A friend of mine is at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota, where the Dakota Access Pipeline  is being built. He’s been there for months now, peacefully holding space with thousands of other brothers and sisters trying to protect the waterways between North Dakota and Illinois, to remind the government of our promise to the Lakota (a Native American word that means friend) people: that we would not desecrate their land again. Dakota Access Pipeline workers are striving to tear up the earth to install a four-state long gas pipeline, that will run through reservation land, and federal land that has been discovered to be sacred burial ground for Dakota, Nakota and Lakota people.

And yet in some bizarre twist the gas industry has called in police to silence and remove the peaceful protesters–including actress Shailene Woodley–so grateful to her because her celebrity has actually brought this situation to mainstream media and hence to more concerned citizens. Shouldn’t it be the Native American people call upon the Police to remove the business who should not be there tearing up the land???!!

Amy Goodman–my journalistic heroine–has now been arrested for covering the story in ND last month on her program Democracy Now (DirecTV station Link 375). You may have seen the atrocious video–viral on Facebook–where private guards unleashed dogs to attack the peaceful protestors, many of whom are Native American. Well, she too has been arrested, despite the first amendment right supposedly assuring freedom of press. Most other media outlets haven’t covered ANY of this story. I’m so grateful to Ms. Goodman and her team for their courageous coverage and encounters with the crazed guards, who manipulated and mistreated the dogs is such horrific and terrifying ways.

Dear God. Dear Readers… dear Humans! This is happening in America. These are nightmares in real life.

I’m saying prayers for Indigenous people who our government is failing to protect, and now violating, yet again. I’m praying for the peaceful water protectors. I’m saying prayers for the gasline workers. I am saying prayers for ALL our media. I am praying for us all. Dear God, please help us put people above profit. Please help us to find courage to make harder decisions that support human and planetary health and well being, to EVOLVE past bank accounts. Please help us humans to figure this out, peacefully, in our own country. Please. 😦  Please help us to end the suffering. Please help President Obama deliver an executive order to protect this land and the Native American peoples’ beliefs, to uphold promises that have been broken top many times, and have the gasline company leave Mother Earth alone and invest the money and workers they are spending on harming the earth and humans, instead towards bio-remediative solutions to oil.  Please God, help stop greed. Please save us from ourselves.

Dave Matthews Band performed at Sacred Stone Camp last week, including this song. Don’t drink the water.  The words are haunting. I cannot believe we are doing this again, not only to our Native American citizens, but also to ourselves.