has already been a very emotional, unexpectedly spiritual experience. Each camp has a sacred fire that burns continuously and is meant for prayer and meditation. Only cedar, tobacco and sage, which grows wild all around the area and is used to cleanse the air as well as the spirit, can be put into the sacred fire. I have participated in a traditional water ceremony, drinking a small handful of sacred water before walking to the river to give an offering of tobacco while singing traditional songs and connecting with the presence of our ancestors. I've watched a hawk come out of nowhere to circle overhead as a young man presented a staff he had painted and adorned with feathers and symbols to represent his brothers who couldn't join him.

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Almost everything that happens feels so full of meaning and spiritual significance that it's palpable throughout the camp. I have met people from every part of the country and many parts of the world. I have been told many times that if this struggle has touched you in some way, if it has tugged at you, that you have been called to be here, and that really feels true. This struggle represents the intersection of so many issues: the power of corporations vs. the power of the people, the sovereignty of indigenous people and our own respect for treaties, oil barons vs. conservationists, and the fight for racial equity, just to name a few.

I have also found myself at the intersection of my past and my present. I grew up in Fargo (where I also usually slept in a sweatsuit and socks, incidentally), but as a kid who just wanted to play baseball and run around in the sun, I could never understand why we were there. A week or more would pass each winter when the high (the HIGH) temperature never got above zero. I vividly remember a radio host laughing and telling us one day that it was 70 degrees colder outside than in our fridge. Woof.

But suddenly, Standing Rock has made growing up in Fargo "make sense." If I'd grown up where I wanted to, I would not be here today. I don't fully understand what compelled me to up and drive out here, but having been here for several days, it does feel like I was called. I don’t know what to make of it.

I'm told often to ask everyone in my own community — in other words, you — to pray, whatever that means to you, for the safety of the people at the camp and the water we are protecting. Pray that the police officers, DAPL agents and all those supporting the pipeline are moved to love and compassion. Pray for our country and for the Earth Mother, as the Lakota call her. This is more than just an issue of one pipeline. Every one of us will be affected by what is happening here.

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A Letter Home from the Road to Standing Rock

Dear Julian and Zeke,

I'm on my second day of driving. If I keep going, I should get to the camp at Standing Rock just before midnight. A corporation is trying to dig an oil pipeline across the Midwest, and it endangers the water used by millions of people. They are also trying to dig up sacred land that is protected for use by the Lakota tribe. They have been making a brave, peaceful stand for months now, and the pipeline still isn't finished. I'm going to help however I can.

I wish you could be here with me. Or that we were all going somewhere else for a different reason. Because I saw vultures today with their drooping necks and had no one to point them out to. And nobody laughed at me when I whooped out a little shriek because a hawk swooped so close to my windshield I thought he was going to grab me pull me out through the glass.

I overheard a guy in a cowboy hat tell people what he would do if he had his druthers. I saw a barn door built into the side of a hill like the Batcave. I saw horses in every combination of colors, I saw cattle and sheep grazing, and I saw a buttes and mountains frame the big Montana sky.

And I saw a train go by that just had the name "Mr. Rogers" graffitied onto its side, but without you here, I just saw it. I didn't laugh about it or try to explain why it's funny, and I won't remember it for long. Or maybe I will, since I'm writing to you about it.

Anyway, I've also had a lot of time to think. What am I doing? And why?

Even having lived elsewhere for a number of years now, I've spent about half my life in the Dakotas. But I did so through a settler's lens, and I learned and know very little about the indigenous tribes, or about the different reservations even. We did learn about "manifest destiny," though, which certainly didn't seem good or right, but it was presented to me as acceptable, so I accepted it. I was a kid. Like you are now. And I'm writing to tell you now that this is not acceptable, and it never has been.

I'm going to Standing Rock because if this happens, then things are no different than the "past" I learned about as a student. If I stay home now, then I am no different than the people whose apathy tens and hundreds of years ago looks so inconceivable now in retrospect.

I am going because I can, which means that if I don't, it's only because I have the privilege of being too afraid.

It was a clear, beautiful day today. By the time I got near Miles City, the sun had started to think about setting. I wasn't sure, but this seemed like my last best chance to get some gas and some food and some long underwear. I was anticipating a beautiful, huge sunset, and I had vague plans to stop at the side of the road to take pictures of it. But I lingered too long in town, just looking at trinkets and reshuffling things in the car, and I missed it.

By the time I had started driving again, the sun had set. I think I was nervous to start the last leg. Miles City is the spot on the map I had picked to leave the more familiar I-94, which runs through Fargo and becomes the same route I took with my family as a child when we would visit my grandparents in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Anyway, I'm turning east now because I've heard there is a police blockade on the highway coming into the camp from the north and that the road is closed.

So, I'm driving in the dark across the western edges of the prairie, through towns I haven't even heard of. I don't know what I'm going to find. I don't know what impact I can have, if any. But by writing to you, I at least feel like I understand a little better why I felt like I needed to come out here. I hope you do too. I miss you already.

Dad