Hundreds of water protectors gathered September 17-20 on private land about 10 miles south of Cannonball, North Dakota, the site of the 2016-2017 Standing Rock encampment that stood opposed to an international and multi state oil pipeline that was proposed to go under the Missouri River. 

The original camp ultimately grew to one of the largest gatherings of Native Americans in decades, sparked international attention to environmental issues and brought the term, “Mni Wiconi” or “Water is Life” into the mainstream. 

... For nearly a year, from April 2016 to February 2017, thousands of people stood strong against militarized police, federal troops and private security forces hired to protect the 1,176-mile Dakota Access Pipeline. They gathered to resist a private corporation’s efforts to build a pipeline less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border.

... In the end, they were forced to evacuate their camps... [but] the fight against the pipeline lives on through countless signs carried at protests across the nation, through the memories of those who gave months of their lives to the camps and the resistance, in an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National American Indian Museum in Washington, D.C., and through the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s continued silent fight in and out of courtrooms.