Standing Strong Read online

  Mrs. White Swan lived out west of town on Star School Road. They arrived in front of her place about fifteen minutes later. It was obvious that the frame house, barbed wire fence, and grounds could use some work. An Appaloosa horse, with its spotted coat, munched on tall weeds in the front yard.

  “What first?” Rhonda asked, looking at all the work that needed to be done.

  “Did you forget?” Floyd replied with a question of his own. “First, we go and respectfully greet her, show our respect, and ask her what she’d like us to do. Traditional way.”

  “Yeah, okay,” the girl said, taking a few deep breaths. “Slow down and be here.”

  After greeting the elder and chatting a few moments, the pair finally began working. Floyd led the horse into the small pasture behind the house and began repairing the fence. Rhonda set about repairing the woman’s front steps, which were in danger of collapsing. She continued with similar repairs to the outside of the house, using skills she’d learned from her uncle.

  The afternoon zipped by, and before long, the sun again began to set beyond the mountains in the west called the Backbone of the World. Mrs. White Swan brought out two paper plates filled with Indian tacos piled high with meat, beans, and cheese. Bottled water rounded out the meal, which Rhonda scarfed down in no time.

  All in all, Rhonda had a good day after surviving the imagined attack of crows.

  After giving her a twenty-dollar bill for the afternoon’s work, Floyd delivered his niece to the front of her grandmother’s house. Before she got out of the truck, he reminded her that it wouldn’t be too long before she could move out of that house.

  “In the meantime, you can practice patience,” he added as she got out.

  Thankfully the house was empty, and Rhonda knew her grandmother was probably at her favorite place, the tribe’s casino. After a quick shower, the girl lay on the bed in her favorite pajamas, which were cut-off shorts and a T-shirt. She turned on her aging computer. It was time to see what social media chatter had been generated by her freak-out session during graduation earlier in the day.

  There were the usual mean-spirited comments from other Native teens, calling her things like “psycho-girl” and saying she was “too chicken to go through with it,” referring to her suicide attempt. Moving on, Rhonda navigated to see what had shown up in her news feed. She watched a graduation video posted by a parent until it came to the moment when she’d fled the gymnasium.

  Thinking of Claudia, Rhonda typed a couple of words and made a couple of clicks, which took her to Claudia’s Facebook page. Still active. No one had closed the account. Scrolling down the timeline, she came across photos of a few past events that brought back fond memories.

  But she could feel the familiar dark, depressive emotions coming on as she thought about her dead friend. It was time to move on.

  Then, when she scrolled over a picture of a Native girl standing in front of a group of tents, a video started playing.

  “I’m standing in front of our encampment on the Standing Stone Indian Reservation,” the girl, who looked to be about Rhonda’s age, said. “In case you haven’t heard, we’ve come to protest the pipeline a big oil company wants to build across sacred tribal homeland. They’ve already started plowing up the soil, and their path will put the pipeline directly under the river that is the main source of water for wildlife and Natives in this area.”

  The camera zoomed out to reveal more of the encampment. Rhonda could see dozens of tents of all sizes mixed in with several tipis sitting clustered beside the river.

  “People from the nearby reservations and communities have been coming to help with the protest over the past few weeks,” the girl continued. “Our camp is growing, and we’re running low on basic necessities.”

  The camera panned to the right and stopped on a group of wooden pallets sitting on the ground. One was stacked with plastic bottles of water. Another held cans of food. A third pallet supported large cardboard boxes with the word “clothing” written on the side.

  “We desperately need food, water, clothing—whatever you can spare,” the girl said. “My name is Pamela Chesalo, from the Wind River Reservation, and I’m just one of several youth from our rez camped out here.”

  The camera panned back over to Pamela, who was now surrounded by a group of Native teens. They held a large banner emblazoned with the words “Water is Life!”

  The whole story fascinated Rhonda. She watched the video a second time, paying more attention to what was going on in the background. Something clicked in her mind, and she made a decision. She was going to collect donations from people on her rez and take them to the Standing Stone encampment.

  “Just hatched a new plan,” Rhonda immediately texted to her buddies, Nadie and Koko. “Can you swing by to pick me up in 15 minutes to discuss?”

  Within minutes, she heard from both of them. Two thumbs up!

  Careful not to wake her grandmother, who had returned home, Rhonda slipped out of the house and waited at the curb. When her friends rolled up, she jumped in the back seat. On the way to the Towne Pump for a late-night snack, Rhonda laid out her idea.

  “Wait, what?” Nadie said after hearing the plan. “You want us to collect donations from people on this rez, and then drive seven hundred miles to deliver them to a bunch of people camped out on another rez?”

  “Well, there’s a lot more to it than that,” Rhonda replied with exasperation. “Those people are there to protect their land and water, to support an important cause!”

  That’s when Rhonda remembered the words of the preacher. He’d said, “Your best means of escape is to take on a cause bigger than yourself, somewhere beyond this place, where you can channel your energy to protect someone or something that needs your help.”

  Then, out loud, she said to her friends, “I think this may be the cause I’m supposed to take on. You know, the message from Claudia’s funeral.”

  They sat in silence thinking about things for a moment.

  “We need to support Rhonda on this,” Koko said to Nadie with a sense of finality. “Whether we think it’s crazy or not, we should help her do this.”

  “Okay,” Nadie said with reluctance. Then she added with a smile, “I guess we can help out psycho-girl here.”

  After a quiet few seconds, all three girls broke out in laughter.

  The next morning, Rhonda phoned her uncle.

  “Did you ever get that old Ford truck of yours running?” she asked him. “The one with the carburetor I tried to fix.”

  “Sure did,” Floyd said. “It needed a new starter motor. It looks a little rough, but it works.”

  “Can I borrow it?” she asked.

  “What for?”

  “To collect donations from people around here and then drive them to the Standing Stone Reservation,” she said, and then explained the whole situation to him.

  “Are you planning to do all that by yourself?” Floyd said.

  “Nadie and Koko said they’d help get donations and take them to the protest site with me,” she assured him.

  “I tell you what,” her uncle said after some thought. “What if I drive you around to all the people I’ve done work for in the past? They certainly should be open to making some kind of donation. They owe me.”

  And so for the next few days that’s just what they did. Koko and Nadie used Koko’s car to visit all their relatives and extended family members as well. The Blackfeet people surprised Rhonda with their generous contributions. Within four days, they’d collected enough clothing, blankets, canned goods, bottled water, and other stuff to fill the pickup bed to overflowing.

  Word spread across the rez about the project, and some cash donations came in as well. There was enough to pay for gas and food for the drive to the other rez in North Dakota and back again. The response was so encouraging, Rhonda started to feel that this might be one of the few things in her life she didn’t fail at.

  Floyd had an old camper shell lying around, which h
e installed in the back over the truck’s bed. This would prevent any of the donated items from blowing away during the trip. The next morning, he filled the truck’s gas tank using some of the donated cash.

  Meanwhile, Rhonda had gotten up early and left a note for her grandmother, the “warden,” about the trip. Koko and Nadie picked her up and off they went to Floyd’s house.

  Using Rhonda’s phone, Floyd took a picture of the three girl adventurers in front of the dented, rusting, brown-and-beige 1978 Ford pickup. Then he hugged his niece, telling her, “This will be good for you. I think this is the best decision you’ve made in a long time, so take your time and don’t rush back.”

  With that, the threesome jumped in the truck’s cab and headed off down the road. The plan was to take turns driving the twelve or more hours so they’d arrive at the pipeline protest encampment by the end of the day.

  To save time, all their meals came from fast food restaurants with drive-through service. And any time there was a cell phone signal along the way, whoever wasn’t driving posted messages and selfies on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to announce their trip to deliver the donations.

  This was really the first time Rhonda had been excited about anything in a long while, and her social media posts reflected it.

  “Can’t wait to get to the Standing Stone pipeline protest camp,” one of her tweets read. “Water is life! Everybody knows that! We have to protect it!”

  As the sun set and darkness descended on them, the girls discovered that the old truck’s headlights were too dim to drive at night. Luckily, a billboard directed them to the Butte View public campground outside of Bodine, North Dakota.

  As they pulled into the campground, Nadie, who was never the best at spelling, asked, “Why would anyone name a place Butt View?”

  Rhonda and Koko just looked at each other.

  “And just whose butt would we have to view?” she continued.

  Koko explained the difference between butte and butt to Nadie while Rhonda used some of their donated cash to pay for a camping spot for the night. The girls crashed quickly in the back of the truck, lying in their bedrolls on a layer of donated clothes.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Unspoken Words

  Sleepy-eyed, the girls awoke shortly after sunrise, which was very unusual for them when there was no school. According to the Butte View Campground manager, their destination, the northern entrance to the Standing Stone Reservation, was only about an hour and a half away.

  After throwing out all the food wrappers from the previous day and eating a quick breakfast purchased from the campground’s store/café, the travelers pushed on. Rhonda’s excitement grew as the miles flew by. Within an hour or so, she made the final turn that put them on the road that led to the encampment. Driving southward on the two-lane blacktop, the three travelers came to the crest of a hill where Rhonda suddenly hit the brakes.

  “Why are we stopping?” Nadie asked as Rhonda killed the engine and jumped out of the truck’s cab.

  Rhonda pointed with her lips to the river valley below them, then answered, “That’s why.”

  Laid out before them was a scene none of the girls had ever witnessed before. To the left was a wide, lazy river flowing gently southward. Straight ahead of them, down the road in the distance, was a sign that announced, “NOW ENTERING STANDING STONE INDIAN RESERVATION.” Nearer to them, on the banks of the river, was an encampment made up of a few haphazardly arranged tents and tipis interspersed with cars and trucks. The camp was dotted with a few colorful flags. Dozens of people, both Native and non-Native, seemed to be busy with day-to-day camping life.

  To Rhonda’s right, much farther inland, was an entirely separate group of people. There were men in brown work clothes, surrounded by large pieces of equipment, including graders, dozers, and dump trucks. The large vehicles were parked in a line. Just behind these men and their machinery were stacks and stacks of large metal pipes: the makings of a pipeline. And behind that, stretching to the northwest beyond the horizon, was a long swath of land that had been plowed and cleared of prairie grasses. The long strip of bare soil looked like a black snake slithering toward them. It was obvious that the snake would eventually reach the river.

  In between the blacktop road and the machinery, a backcountry gravel road stretched westward. Spread out along the gravel road, a small line of protestors holding signs and banners marched toward the construction workers and their machines.

  “Water is life!” the protestors chanted in unison as they marched. “You’re trampling sacred ground!”

  The pipeline workers shook their fists at the protestors, and one of them with a megaphone shouted, “You’re anti-American!” and “You’re nothing but a bunch of terrorists!”

  Rhonda pulled out her cell phone, took a couple of pictures, and then posted them online with the message, “We made it all the way to the pipeline protest at Standing Stone. This is something to see. Pipeline workers and machinery to the right, the river and camp to the left, and a line of protesters in the middle.”

  When she finished posting, she told her friends, “We got to get down there,” and jumped back in the truck.

  “Wait!” Nadie yelled back at her. “You want to get into the middle of that?”

  “That’s what we came for, isn’t it?” Rhonda replied, nodding her head.

  “But, I’m confused,” Nadie said. “When it comes to conflict, you usually run for cover.”

  “I know,” Rhonda said, “But my uncle and my therapist keep saying I need to learn to face my fears and try new ways of dealing with stuff.”

  Nadie and Koko just looked at each other.

  “Come on! Get in! Let’s just go!” Rhonda said impatiently. “If I put this off, I might chicken out.”

  Realizing this is what their friend needed, Nadie and Koko got into the truck, and Rhonda headed down the hill. She made a beeline for the heart of the camp and spotted an area stacked with pallets of goods: bottled water, cans of food, and boxes of clothing. Nearby sat a large tent that was actually constructed out of several smaller tents stitched together. A large, hand-lettered cardboard sign on one side announced, “KITCHEN.”

  Rhonda parked the truck close to the pallets, got out, and began looking for someone who might be in charge of things. Nadie and Koko got out and started looking around the camp. A familiar-looking girl stepped out of the kitchen tent.

  “We’ve brought donations from Blackfeet,” Rhonda told her. “Should we unload them here or somewhere else?”

  Rhonda recognized her as the girl in the Facebook video.

  “You’re Pamela, aren’t you?” Rhonda asked. “The one online asking for donations?”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Pamela answered. “Call me Pam. I’m sort of the supply clerk for the camp. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Rhonda opened up the back of the camper shell and dropped the tailgate so Pam could see the load they had carried from Browning.

  “Impressive,” Pam said. “I’ll call some guys to come and get it unloaded.”

  “We can handle it,” Rhonda replied, and she called for Nadie and Koko to come help. When the four girls finished with the task, Pam invited them to stick around.

  “We’ll be serving a meal in a little while,” she explained. “After that, if you’re interested, we’ll get an update from the Standing Stone Tribal Council on the status of the tribe’s attempt to legally stop construction of the pipeline.”

  “Absolutely,” Rhonda replied with excitement. “What’s going on over there where the protestors are lined up?”

  “That’s just the daily standoff,” Pam said. “Pipeline construction has halted for the time being, thanks to temporary legal action against the energy company. This afternoon’s meeting should tell us if the injunction will hold or if the judge will allow construction to continue.”

  “How long have you been camped out here?” Rhonda asked.

  “Since April, after a Standing Ston
e tribal elder heard about the pipeline plan and set up her camp here by the river,” Pam answered. “This is her land, and she was the first one out here.”

  Pam excused herself saying she needed to take care of a logistical emergency.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Nadie asked Rhonda. “We delivered the goods. Ready to head home now?”

  “I’d like to hang around awhile just to see what’s what,” Rhonda replied. “It wouldn’t hurt to stay a day.”

  “Sounds sketchy,” Koko said. “But not much is happening back home, so why not!”

  The girls headed for the line of protesters to see what that was about. Up the gravel road, about forty people of all ages stood in a line facing the dormant tractors and trucks. No one in the line spoke. They just stood there quietly facing the pipeline workers and their equipment. Many held signs saying, “NO PIPELINE,” and “YOU’RE ON SACRED GROUND,” and “OIL AND WATER DON’T MIX.”

  “No one’s doing anything,” Nadie complained. “What kind of protest is this?”

  Rhonda shushed her friend and studied the situation for a moment. It seemed quiet and nonthreatening, so she found an empty space between two protesters and stepped into line. She signaled Nadie and Koko, encouraging them to join her, but the two weren’t into it at all. Silently, the pair shook their heads and turned away, heading back toward the camp.

  But the line of focused, silent protesters somehow spoke to Rhonda. A subtle yet powerful energy began to flow through her as soon as she made herself a part of the line. An understanding came into her mind, an understanding of what was at stake here in this seemingly ordinary, out-of-the-way place.

  No words were spoken, but Rhonda heard a voice in her head. Was the voice coming from the minds of these people? Or was it coming from somewhere deeper? Wherever it originated, it communicated something meaningful to her.

  This is sacred ancient land. Our ancestors lived and died on this soil. The water in this river is sacred water that feeds all living things nearby. Constructing a pipeline to carry oil through here defiles this land. If the pipeline spills its contents, it will contaminate this water. It has no place here. Our lives and our bodies are a testament to these truths. Enough is enough. We stand together as the last line of defense for the spirit of the earth and the water.