The Water Protectors of Standing Rock

On the night of November 20, in 25-degree weather, police shot water cannons into a crowd of activists huddled on a bridge on Highway 1806 in North Dakota. The activists, who call themselves “water protectors,” object to Energy Transfer Partners’s (ETP) plans to drill a segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) under the Missouri River. The controversy has been burbling since the spring; the confrontation that night began when some activists attempted to remove a barricade of burned-out vehicles that has for months been blocking a road that leads to the construction site.

Some news reports claimed that activists had set fires and that the police were simply trying to extinguish them. But my social media feed, full of updates from firsthand observers, told a different story: It said police in riot gear were firing water cannons, along with tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades, to keep activists from crossing the bridge. These reports were later confirmed by . A few people in the crowd might have been burning sage, which has ceremonial value to the Sioux and is thought to promote healing. Other accounts indicated that some protectors, trapped on the bridge by police vehicles, started small