On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the state of North Dakota is entitled to nearly $28 million for its militarized response to the peaceful resistance of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017. This decision marks yet another moment where the legal system upholds the costs of suppressing Indigenous voices, rather than recognizing the deeper debts owed to the land and its first peoples.
North Dakota first filed its lawsuit in 2019, demanding $38 million from the federal government for the massive police mobilization deployed against water protectors. The protests — led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and supported by thousands from across Turtle Island and beyond — captured the world’s attention. Our people stood in prayer, ceremony, and solidarity, raising the alarm that the pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River posed a grave threat to the sacred waters that have sustained our Nations since time immemorial.
Throughout early 2024, a trial unfolded in Bismarck — the very city that grew from broken promises and stolen land. Among those who testified were former North Dakota governors who had overseen the escalation of force against unarmed men, women, and children. They told their side of the story, but none spoke of the tear gas that blanketed the night air, the rubber bullets that pierced brown skin, or the freezing water cannons turned on human beings defending the Earth.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor found in favor of the state, blaming the federal government for failing to follow procedures that, according to the court, could have prevented “harm” — not to Indigenous communities, not to the river — but to the government of North Dakota itself. His words were clear: it is not the poisoning of the land or the violence against the people that demands reparation, but the inconvenience and cost to those who tried to silence us.
In the months of Standing Rock, thousands came to stand against greed and destruction. They came to say, Mni Wiconi — Water is Life. In response, the state answered with armored vehicles, snipers, and mass arrests. Over 761 water protectors were taken into custody, facing charges meant to intimidate and criminalize prayerful resistance.
When the camps were finally raided and cleared in February 2017, it took days to dismantle the temporary villages that had become a beacon of hope and unity. What the state called “millions of pounds of trash” was in reality a mixture of abandoned supplies, sacred items hastily left behind as law enforcement moved in with threats of violence, and the remnants of a living movement that had been forcibly uprooted.
Today, state officials like Governor Kelly Armstrong and Attorney General Drew Wrigley continue to blame the Obama administration, and the protectors themselves, for the so-called “damage” done to North Dakota. They ignore the deeper truth: that it was not chaos we brought, but conscience. It was not violence we offered, but a vision of how to live in respect and balance with Uncí Maka, Grandmother Earth.
The government’s defense, that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “acted reasonably” with “limited options,” rings hollow to the generations who witnessed the beating of drums answered by the firing of projectiles.
The real damages — the ones that will not be paid by any court — are the scars left on the people, the deepening wounds in our relationship with this settler system, and the continued risk to the waters of the Missouri River.
And yet, despite it all, we remember: Standing Rock was not a defeat. It was a prayer made visible. It was our Nations rising together, singing the songs our ancestors gave us.
They may claim their millions — but we still hold the sacred.
Mni Wiconi.
John Gonzalez
ᑲᓂᐸᐏᐟ ᒪᐢᑿ
Standing Bear Network
