The images of the season come to mind with snowmen and White Christmas, Santa and Coke's polar bears as I opened a Mexican Coke from Nott's. Coke, the largest carbonated soft drink brand in the US partnered with the World Wildlife Fund years ago to raise money for a refuge of sorts for a threatened species, the polar bears. One of the only snowmen I have seen this year was out in front of a tipi at the Oceti Sakowin camp a couple of weeks ago, dressed with a warm hat, scarf, real carrot nose and her own baby snowman right beside her.

The North Pole is warming and it is about 50 degrees above average for this time of year and this is not normal. This is the Arctic’s warmest year since records began in 1900. The warmth this fall was described as “just relentless." The arctic is warming faster than any other region on earth. It is like the freezer door has been left open for too long, and the Arctic air is spilling out causing severe cold snaps in the Midwest United States, like 50 degrees Fahrenheit below average. The day after I left Standing Rock that kind of cold hit with a vengeance, and it was already beyond too cold for me and my boots!

There is some hope this global warming won’t end all our dreams for a white Christmas, chances are given now for a Christmas snow in the U.S. about every five to eight years.

When Pope Francis wrote about the “urgent challenge to protect our common home” he also saw “the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.” I also saw images of those now thin and hungry polar bears walking on real earth, not a bit of snow in site: water with no ice, a White Christmas for the "season" didn't seem quite as important to me as it is for them.

Wendel Berry felt like the pope when he said, “I can’t think about climate change and look away from the ruining land and the ruining communities and the ruining towns and the ruining lives that are around me." There is the “great mistake” of separating the land and the people, in that it “permits people to treat the land as an inert material quantity” to be safely exploited. He told the story of the first time he saw strip mining, saying, “It never occurred to me that people could do a thing like that.” I think about each of the EPA and other officials who see the chat piles around Picher and their first responses to the scope of the cleanup they faced of manmade waste.

Berry's World-Ending Fire is burning in every internal combustion engine every day. “We’ve been burning the world up, literally, since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Coal is the earth. Petroleum is the earth.” The movement to put that fire out: the climate change movement appeals to guilt, anger, and fear, and the answer’s not coming that way. Wendall Berry thinks it’s going to come from love. He thinks it’ll come from people finding work they love, loving one another and then they will begin to protect everything that’s worth protecting, to stop permanent damage to everything that’s worth keeping.

“A whole program of that kind has to be carried on by whole people. People who are not ashamed to say that they love something. I can’t give anybody hope. Hope has to come up out of you. It’s been a struggle for me to be hopeful, and all I can do is invite other people to take up the same struggle.”

What he is describing I saw and you have too in the reports from the way those water protectors have taken on the impossible task of protecting what is most loved, our water. Berry thought we needed love to find hope, but we also need Faith.

And one member of the Electoral College agreed with me when he cast his vote for my friend Faith Spotted Eagle. Faith has created a movement within the Great Sioux Nation, to regain their sacred hoop, to find their inner strengths and rebuild courage, beginning with the girls and a circle of Grandmothers in the Brave Heart Society.

Her father told her when she was a girl that she would have to do something about the tribal burial ground the Army Corps of Engineers had flooded to create a lake. Twenty-nine years later, she saw why when the water level of the lake fell and the bones of her relations were exposed, even a tiny coffin was exposed because the graves had not been properly moved.

That Brave Heart Society kept a vigil camp on the banks to prevent scuba divers from stealing artifacts and took the Army Corps to court to allow time for the girls and women to remove the remains. These actions prepared Faith to organize a movement that has culminated in the efforts at Standing Rock. She received recognition in an issue of Mother Jones as an official "Hell Raiser" at that time. But the teachings the Brave Heart girls received are being taught in part to everyone entering the camp and the movement goes home with everyone leaving.

Tell me that does not give you Faith, too.

The arctic ice is melting and cold descends into our country. Decembers have been harsh for the Dakota people and for the Horse Nation. One hundred years ago there were 25 million wild horses roaming the plains, now we are down to 25,000 after the widespread roundup and slaughter of wild horses in the American West. American bison were almost wiped out during that time and the tribes of the plains were not faring well either.

When the Ghost Dance Religion arrived it gave hope there would be a revival of the old times. The U.S. Office of Indian Affairs outlawed the Ghost Dance in 1890. The behavior of the tribal members worried the Indian Agent at Pine Ridge who desperately asked for protection and that the leaders be arrested.

The order to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation resulted in his death on December 15, 1890. On learning of Sitting Bull's death, Chief Big Foot (Spotted Elk) led his people south to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. The army intercepted the band and brought them to the edge of the Wounded Knee Creek to camp. The next morning on December 29th troops fired into their camp with Hotchkiss guns and approximately 300 Sioux were killed including Big Foot. This massacre at Wounded Knee effectively ended the Ghost Dance movement, ended the Indian Wars and hope for the future.

To mark the anniversaries of a twin tragedy for the Sioux Nation of the killings at Wounded Knee but also the slaying of Sitting Bull, a group of riders leave from Standing Rock and ride for weeks over 300 miles to the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. they endure to honor their relations. At that first ride Sioux spiritual leader, Arvol Looking Horse, said, "Today we pray for unity and peace and ride as an effort to mend the sacred hoop and bring our people back together."

Two weeks ago my son and I had walked behind this leader as we walked to mend the sacred hoop at the Oceti Sakowin Camp. Prayers and action were powerful and two hours later the permit to stop the pipeline was announced. It was Arvol Looking Horse who repeated the message of peace when Wesley Clark, Jr. and others apologized to tribal elders the next day.

America's wild horses are protected by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. The law prevents the killing of wild horses on Bureau of Land Management land except in some limited circumstances, such as old age, lameness or sickness.

The BLM is using population-control methods to stem the growth of its wild herds. One Powerball winner in South Dakota adopted over a thousand wild horses on his 33,000 acre ranch. His horses will live in peace until death, all are geldings, having been castrated upon their removal from the wild ranges.

They are watered from dams and tanks installed to bring water from the Belle Fourche River. I lived for a time with my family in Belle Fourche, South Dakota and that river ran through the town, as rivers do, but it's size always made me think it was only a creek. The funniest thing happened one cold day, I crossed it and it was frozen solid, but it froze so fast it froze with waves caught as in motion!

Bob Wright, a medical doctor and Harvard MATCH Project researcher brought his daughter Alexa to Tar Creek when she wasn't yet a teenager. I took her to George Mayer's horse ranch in Commerce and told her about his horses and his hope to restore the land that was covered with acid mine water. That land now has a passive water system treating that water. Alexa loved horses and she knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and is now well on her way to pursuing that goal. Last summer she interned at Pine Ridge, South Dakota castrating wild horses.  A few weeks ago while at Standing Rock, some of her horse patients might have walked by me, some with riders, some, walking around the camp on their own while some could have been on the Powerball winner's ranch.

My son Dana Jim and I stood in line for press passes with James Kleinert who is a filmmaker and also rides the Big Foot Memorial Ride. We spoke about how winter in those parts bring back memories of times of great grief and now are woven in with moments of peace. Those horses are riding now and will ride until they arrive at Wounded Knee, just as their ancestors did one hundred and twenty-six years ago. Decembers to remember.

I can't help but think of a local native horse-loving girl who wouldn't have eventually made that ride, Rachel Wright, the Horse Nation was well known to be her relation, too.

With all our Relations ~  Rebecca Jim
 
Consider these words, especially after the amazing gathering at the Oceti Sakowin.
Before he was killed, Crazy Horse said this to Sitting Bull:
"Upon suffering beyond suffering the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world; a world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations; a world longing for light again.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.
In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one."
-Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux

The card that came in the mail when I got back from Standing Rock from Rosaline and Jimmy Carter must have been one of a million they send each year but it is always opened knowing it will have a special message, this one: Imagine Peace.

A good long word list of emotions could have been used to describe the feelings that rode along with my son and I on the 1,000 mile trip to North Dakota and peace would not have been one of them though my imagination was going places with words from anticipation to fear, excitement to dread. People had talked about some experiences, but I hadn’t nailed them down to how they felt about going or being there.

My brother Clark Frayser had taught school one summer a few miles away almost 50 years ago and told me, "It wasn't the end of the world, but you could see it from there!" I had taken a trip up to Fort Yates during that period, my truck shared the road for as far as you could see with only one other vehicle, a bicycle with a young man almost to Canada to avoid the draft during the Viet Nam era.

As the Tar Creekkeeper, one of the newest members of the Waterkeeper Alliance, I intended to easily  find the other members, with their phone numbers in hand and find my college classmate Faith Spotted Eagle right off, and numerous other people who were bound to be there. But first you have to get there. Nikki Thomas assured me 1806 was the road to go on, but the road seemed to be getting more and more ice along the sides the longer we were on it until it was totally ice covered and both sides of the roads were snow drifted and dotted with abandoned cars. We drove past road closed signs when the large CNN van passed us on a hill in a no passing zone and we decided to “follow that van.”

As we approached Oceti Sakowin Camp, the flag poles flapped in the wind and the snow covered camp with almost as many residents as Miami, OK came into view. Every sort of structure greeted us, but the tipis looked most at home.

The Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation had last convened  140 years ago, in 1876 when Sitting Bull had had a vision and now they had gathered again and opened the camp to supporters, over 300 tribes were represented but the majority of the protectors were not native. They continued to stream into the camp, day and night while we were there. Busloads of veterans came and more were coming for an action the next day.

We stood in the Sacred Fire Circle and listened to Sitting Bull’s grandson and a relation of Crazy Horse recount their history and pray before the group joined in a walk around the camp, the Sacred Hoop.

An hour later Dana and I were in the Direct Action training learning how to deal with the very real possibility of mace and pepper spray when the excitement began. Car horns were blasting, songs and luluing, and finally it was announced to us that the Army Corps of Engineers had denied the Dakota Assess Pipeline the permit to drill under the Missouri River. I won’t ever believe that the 4,000 veterans didn’t tip the balance on the decision to deny the permit.

We were cold and never warmed up, the blizzard was coming, the war, no the battle was won for now. We waited until dark. watched the fireworks and set out for home.

I never found the waterkeepers, but yet, I had found them all, we were all waterkeepers, all there to protect water. I never found my friend, but know that true friendships were made that will last for lifetimes. Wesley Clark, Jr. with veterans asked for forgiveness for what the military had been party to in history when dealing with the Natives in this country and was granted that forgiveness by Chief Arval Looking Horse, who then spoke the words: World Peace.

When you get home, no, when you rise up the road out of the camp, a cape wraps round you for warmth like memory hugs and the smell of sage and cedar and sweet grass is embedded  in your clothes. Faces of people with character met at the round dance in the dome, at the sacred fire, or up on media hill find places in your brain to stay.

We rolled down our windows each time we drove near and over the Missouri River to smell their clean water with the hope this water will remain that way and listened to the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribal radio. We smiled as one of the first oldies played was Dwight Yoakam singing, “I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, Time don't matter to me, 'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, And there's no place I want to be." 

Standing Rock is Everywhere.

Imagining Peace  ~  Rebecca Jim

Read more: Dwight Yoakam - A Thousand Miles From Nowhere Lyrics | MetroLyrics

John James Engels when tasked to design the Great Seal of the State of Kansas believed the aspiration of the new state was to reach the unattainable, its dream the realization of the impossible. In 1861 he submitted a single star rising through the cloud of perils to meet the other stars representing the other states in the Union. “Ad Astra per Aspera – To the Stars with Difficulty,” saying the phrase was most melodious.

The decade of anti-slavery forces and slavery proponents known as Bloody Kansas could surely qualify as perils.
Three years ago at the end of that summer, my son and I traveled to South Dakota for a training for pipeline resistance called Moccasins on the Ground.  When we left we knew the work had begun in earnest to resist pipelines that might cross the tribal boundaries in the Dakotas. It was definite. It would be a fight of wills. The people in that room were never going to give in and let one cross.

For many months we have been hearing about the tribal efforts at Standing Rock in North Dakota to protect their drinking water source from an oil pipeline called the Dakota Access.

And with the Dakota Access Pipeline the resistance has been consistently peaceful, prayerful and contagious. The gatherings of protectors have grown from a few to thousands, the largest tribal conclave ever assembled. Tribes have come from across this nation, many tribal representatives from other countries and continents.

Waterkeepers have come with the president of the Alliance Robert Kennedy, Jr. People, some tribal folks call Hippies have come. Recently religious leaders from many denominations came. United Nations observers, human rights advocates, and journalists. And this weekend thousands of U.S. Veterans came. Why did they come? They are not known to be joiners of “causes in mass.” These vets came to stand up front to give the protectors a break from what the world is seeing as the truly ugly in America.

I saw images a few weeks ago of what Ugly America looks like when Faced-Guarded officers, heavily armored, struck, maced, and shot unarmed protectors with rubber bullets, and sprayed them with water cannons in freezing weather. These officers might not all be ugly. But their actions were not pretty, and could be the images they themselves see years from now as PTSD sets in for what has occurred here. It certainly can be a result for those who have been abused and slept or tried to sleep with the threat of what new atrocity might come.

Another image was the day the dogs were brought out by the pipeline company and allowed to attack unarmed people. That image took me back to images I had seen as a child on TV news when police with dogs let them attack Black protestors who wanted the right to vote. Today’s issue is the right to clean water. We all want both, and why would anyone want to keep any of us from either?

We were thinking a lot about history on the road north to Standing Rock from Oklahoma. My son read from the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America about the history of the places we were passing through while in Kansas.
As the United States grew, states began to line up with those who were for slavery and states that chose not to allow slavery. New states had to decide which way to go, and several towns we traveled through were in the guide book.

We passed Fort Scott and looked over at the actual buildings built in 1842 where Dragoons, the elite mounted regiment trained to fight on foot or on horseback with regimental groups made up by the color of their horses. A few years later my own Cherokee grandfather would be there breaking wild horses for them to ride.

I cringed as we saw the visitor center’s marker: the massacre at Marais Des Cygnes and I believed it would be a dead Indian site with massacre in the name, but I was wrong, it was the site of  murdered white men for a Free Kansas killed by Pro-slavery proponents.

 Fort Scott had one of the first black regiment raised in the Civil War and many were freed slaves from Missouri.
My worry was for safety as I approached Standing Rock as a Cherokee and a Waterkeeper, my rock- the traditional and seasoned men and women who have been standing guard all these months and my strength to stand with them grew stronger knowing many of our country’s finest: our veterans were there with their bodies on the line for water, for humanity. Our Stars are rising.  Justice and water meet on the plains of North Dakota.

You can go back in time, you can retrace your steps. You can return to places you have been before.
 
Submitted With Difficulty ~  Rebecca Jim