On the other side of the highway is the Missouri River, which developers want to place pipe under. "You could see they were ready for action," Mossett said.The 'best signal in the area' isn't on Facebook HillThe encampment protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline are heating up. Starting in April, self-described "water protectors" from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began occupying land near Bismarck, North Dakota, to halt construction of a four-state oil pipeline, saying it could poison their water supply. Then on September 9, shortly after footage emerged of dogs attacking water protectors, President Obama called on the US Army Corp of Engineers to review the risks of submerging an oil pipeline under the Missouri River, which supplies drinking water for 18 million people.Today, we experienced police protecting & serving the interests of Dakota Access, LLC. tara houskaOctober 28, 2016
Facebook Hill is part of a ridge where water protectors have attempted to get cellular service in an area notorious for its spotty coverage. Below the ridge sits a more permanent encampment which has been occupied by water protectors since April. The land is considered property of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It's likely where many will retreat to, now that the standoff at Highway 1806 is dispersing."Most of the land out here is for cattle grazing, so the connectability challenge is great," said Eileen Williamson, spokeswoman for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Water protectors claim that coverage has been complicated by the presence of police IMSI catchers, commonly known as StingRays or TriggerFish, which mimic cell towers in order to obtain personal data from phones. "We'd be using our phones, and all the sudden the batteries would get sucked down really fast," says Mossett, describing a telltale sign that a StingRay is being employed."I'm out there with my three year-old daughter, looking in the face of police in full riot gear, with mace in cans the size of small fire extinguishers, with their huge guns like something out of Rambo."
"I do take personal responsibility for that," he said with a sigh. "[The water protectors] want the capability to upload high-quality video, even do radio, to show directly what's going on. But this area isn't made for high-traffic internet. It's not just a matter of setting up a little tower and shooting point-to-point internet at them, from our main tower here. It's a line of sight issue. The camp is sitting below a ridge.""Right now all we've got is the reservation and our headquarters, Facebook Hill."
What's more, if you dig deeper, you can find that American cyberculture is strongly tied to tribal values. The only thing propping up this conspiracy is the long historical backlog of American entertainment that has painted Native Americans as technologically backward It risks turning the pipeline protests into a modern version of "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show," an 1880's carnival production in which Native Americans from the Dakotas were recruited to "play Indian," as author Vine Deloria puts it.BRAVE PROTECTOR A TRUE WARRIOR SHOT POINT BLANK WITH A RUBBER BULLET Thunder Walks AboutOctober 28, 2016
So it looks like Kirk is on to something: just because Native Americans reject the outsize oil pipeline, doesn't mean they're de facto bow-and-arrow wielding "rioters," as militarized law enforcement has called them. They just prefer "small-is-beautiful," an intuitive approach to tech that doesn't require commercial or state experts. For example, don't build oil pipelines near major drinking water sources. Or don't use StingRays that prevents using smartphones to document police presence. These are, again as Kirk remarks, sophisticated approaches to technology that show an understanding of scale and risk. The water protectors have more in common with Stewart Brand's WELL and the early iPhone culture which he inspired Steve Jobs to create, than the public may realize. In fact, Obama announced his rural connectivity program last year to an excited indigenous tribe in Oklahoma."It's a sign of technological sophistication, not a fruitless protest against modernity, as I think is sometimes shown in the media."
This story does have a clock on it. If oil is not flowing through the pipeline by January 1, then the suppliers can cut their contract with the developers. Originally, the pipeline was planned to go north of Bismarck, but municipalities rejected that on grounds of risk. For now, the standoff remains at Highway 1806, where the pipe waits to be dug under the Missouri River. Water protectors are claiming that adjoining land was ceded to the Sioux in a treaty.It's important to note how conspiracy theories are supported, or even engendered, by the militarized police presence ramping up at this site. As Standing Rock chairman Dave Archambault has noted, this presence creates the appearance of dramatic pushback, as the public has seen in other places of social unrest and heavily outfitted police departments, like Ferguson, Missouri. Archambault is calling on the Department of Justice to intervene, out of fear of escalating police tactics.The battle for the air and the airwavesBack at Facebook Hill, Dean Dedman, Dallas Goldtooth and Kandi Mossett, the water protectors, are shaking their heads over allegations. "The local police have claimed we used bows to shoot arrows at helicopters," laughed Goldtooth, a Dakota tribal member who produces skits about Native American stereotypes. "There have been over 200 arrests thus far, and not one weapon produced."The land of the free, the home of the brave, where a barrel of oil is worth more than a human life. Wrong in so many ways. Lakota ManOctober 27, 2016
If any aerial attacks have been recorded, it's been by police against Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Dedman knows, as his drone was shot down on October 23. He was using it for his media company, Drone 2 be Wild. Shortly thereafter, the FAA instituted a no fly zone for drones in the area."For the past three months, activity has been spread out over 30 miles west of the Missouri River, now it's concentrated into an eight-mile swatch," Goldtooth said. "We'll see and hear drones overhead at night, it's really eerie.""Yep, we've started to see drones we can't identify," Mossett asserted. "The police even charged one of our licensed drone operators, Myron Dewey, we partnered with him to produce media from our camp. They confiscated his drone, it's still in their possession. That's thousands of dollars. There's been a media blackout for so long on this issue, we're dependent on social media.""So we've got to work with Freddy [McLaughlin], to boost our signal, he's got that tower on the other side of these hills," Goldtooth replied. "Our only other hope is death by delay. Stop this pipe by waiting it out.""It's more intense than it ever has been," Mossett said to me, before everyone left to meet with Mark Ruffalo about building that mobile media van."There's been a media blackout for so long on this issue, we're dependent on social media."