LaDonna, THE LADY
LaDonna Tamakawastewin Brave Bull Allard, who died on April 10th, was key in facilitating the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. She generously donated her land — which was in close proximity to where the pipeline was to go under the Missouri River — to host the first camp of water protectors trying to stop the pipeline. But as we all know, the pipeline wasn’t stopped…because this culture is almost completely spiritually bankrupt and it’s unclear if ANYTHING at all can reach us at this point. We are fully plugged into the Matrix and we know it and don’t seem to care all that much and even if we don’t like it we just don’t seem to have it in us to even try to reject our machine overlords and help one another get the eff out.
But LaDonna NEVER stopped trying to reach us, never stopped trying to get us to unplug from this beast, and she helped inspire me and countless others to also never stop trying either.
When you break down her first name you get la (French for the), and donna (Italian for Lady). And boy was she THE LADY.
Here she is confronting the hell out of an Army Corps of Engineers Officer (along with another very strong brave Native woman).
DAMN.
In honor of LaDonna Tamakawastewin Brave Bull Allard’s life of sacrifice and devotion to the sacred I’m sharing this account I wrote back in 2016 during my 3 month stint at the Standing Rock water protector camps in North Dakota.
It’s about women.
Last Sunday, November 27th, 2016, I had the profound privilege to participate in a Women led prayer procession to the water here at Standing Rock…well actually I hate to use the word privilege because as a white person I am so privileged in so many ways, and my participation in Sunday’s march was not about using privilege, it was about surrendering privilege.
The plan that a small group of us had come up with was to gather as many arrestable non-native women as possible to act as a shield between native women and the police while native women held a water ceremony at the river and also while the white women attempted to push on thru past the police barricade and make our way as far up to the pipeline construction as possible. It would be about non native women protecting native women as a small way to make reparations. One strategy for beating the pipeline that is talked about a lot by my Lakota mentor Cheryl Angel (although she would most likely not like that title as she is always referring to herself as “just a regular person”, lol) is the idea of reaching the hearts of the police and convincing them that what they are doing is not only bad for the water and the Earth but bad for themselves, for their families, and for their own spirits. She says it’s not about fighting, its about asking our so called enemies to join us.
But the strategy I was most interested in was to create a scene that would get thru to and inspire anyone who saw it: hundreds of women — WHITE women — being arrested while trying to get to the pipeline, so that someone (a REAL regular person) who sees it might say, “Hey that looks like me, or that looks like my sister or my mom or my wife or my daughter, maybe I can do that too!” Because we are gonna need WAY more white people to be moved to the point where they take action if we are going to gain the critical mass needed to stop the treacherous forces that are destroying life on Earth. Our plan too was that once we were arrested we would refuse bail and remain in jail. And then the next wave of white women would be arrested and go to jail and refuse to be bailed out too, over and over until the jails were filled, overtaxing the system and starting a movement, a new kind of occupation.
Cheryl has been on the frontline here several times now and has looked into the eyes of the police, she has spoken to them kindly, and she has seen in their eyes a recognition of her, she has seen their humanity because of course they are human. So we were going to challenge the white male police officers by bringing them face to face with a mass of white women (that could easily be their daughters, their wives, their mothers, their sisters, etc) as a kind of kryptonite (apparently police subconsciously go after white women the least in mass arrests). Cheryl’s job was letting the police know that we care about them and that we know there are other options for them, that they don’t have to defend this pipeline, that they are welcome to join us in protecting the water instead of protecting the investments of a small handful of extremely rich people (*cough, rich white men*). She wanted to let them know we need them, that we need their help.
At sunrise on Sunday, those of us women who were to be on the front line held a sweat lodge facilitated by Lyla June Johnston (you’re gonna wanna look this powerful and talented native sister up on the you tube and the facebook, this interview is a good place to start). It was all so mindblowing and heartmelting that I cannot even begin to express it with such an unworthy platform as this.
There were 30 or so of us nestled tightly into a dark hot cave, a womb essentially.
We sang together, we prayed together, we cried together, we healed together as women. Despite our different backgrounds and ethnicities we were able to bond over our shared experience of living with the complexities of womanhood in these times.
Then at 9am hundreds of men and women gathered for a non violent training led by Cheryl, Lyla June, and Starhawk (another lady you should look up, author of ‘The Fifth Sacred Thing’). The men were trained on how to hold space for women and let us be in front for once…many men later said they found this challenging but deeply rewarding.
Then at 2pm, led by Cheryl beating her drum, we started to march out from Sacred Stone Camp (the one furthest away from the frontline). We marched silently through all three camps and at each one Cheryl stopped and gave a rallying speech, asking for more to join us and they did! There was something so ancient feeling about this way of gathering people. Our numbers grew and grew. It felt amazing, one of the best feelings of my life…walking, arms linked, with so many strong peaceful women, in the unity of silence, followed by men in that same silence, to the river…….
But of course there were snags.
This action was organized in Sacred Stone camp by Cheryl with the blessing of Ladonna (the Lakota woman who owns the property that Sacred Stone Camp is on). Cheryl and Ladonna consider themselves elders (which they are), but many many others consider themselves elders as well. There are three main camps here at Standing Rock: Sacred Stone, Rosebud, and the main camp, Oceti Sakowin. Each camp has a different feel, and different protocols. Unfortunately there sometimes is conflict between these camps on how to best stop the pipeline. Each camp has its own elders, and sometimes its not even clear who the elders are exactly and if their motivations are compromised in some way.
Our walk had started in Sacred Stone camp, which is where I have been staying with Cheryl in her yurt. Because Sacred stone is on private property it is not affected by that Army Corps of Engineers statement that was just released about evicting all the water protectors. Rosebud camp is also safe because that is on Reservation land. But the biggest camp, Oceti Sakowin, where thousands of people are living right now, is on Army Corps of Engineer land (although it used to be Reservation Land until the government decided they wanted it back…..and why is it we call the natives “Indian givers” again?). So people over at Oceti Sacowin are pretty nervous about that eviction threat, and rightfully so. So we started our walk in Sacred Stone, and then on through Rosebud Camp and then lastly to Oceti Sakowin, which is closest to the police barricaded bridge that we were going to walk to…..and try to get thru.
Cheryl had gotten permission from Oceti Sakowin for this action well ahead of time….or so she thought. As our procession reached the sacred fire there at Oceti we circled up around it to hold ceremony before going on to the bridge barricade. But we were met with opposition. An Oceti Sakowin elder woman comes out to meet us, surrounded by many tough looking intimidating men. She confronted Cheryl and said there simply can’t be any more actions at the bridge after what had happened last Sunday where over a hundred people were injured with water cannons and tear gas and rubber bullets.
This elder woman felt that last Sunday’s action at the bridge is what brought on the eviction notice by the Army Corps of Engineers. She was angry, she felt disrespected, she spoke on a concern I have heard from many native elders here, which is that non natives come here and they don’t know how to behave themselves, that they aren’t peaceful and prayerful and that they are only worsening matters by escalating things with the police. I have to say that I have indeed seen some of this. But I have also seen natives do this as well, not just non natives. However, native or non native, the people I’ve witnessed causing the most escalation with the police are men. It’s definitely not the majority of men doing this. The majority of people here are peaceful. But there is a certain aggressive dynamic that often plays out on the front line when men face off against other men and it was the hope of our Women’s march to break this cycle.
So this elder woman was getting more and more agitated, Cheryl was at a loss of words. They were at a standstill. All of a sudden, before I could question whether or not it was appropriate, I stepped forward and approached this elder. I told her I was one of the people that had helped organize all this and I just wanted to assure her that this would be 100% peaceful, and that we women wanted to do something to dissuade all the chaos and violence.
Then I just fell to my knees at her feet as if the pull of gravity somehow became stronger at that moment. I found myself telling her I was sorry, over and over and over again I said “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” until I could barely speak thru all the crying that was coming out of my face because both I knew and she knew that my repetitive apologizing had very little to do with what was happening right then. Then SHE started crying! Then she let out a sigh and said she did not want to shame anyone. She extended her hands to me and helped me up and said I didn’t have to apologize. She said “We are both women and so you know what its like to live in a man’s world, I just want you all to be safe.” I nodded.
Cheryl used this lull in the conflict to start charging off towards the bridge again before they could officially tell us we couldn’t go and we all followed suit. Cheryl is such a powerful leader, with strong intuition and instinct. She lives in the now and knows when to act and when not to. We started hiking up the hill towards the bridge, arms linked, in silence, hundreds of men were following behind us women, holding space for us, supporting us, making sure no other men forced their way to the front: They were our ‘Love Bouncers’, as someone called them.
As we climbed the path through the golden grassy hills I could feel the entirety of the fellow marchers behind me even though I couldn’t see them since I was in the front (I later learned there were over 800 of us).
It was such a big wonderful feeling. I remember that I couldn’t stop smiling. I remember my hands being super warm…and if you know me you know that my hands are NEVER warm. I felt so supported. I felt no fear, only peace and calm. I felt part of a whole, my individuality had lessened greatly, the veil of separateness had started to lift, I was dissolving into something bigger than myself. How sad is it that we rarely get to have this experience in our stupid hyper individualistic society! Dumb.
The confines of my body could not contain all the energy that was flooding into it and so it expanded and expanded and expanded until I was totally merged with everyone and everything, until “I” was no longer!!! This sensation used to happen to me sometimes as a child: my body expanding until I couldn’t tell the difference between “me” and everything else. When this happened to me as a kid it was frightening because I had no idea what was happening. But this time I was not afraid.
Woman, or rather “the feminine”, is associated with water. Women are the water carriers. For those of us who are mothers, we carried water for 9 months. Women have always traditionally been the ones who fetch the water for their communities. Even today, for an estimated 2 billion women, searching for potable water is a daily task. The average woman on Earth spends 4 hours a day hauling water. And all too often this water isn’t clean. Every 90 seconds a child dies from the result of unclean water. As you read these statistics you might be picturing some remote part of Africa, but remember, Flint Michigan STILL DOES NOT HAVE CLEAN WATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As we walked together that day, it felt as though we WERE water, a great river of flowing water, swift but calm, powerful yet humble, moving where we needed to go.
As we descended the hill and approached the road that leads to the police barricaded bridge we could see that there seemed to be an action (“action” is the lingo used here for an arrestable protest) already in process at the bridge. My heart began to sink like an anchor to the bottom of our river of marchers.
There was a group of men, Oceti Security men as well as some Vets, who were kinda facing off with the police on the other side of the barricade. But not really. It looked like they were just hanging around…..waiting for us. These men had brought a semi truck up there to the front line (without the trailer). It wasn’t clear what they were trying to accomplish with the truck. These men, “our men”, were on high alert, but not in regard to the police…but more in regards to us! When they saw us approaching they moved to block us from walking any further. They said they were doing an action so we couldn’t come any further and that it wasn’t safe. But we had been planning our action for weeks! This was the first we had heard of theirs! Their action seemed to be “impromptu” and disorganized, because it wasn’t really an action at all, it was a front to stop us! But WHY????!!!
These men were quite aggressive and condescending with us. It was a strange sensation. Water wants to flow where it wants to flow and these men were trying to block our flow, they were trying to dam it. I cried a little in that moment thinking about all the rivers that had ever been damned and how I had never realized what a truly violent, unnatural criminal act this is. I thought about our own bodies, our own veins, and how our modern world with all its rules and conditioning and suppression blocks the natural flow of energy in our bodies. Our bodies and souls and hearts are riddled with dams!
We waited for these men to move the semi truck and then they “allowed” us to proceed a little closer towards the bridge until they damned us again. I wanted to scream at them “WE DON’T NEED YOUR PERMISSION, LET US THRU!” They held us back for awhile until again they “allowed” us to inch forward another 30 feet or so. When I found myself growing frustrated I kept bringing myself back to the calm energy of our group.
I just kept thinking…..geez, these guys who are supposed to be “on our side” were essentially acting no different than the police have been acting! This is a perfect example of the world we live in, a world where women (and other groups of oppressed people, like say Palestinians) so often are not allowed to go where they please, to make their own choices, a world where men think they have the right to control women, that they know what’s best for them or don’t think they are up for the task of taking the trash out! We have been living in this unbalanced way for centuries now, in a world of dams. Too many men have become dams and too many women have become the dammed. This prevents both men and women from being their true selves, from doing their real jobs. But, it’s important to point out that saying “men and women” is generalizing. In many Native American cultures they have this notion that some people are “two spirited”, meaning that they embody both the masculine and feminine equally, but the term is so much more complex than that. “Two spirited” is somewhat comparable to “LGBT” or “Queer” but I get the sense it’s something much more, that it goes beyond gender identity or sexual orientation, and that something is hard for this rigid damming dominator culture of ours to grasp. So i want to switch to using the terms “feminine and masculine” instead of men and women. Each of us have both of these energies in us, and both are super duper out of whack. The result of this out-of-whackness is a world of destruction and oppression and exploitation and imbalance and insanity and pain. The Masculine should protect and defend the feminine, not dominate it. Domination is not a masculine trait, it is a dysfunction of the masculine when the masculine isn’t able to express itself in a healthy way, when it’s not getting what it needs. The feminine is supposed to nurture and heal and impart intuition based wisdom, not be submissive. We were there that day on the bridge to heal ourselves and heal those police officers on the other side of the barricade, and heal the land and water. But these posing tough guy Oceti camp security men in front of us also needed healing. They, just like the police, had been emasculated and so could not do their real job of protecting and holding space for the feminine magic to do its trick.
Before the walk began that day we had extensive training with Environmental Non-violent activist Starhawk. We practiced linking arms and grounding ourselves and then Starhawk and others pretended to be police officers pushing on us trying to break our chain.
But I never thought this training would apply to our own men!!!! But there we were, on the bridge trying to get to the police to try and heal them so we could get past them to the pipeline so we could heal that and we simply couldn’t because our own guys were forcibly stopping us by physically pushing on us! They were yelling at us to stop and telling us we couldn’t go up to the barricade. They said it was for our own safety and that they were just “following orders” (Who’s orders??? As if our orders don’t count!). How much suffering has been caused throughout history by people “just following orders”. It sure didn’t feel like they were trying to keep us safe.
I had grown quite frustrated with them by this point, their macho posturing, their egos, their anger, their failure to look us in the eye and recognize our human-ness. Then I realized that my frustration had brought me back down into my small self, away from that peaceful unified body-less state. I was dragged down to the same level as these men!
I closed my eyes and began to reconnect to that peaceful healing energy we women had generated. Then I opened my eyes and finally was able to make eye contact with the man directly in front of me who was holding me back. I smiled and gave him a wink. This visibly jarred him. He looked away and said to us, “C’mon ladies, please, we’re just trying to keep you safe!”
Right then, Native elder Ladonna (the woman who owns the land that Sacred Stone Camp is on) CAME OUT OF NOWHERE and stepped in between Cheryl and I and locked arms with us. She had not originally planned on coming to this, but couldn’t stay away. Her energy was so strong and determined! She led us further on, pushing through the men. One of the men, a Native man, tried to stop her and she got up in his face, pulling me along with her since our arms were linked, and started speaking very sternly to him in Lakota. My own face was only inches away from this! She looked deep into this man’s eyes. He had no chance, the poor fellow. He melted and backed down and let her through. Then one of the men said that only the elder women could go through to the frontline and pushed back on me hard. So Ladonna and Cheryl and a handful of others were escorted to the barricade. It bothered me that they had to be “escorted”. Once there they sang to the police and prayed for them, while the men still held the rest of us back from going any further. It felt so painful to be separated from the elders. From where I was being held back i could not see or hear what was going on at the barricade.
Cheryl told me later that as she sang and prayed to the police officers through the razor wire, she could see in their eyes that they were deeply moved. How could you not be? I can’t imagine being on the receiving end of such powerful loving prayers and songs. Cheryl told the police that she was praying for them, and that long after she was gone, and long after they were gone, her descendants would still be praying for their descendants.
The majority of us did not make it to the frontline that day or to the water, and we were not able to carry out our action at all. But Cheryl and Ladonna and a few others were able to slip thru the cracks that our collective river had made in the dam.
We did not crack it with aggression or fear or anger, we cracked it with love and unity. That is the only way. I have regret that I was not able to get through to the men that were holding us back. I wanted so much to speak to them. I wanted to tell them that they don’t have to keep acting so tough, that real strength is about surrendering to what your heart knows is right. These men were afraid, I could see it. I wanted to tell them that there is nothing to fear. I wanted to tell the man I had locked eyes with that he didn’t have to carry all that weight, that the women were here to help lessen the load. But I stayed silent.
After the women elders prayed to the police at the frontline they were “allowed” to go down to the water’s edge and hold ceremony.
Cheryl had brought a vessel of water she had blessed and released it back into the river. Then we all walked back in silence to the sacred fire at main camp. Cheryl spoke, thanking us all. Then Lyla June Johnston sang us a song. And then, RIGHT THEN…..just as Lyla was finishing her song it began to rain. Full circle.
I hope we, both men and women (and everyone in between), using both the feminine and masculine energies in their purest bravest forms, continue to crack these dams and eventually topple them so that life can flow freely again. I hope the feminine is able to do her job and heal the world, and that the masculine is able to soften and put down his guard and make space for this much needed healing.
ENDLESS THANK YOUS to LaDonna for her amazing damn cracking abilities.
It’s up to the rest of us to continue putting pressure on that which is blocking the flow of life.
Let’s get cracking.
I’ll end with this lovely moving video made by Mirrors and Hammers Productions. The song featured in it is ‘All Nations Rise’ by Lyla June Johnston. In a couple scenes you can see the “tough guys” standing in front of us, preventing us from going up to the barricade….
