Local Peacemakers from the Agape Community Brayton Shanley in Hardwick, MA, Tim Bullock of The Peace Pagoda in Leverett, MA and Nelia Sargent, NH deliver a truckload of 237 straw bales for buildings during the harsh winter months, to the Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota, in solidarity with the ongoing protests there.
Background: Native American tribes and their allies, led by the Standing Rock Sioux, who have been protesting against the Dakota Access pipeline, a project that would transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Montana across the Plains to Illinois.
Who is there? The protesters, numbering in the thousands and including members of hundreds of different tribes, and over 2,000 American Veterans protest the desecration of ancestral lands, and the threatening of the water supply in a project led by Energy Transfer Partners.
Shanley and Bullock bring a prayer for nonviolence along with the straw bales, amidst threats of camp closure and forcible removal of campers.
