CANNONBALL, N.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – Climate activists and Indigenous and cultural leaders will join A-list celebrities and musicians for a festival and conference Sept. 16-18 on the Standing Rock Reservation to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
“People of the Sun” is a ticketed celebration organizers aim to hold each year near Cannonball, North Dakota, the site of what became a massive encampment of opponents to the pipeline. The camp drew visitors from across the globe and inspired a host of environmental and community activism in the years that followed.
The protesters opposed the crude oil pipeline over concerns about possible leaks and water supply contamination.
The phrase “water is life,” popularized by the protest, has become shorthand for environmental concerns by those opposed to natural resource extraction projects in and outside of South Dakota.
On Tuesday, opponents to a Black Hills uranium exploration project placed a sign that read “water is life” on a chair in the venue of a Hot Springs permit hearing.
The lineup for the inaugural “People of the Sun” event includes actors Mark Ruffalo and Shailene Woodley, the latter of whom was arrested at the protest camp in 2016, as well as the band Mumford and Sons, and Taboo, of the Black Eyed Peas.
‘What comes next’
The event is a presentation of Indigenized Energy – a Native American-led, nonprofit solar energy company that got its start in 2017, in the wake of the protests. Its founder, Cody Two Bears, was the elected representative for Cannonball on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council at the time of the protests.
“After No DAPL happened, people went out there and started taking those seeds from the movement and planting them in different parts of the world,” Two Bears said. “You’re starting to see a lot of great things flourishing out there now.”
On the conference side, the event will include awards for energy sovereignty to a tribe that’s led the way in its pursuit of clean energy, Two Bears said, as well as individual awards for teaching, workforce development and mentorship.
The idea is to celebrate “what we’ve been doing, but also what comes next,” he said, and to “realign” the various groups involved initially or spawned since the protests with the values that animated them.
Picking up the pieces after funding cancellation
Indigenized Energy was chosen in 2024 to guide $135.6 million in funding awarded to the Northern Plains Tribal Coalition by the Biden administration for solar energy. The Trump administration canceled that funding, but Two Bears said the tribes involved have largely continued to pursue the projects through philanthropy, albeit at a smaller scale.
“It’s at the scale of trying to pick up the pieces to preserve what we can,” said Two Bears, whose company finished a solar project for the Chippewa Cree Tribe in Montana and a home solar project in Porcupine, South Dakota, before the federal funding stream stopped.
The company also completed, without Biden administration funding, an off-grid solar energy project for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana that powers a buffalo processing facility on the same land that hosts the tribe’s buffalo herd.
Part of the goal for the gathering in September, Two Bears said, is to generate interest and connect energy sovereignty backers with philanthropists and funders to “enjoy some high-level speakers” and entertainment.
Attendees of People of the Sun, he said, will be invited to see the in-progress installation of a solar system at Standing Rock, and to learn how such infrastructure can serve more than one purpose.
“That’s going to be a buffalo sorting unit, which is also going to provide, at some point, buffalo processing of their meat,” he said. “But most importantly, it’s a big solar array for when they kind of corral them up that provides shade for those buffalo.”
Ticket prices have yet to be set, and Two Bears said the lineup could grow in the weeks and months ahead.
‘Can’t get our heads down’
In late 2016, the Obama administration denied a permit for Energy Transfer Partners, the company that controls the Dakota Access Pipeline. President Donald Trump reversed that decision and cleared a path for completion of the now-operational pipeline shortly after taking office for his first term. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has continued legal challenges, but the pipeline company has withstood them, earning a permit Thursday to continue operations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
That the Dakota Access Pipeline is operational remains a disappointment for those who opposed it, Two Bears said, but “there’s a lot of great things that have happened.”
Lawsuits and protests shrouded Pete Lien and Sons’ exploratory drilling for graphite, used in electric vehicle batteries, lubricants and pencils, in a Black Hills area considered sacred by Lakota people known as Pe’ Sla.
A judge granted a temporary restraining order against the project earlier this month, in response to lawsuits filed by nine Native American tribes and a coalition of nonprofits. The company sent a letter to the Forest Service on May 7 announcing it had halted the project.
“We can’t put our heads down because of one particular thing,” Two Bears said. “Maybe there’s 20 other different things that have happened.”
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