Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota (CNN)Ask around and you'll hear stories of pipeline protesters who've traveled great distances.
They've
come from Japan, Russia and Germany. Australia, Israel and Serbia. And,
of course, there are the allies, not exclusively Native American or
indigenous, who've flocked here from all corners of the US.
Together they stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.7 billion investment
to move 470,000 barrels of domestic crude oil a day through four
states. They're fighting against what they see as corporate greed, an
environmental threat and an assault on sacred land.
Demonstrating is their proud daily work.
The
Standing Rock Sioux call this reservation home, and many are not on the
frontlines of this months-long, and at times violent, protest. With no
end in sight, what does it mean to them? And are they even united in
their support?
The answer to that last question: Not even close.
Wishing they'd go home
No
one makes this clearer than Robert Fool Bear Sr., 54, district chairman
of Cannon Ball. The town he runs, estimated population of 840, is just a
few miles from the action. It's so close that, given the faceoffs with
law enforcement, you have to pass through a police checkpoint to reach
it.
It's about time people heard from folks like him, he says.
Native
Americans march to the site of a sacred burial ground that was
disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access Pipeline on September
4, 2016 near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
Not
long ago, he found three teenage girls from Ontario, Canada, camped out
inside his storage shed. A white woman from Spokane, Washington, came
to see him for help, saying she'd come here with nothing and her car had
broken down. When he was at the casino recently, someone approached him
about two young kids who were on their own because their parents had
been arrested.
The situation has
dissolved to madness, he says, and he wishes Dave Archambault II, the
Standing Rock Sioux chairman, would speak up.
"If he had any balls, he'd tell [the protesters] to go home," Fool Bear says.
And
he's not alone in feeling this way. Two women who listen in as he talks
keep nodding in agreement, but they don't want to speak.
Just
look at a recent vote in the community for further proof that Fool
Bear's not the only naysayer. When protest organizers presented a
request to build a new winter camp in Cannon Ball earlier this month,
his community shot it down.
Of the 88 people who voted, he says 66 were against the camp, less than 10 were for it and the rest remained undecided.
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