Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border

by Porter Fox

In September of 2016, ETP announced that despite the protests, its pipeline was almost complete and DAPL would be operational by the end of 2016. The final section would tunnel under a dammed section of the Missouri called Lake Oahe, near Standing Rock. Things there did not look good. The Sioux Nation had a long history of standing up to corporations and the US government. They were the only Indian nation to have defeated the US Army in a war—and to have received everything they asked for in peace negotiations. The government had been taking from them ever since. It sold off millions of acres of their land and violated multiple treaties. Mining corporations had recently started digging for uranium and dumping radioactive waste on Sioux land. In September of 2016, the protest camp, set on the Cannonball River, prepared for what many saw as a last stand against a century and a half of oppression.