vimeo.com/.../208725635

Greetings, trouble-makers.

Welcome to Trouble….

my name is not important.

In the year of 1990 my community,
the Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke,

began to fight the construction of a golf course
that would have destroyed

one of our sacred burial grounds.

We filed petitions, we protested, and finally
we took up arms against the Quebec police

and eventually the Canadian army,
to protect our land.

After a 78 day stand off... we fuckin won!

And the cemetery and the surrounding pines,
that would have been cleared and used by rich

men to play golf on, are still there today.

Fast forward to 26 years later.

The Lakota community of Standing Rock,
faced off with oil infrastructure company,

Energy Transfer Partners against their attempt
to build the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL,

through their territory,
and under the Missouri River.

A pipeline that they say, if built, will almost
certainly rupture and contaminate

the water of millions of people
in the United States.

The fight against DAPL became the
stuff of legend.

Thousands of Indigenous and Settler allies
converged in North Dakota to stop this project

against incredible odds.

They became known as water protectors, and
in November of 2016 they had a temporary

victory, when outgoing president Barack Obama
denied a permit for a key part of the construction.

For some, this executive action seemed
to validate a particular strategy

and corresponding set of tactics.

But history has clearly shown that states
have never had any qualms breaking the countless

promises they’ve made to Indigenous peoples.

As for those who’d forgotten,
or neglected this fact...

Donald Trump wasted no time in reminding them.

At the same time,

there were many water protectors
who saw this political maneuver

as the dirty trick it was,
and who continued to stress

the need for a strategy based on
physical confrontation and direct action.

During the next thirty minutes, we’ll bring
you the voices of some of these individuals,

as they relate their experiences fighting
the black snake...

and making a whole lotta trouble.

It's hard to just even use the English word
"warrior" when you're talking about

what it means to be a warrior.

Because as Indigenous people, we we born into
this life and we believe that it's our duty

and responsibility to defend our land,
in which our language, our culture,

our existence flows from.

There is no separating us from our land.

It's a spiritual connection that goes deep
since the beginning of our people.

So as a warrior we are a defender.

We are a protector.

And as a warrior we would do and by any means
protect and defend our people.

Anything that comes in the way of that

-- and here we're talking about the contamination
of water that so much people depend on.

I've been down here since the middle of September.

And here to be in solidarity with people
that are fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Across the river is Sacred Stone camp
where it originally started.

There was like a handful of people there
for a long time.

Once these guys actually came here and really
started building and destroying the earth,

so everyone just started coming here faster.

And every day it was just growing and growing.

Before you knew it, Sacred Stone camp
was just overflowing.

I came out here in response to a call
for medical support.

We received an invite from some of the matriarchs
and Indigenous leadership from this Lakota/

Dakota/Nakota territory to come and help fight
the black snake, help fight the pipeline.

And in some matriarchs' opinions, "by any
means necessary".

And in a spirit of collective resistance,
and use a diversity of tactics to do that.

There's hundreds of camps in this bigger
Standing Rock encampment that's called

Oceti Sakowin camp.

It got up to around twenty thousand people.

But a lot of the people that are here and
have maintained camps here.

There's High Star camp, there is Wild Oglala
camp.

So this is a big massive mobilization.
There’s a lot of people here

and they want to stop a pipeline.

It went from just a few of us in little small
groups, going out and shutting down the pipeline

wherever we could, y'know?

Like multiple sites a day... everything.

We were just on it.

Black Snake Killaz! Black Snake Killaz!

Alright, now from here.

On three, we're gonna move.

One, two, three!

Move! Move! Move!

Diversity of tactics is a turn of phrase that
represents the very real fact that for every

one person on the frontline who's there and
who can stand and catch rubber bullets,

there are many folks behind them.

Be those folks medics, be those folks logistics
personnel, be those the folks in the kitchen

who fed them that day.

I believe that the only way that anyone could
organize is as a diversity of tactics

because we are all so diverse people.

Where else could you get thousands of people
to all come together like that and form this

community and actually people are not,
y'know... like killing each other?

Look at the rest of society!

We need all the things.

We need people litigating in court, we need
people doing "petitions", we need people praying,

and also people that are doing direct action.

A lot of people did a lot of different things.

They went to courthouse, went to the State
Capitol, locking down on the machinery and

actually physically stopping the construction
and the machines for the day.

They had massive caravans out to just make
a presence and stop the construction.

Stopping it everywhere we could...
anyway we could.

Using our bodies, locking down, just showing
up in force and scaring the workers off.

Just the pure presence of four hundred
water protectors and Native people

would shut DAPL down for the day.

And sometimes they would actually be running
to their trucks.

Because they know what they're doing is wrong.
Like... I would be scared too!

At one point, lockdowns were really effective.

They could stop construction, they could stop
what was happening for the day on

prospective work sites.

But then it got to the point where it was
so militarized.

And with the resources that we were up against,
it didn't matter that we had the intention

to go and lock down to something.

It just wasn't an option.

So then people had to reevaluate the situation
and ask themselves what it means to be effective,

look at the violence that is being perpetrated
on them, and then collectively come back together

and decide what tactics they're going to use.

And then people started seeing things like
flaming cars on highways, and what-have-you.

Because a lot of the time, that sacred fire
was the only thing protecting people from

the crazy cops and military from coming in
and wrecking shop.

The climax of everything that
I witnessed when I was here,

was when the police took
the front line camp.

People sacrificed vehicles that day, to blockade.

"What does that mean, to sacrifice vehicles?"

Lit up.

Were it not for people who had been training
for these sorts of non-violent civil disobedience

confrontational situations...
that pipe would've been built by now.

Success in stopping a pipeline or
other major infrastructure project

depends on a number of factors.

And despite what lots of people wanna believe...
facebook likes aren't one of them.

A strong heart, patience, and determination
on the part of land defenders are all crucial.

But timing and proper planning are also key.

It's important to get out in front of the
pipeline, both physically and by knowing

when and where to make your stand.

On the west coast of Turtle Island, in the
unceded territories of the Wet'suwet'en nation

in so-called "British Columbia", warriors
and tribal elders from the Unis'tot'en clan

have been blocking the construction of
multiple pipelines through their territories

for seven years now.

This anchor of land defense has been the Unis'tot'en
Camp, a resistance community constructed

smack dab in the pipelines' proposed path
-- similar in some ways to Oceti Sakowin,

also known as Sacred Stone camp,
that has served as the home base

for water protectors fighting
to block the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Here’s camp spokesperson Freda Huson,
kicking the cops out of her territory.

People don’t just freely walk in
because were blocking pipelines out,

we’re not blocking everybody out.

I’m not a pipeline.

And here she is again kicking out
pipeline workers who illegally

choppered in to do survey work.

Is there a problem why you’re not leaving?

And here she is denying access to
Chevron executives, who had the audacity to

offer her corporate bottled water
and industrial tobacco.

We’re here today to talk to you about doing
work on your land and are requesting access

onto your territory.

We’ve already said no to these projects
and that no pipelines would come on our territory.

In November of 2016, Canada's walking photo-op
of a Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau,

signed an order killing
the Northern Gateway pipeline,

one of the pipelines that had been slated
to cross paths with the Unis'tot'en.

But at the same news conference where he
signed Northern Gateway's death certificate,

Trudeau announced the approval of two other pipelines
including Enbridge's Line 3

and Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain

-- which is expected to face serious resistance
in the months and years to come.

In addition to logistical considerations,
those seeking to block pipelines need to be

prepared to deal with internal dynamics, and
for the potential for disagreements over tactics

to sow further discord and disunity.

Here you have hundreds of different people
and hundreds of different tribes

that are coming together.

People that have many different views
on how we're gonna fight this pipeline.

People believe that the only way we're going
to fight this pipeline is if we face off

and when we fight direct head-on.

Some people think the best way is the legal
route.

Some people feel that prayer is
the most powerful thing

and that's the only way that we're
going to beat this.

But as Indigenous people, we have to understand
that we come from respect.

Y'know... that's who we are
as Indigenous people.

Respecting the way that people believe.

There has been a group ever since we got here,
y'know, that wanted some of us out of here.

But we're still here.

We didn't want to go and we weren't
gonna go nowhere cause we knew

nothing was gonna happen if we left.

There was a lot of fighting that went on too
because they didn't want our camp

doing actions no more.

They didn't understand direct action so they
just didn't want it, you know?

The whole tribe and all the council and everybody.

There has been a lot of issues with
"peace police" and how people

have been fighting this struggle.

Even when it's been just lockdowns.

The peace police both here in treaty territory,
much as I've seen them over the years

in urban settings and demonstrations,
are folks who tend to, for one reason or another,

feel that their concern for other people's safety
trumps any good tactics, or any of those

individuals who may be putting themselves
knowingly in harm's way.

Trumps their opinions that they have made
to choose to be in harm's way.

Who are the Peace Police?

It's a combination of people that are
closely affiliated with the tribe,

people that have, like, monetary interest
in different NGOs.

So even some people that came here that
threw down in Ferguson and Baltimore,

that were part of those struggles, have come
here and have felt relatively immobilized.

Because they've tried to be good comrades
in deferring to Indigenous leadership.

But there's such a struggle between different
groups as to, like, who is Indigenous leadership

and what it means to be here in a good way.

And what it means to resist in a way that's
beneficial to the local community.

There was this group of people that came in
and they were just all about "peace! peace!"

And they were bringing around spiritual items
and trying to use them against the people

and it caused a lot of confusion and fear
and, I don't know, anger.

Don't touch me!

Back up!

Back up!

Some of our own people that were policing
our own people, telling our own warriors

and water protectors that were
taking direct action to go back.

Go back to camp.

"Keep it peaceful!"

"Come on you guys...that's not okay"
"We need to be peaceful!"

You can't both ask people to come and fight
and use civil disobedience and nonviolent

direct action tactics and similarly lose
your spine for those tactics when people

start getting injured or the police start
responding with the sorts of violence

that we train folks to expect.

When we instead tell folks that this will
be accomplished through the courts,

or this will be accomplished
through prayer...

why were so many people asked to come
to be physically present?

These peace police have time and time again
scuddled and interfered with actions that

were well under the momentum to be successful.

And they were hampered.

“love will find a way!”

If there's one good thing you can say about
nazis, it's you know that they are your enemy.

No doubt about it.

You see one of those racist idiots walking
down the street, or giving an interview with

a reporter, you just wanna punch 'em
in the head.

Ouch!

But within movements of liberation,
there are actors within our ranks

that claim to be our allies,
but who are really not.

Putting aside police infiltrators and informants,
who pose a real threat,

we'd like to talk to you about
Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGO's.

NGO's have a sordid history of infiltrating,
pacifying and co-opting movements.

Now... not all NGO's engage in these practices,
and some actually do good work,

but in recent memory we've seen far too many
examples of Environmental NGO's

royally screwing over Indigenous folks
engaged in land defense.

Take the battle for the Great Bear Rainforest
in Western Canada, where Greenpeace and ForestEthics

joined the Indigenous grassroots forest protectors,
later to sideline them and negotiate with

logging companies to save a fraction of the
one of the most important temperate rainforests

left in the world.

What the logging companies got in return,
was a promise that the Environmental NGO's

would not protest or oppose logging
in Western Canada.

This deal became a template for
an even bigger betrayal.

At stake this time was the
Canadian Boreal Forest,

one of the largest continuous forests
in the world.

This time Greenpeace and ForestEthics teamed
up with the Canadian Forests Products Association,

i.e. the logging industry, for a similar deal.

Once again, Indigenous communities who have
land in the Boreal Forest were not consulted

and NGO's promised not only to stop
anti-logging campaigns in the Boreal Forest,

but also to defend the industry.

One interesting piece of the
agreement is, uhhh....

with Greenpeace, David Suzuki, ForestEthics,
Canadian Parks and Wilderness on our side,

when someone else comes
and tries to bully us,

the agreement actually requires that they
come and work with us in repelling the attack.

And we’ll be able to say...
fight me, fight my gang.

The latest deal of this type was signed
between NGO's like ForestEthics,

and Alberta's Tar Sands industry.

Given the public backlash of the previous
two agreements, this one was done

behind closed doors,
so we don't know all the details.

What we do know is that oil companies agreed
to place limits in Tar Sands extraction,

in exchange for the enviros backing down on
their opposition to pipeline construction.

We now turn our attention to another movement
enemy hidden in plain sight.

That is the federally-funded tribal governments
that rule over and police Indigenous communities.

In the US, these so called "sovereign tribes"
govern federal government-assigned pieces

of land called reservations,
or reserves in the case of Canada.

Their leaders are members of the community,
and are chosen through elections,

and have little or nothing to do with
traditional governing structures

of the Indigenous communities
they oversee.

Historically, although there are some exceptions,
tribal government officials are more likely

to cut deals with mining, logging and other
extractive industries to exploit traditional

territories of the Indigenous nations they
belong to.

This is land outside the reservation and land
in which they have no jurisdiction.

Both in the US and Canada, Tribal Councils
have their own police forces.

Let's not forget that Indian Police killed
Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation.

And in my community of Kanehsatà:ke,
Mohawk police shot and severely crippled

Oka Crisis veteran Joe David.

He later passed away from those injuries.

Today we see the same thing happening
in Standing Rock.

Just this month Bureau of Indian Affairs cops
brutally beat a water protector

fighting to stop DAPL,
in their campaign to clear out

the last remaining people
out of the protest camps.

I believe, and it is my belief, that any type
of DIA, or Department of Indian Affairs,

or Bureau of Indian Affairs, you know Tribal
Government or elected Chief and Council

that receives federal funding from
the federal government that pays their bills,

that gives them the paycheck,
has [no] right within a people's movement.

Because we've seen it time and time again,
them be co-opted.

And it's not the true voice of the people.

And we're dealing with this back home with
our fight against the Kinder Morgan pipeline

and I see us as Indigenous people battling
with this straight across the whole hemisphere,

where there are Native people that side
with the corporate interests.

And it really does damage to our people
and to our movements.

And a lot of times our people fear exposing
the corruption within tribal government,

or even take this tribal government
as their own government

-- when that was invented by
the American and Canadian state

to continue to control the people.

As discussions about the Dakota Access Pipeline
continue, Standing Rock tribal council

will take all the support they can get,
provided they abide by

the rules of peaceful protest.

Folks who overly fetishize Native peoples
and populations on Turtle Island but don't

have a real understanding of the reservation
system, or that these reservations used to

be prisoner of war camps, they think that
Tribal Council is part and parcel with the

traditional leadership, which is only played
into when you see tribal council members wearing

full war bonnets when they've not done
anything that the traditional mandate

to get such a sacred item would dictate.

And so you have this real kind of constant
simmering conflict between these more traditional

Native folks and these IRA governments who
you even see in much of the mainstream media

who talk about Chairman Dave Archambault,
and don't talk about the International Youth Council

or the Youth Runners, or
Ladonna Bravebull-Allard,

who it was their spark that started
the first sacred fire over at Sacred Stone.

There has been a lot of self-proclaimed Elders
that are men that are not all from this community,

or are not deferring to the matriarchs in
this community that are supposed to have power.

And that has created conflict and divide
when we don't need it.

Which is exactly what the gov wants and what
COINTELPRO and shit like that does.

As a friend kinda put it as the question of
the year around here.... is "which Elder?"

Because you always have these instances of
people coming and saying they're speaking

on the authority of "the Elders."

Or "a Elder."

But often time they don't know the
name of that Elder.

And so you can't help but wonder
how good of a way they are operating in

if they're coming in and barking orders
but they don't really know

where those orders originated from.

"The chiefs told us to go around asking people
if we could-" "There is no chief here!

There are no chiefs!"

"No, nobody's listening right now!

The Elders asked you guys to go back to camp!"

"See... fuckin people are
always doing that shit.

Trying to split everybody up."

You see it clearly.

The players that come in to be able to co-opt.

And we have to be able to pinpoint that
and to be able to address it

in a way that's going to expose it,
but also eliminate it from happening again.

"And what we need to do is
we have to be proud of what we did.

We have to be honored by the victory
and it's time now.

It's time to go home."

There is a lot of different ideas and lot
of discussion around why Dave Archambault

asked people to go home.

One of the things is someone said
that the tribe could be held liable

if he didn't publicly say this.

But this land is what they call
"1851 Treaty Land."

This land that the government calls
"Army Corps Lands" is out of the jurisdiction

of the Reservation so it's supposedly
out of the jurisdiction of

Dave Archambault
and the Tribal Chairman.

This one pipeline where people refuse to leave.

This is not gonna be detrimental to our Nation.

He's a politician.

That's what it is.

Like, is that who people defer to
in the community here

as like the end-all be-all?
No.

People defer to the matriarchs from the community,
or their Elders from their tribes

that they're representing
that have been, like, invited to be here.

Does that make people leave?
Obviously not.

So obviously the people that are left here,
think it's bullshit, or they would have left.

Despite all our best efforts...
sometimes pipelines still get built.

The US alone contains over 2.5 million miles
of oil and natural gas pipelines.

That's enough pipe to encircle the earth
more than 100 times.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways
to stop the flows of existing pipelines

for those who know what they're doing.

Last year, Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline was
shut down three times by trouble-makers

who broke into Enbridge's stations
and shut down manual valves.

This happened once in so-called Quebec,
and twice in so-called Ontario.

Activists used a similar tactic to simultaneously
shut down five Tar Sands pipelines

coming into the US,
in a coordinated action

carried out in solidarity with
water defenders in Standing Rock.

Since they cover huge tracts of land, pipelines
are extremely vulnerable to sabotage.

Between 2008 and 2009, Encana pipelines
in and around the towns of Dawson Creek

and Tomslake, in so-called BC,
were targeted by a series of bombings.

Earlier this year, someone used heavy machinery
to dig up a section of pipe in so-called Alberta,

causing about half a million dollars in damage.

Oil infrastructure has also been a choice
target for armed rebel groups,

such as the ELN, and the Movement for
the Emancipation of the Niger Delta,

or MEND, in Nigeria.

Of course, when taking action against existing
pipeline infrastructure, it's incredibly important

that people know what they're doing, and are
fully aware of all the risks involved.

States go to extreme lengths to criminalize
people they catch messing with the flows of

crude and natural gas, and will try
to deter activists with the threat of

extremely long prison sentences.

And it should be obvious, but it's worth stressing
that the whole point of shutting oil pipelines

is to avoid environmental damage.

So it's vitally important that anyone carrying
out these types of actions take all the necessary

precautions to ensure that they don't accidentally
end up causing a leak or spills themselves.

That said...we're in for a long fight
with high stakes.

What looks like a defeat can also be a chance
to regroup, reflect on how things went down,

and figure out how to adapt our strategies
and tactics as necessary.

What I learned from here is that, going home
and working with our community and Nation,

we really have to set out some type of template
or way to organize that's going to respect

the whole range of diversity of tactics.

And I believe that it's
going to take education

and y'know... it's going to
have to take leading by example,

because we can't have
history repeat itself.

There is just regrouping that needs to happen.

Recollectivizing. And the biggest part, that
comes back to what we've been talking about

is trying to get either
the peace police out of here

or have them be accountable for their actions,
so that they can see that what they're doing

is really negative to the struggle as a whole.

And it's negative to community building,
and that they are not protecting the community.

They're endangering the community.

They think they're protecting the community
from the cops and the military "coming in."

But the fact is, they're already here.

They're gonna build this thing.

It'll eventually break, rupture,
what have-you, and then it will hurt

and destroy the community more.

So, like, regardless of what inter-conflicts
that may or may not be happening in camp,

or that the people on the "other team" the
cops and the police are creating,

- - if we can remember that what they're doing
is gonna cause more harm than anything,

it can help us make better decisions
as a radical resistance.

And it can also help us understand like, what
kind of help to ask for.

And if we don't need help, where to send other
people so that they can be more effective

so that more of these encampments can keep
popping up in other places in the United Snakes,

cause that's the idea.

Like this happened here, why can't it happen
somewhere else?

The skillsets that were brought in by folks
who had been training to fight pipelines

was crucial.

In many of these coming fights, we're gonna
see communities who are standing up

as they get fed up with how
the oil companies and gas companies,

and mining companies treat them.

But they don't have the skillsets
with them to necessarily bring

a solid resistance to those things.

While these legal machinations are going on,
while the public comments are going on,

we can't continue to have faith that the process
will work 'cause the process is rigged.

We must go in tandem.

And we can hope and we can pray that the easier
paper route will get a project stopped.

But we also need to prepare ourselves and
prepare our youth in the tactics that they'll

need to successfully fight these pipelines
rather then when all the paper fight is done,

all the public comment is done and the thing
gets approved.

That's not the time to start bringing people
in to get trained.

That's the time when you gotta start your
attack.

We have to completely look at ourselves as
as our whole life is dedicated to the movement.

To spark this whole revolution so we can fight
for our freedom, so we can fight and have

what we're fighting for:
our land, our water, our territory.

So we can live where we want,
hunt where we want, swim where we want,

like our ancestors
before white man came.

That's why we're here.

On January 24th, Donald Trump signed an executive
presidential order approving the remaining

construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

With the same stroke of the pen, he also gave
the go-ahead to the Keystone XL pipeline,

which had been shelved by the Obama
administration in 2015 following a multi-year fight

by anti-pipeline activists
and environmental groups.

On Thursday February 22nd, an army of state
and county police, flanked by members of the

National Guard and Department of Homeland
Security, cleared out the last remaining pockets

of resistance at the Oceti Sakowin camp,
bringing a bitter end to the NoDAPL encampment.

As we enter into a new phase of struggle
against ramped up fossil fuel production,

and even more unrestrained
militarization of policing,

the dynamics that played out at Sacred Stone
camp can provide valuable lessons moving forward.

These are lessons that our movements
must learn and properly internalize

in order to better prepare us
for the battles yet to come.

With that said, I hope you enjoyed
this first episode of Trouble.

Stay tuned for more to come.

These short films are intended to be watched
in groups and to be used as a resource to

promote discussion and collective organizing.

Interested in running screenings in your area?

Become a Trouble-Maker!

For 10 bucks a month, we'll hook you up
with an advanced copy of the show,

and a screening kit featuring additional resources
and some questions you can use

to get a discussion going.

If you can't afford to support us financially...
no worries!

You can stream and/or download all of our
content for free off our website: sub.media/trouble.

If you've got any suggestions for show topics
or just wanna get in touch, drop us a line

at [e-mail].

We produced this documentary with the generous
assistance of the West Coast Women Warrior

Media Cooperative and Mutual Aid Media.

Now... get out there and make some trouble!